Advances in Consumer Research
Issue 2 : 138-145
Original Article
Negotiating Dalit Womanhood: Resistance, Identity, and Agency in Bama’s Sangati
 ,
1
Research Scholar, Department of English, Singhania University, Rajasthan
2
Associate Professor, Department of English, Singhania University, Rajasthan
Abstract

This article undertakes a comprehensive critical study of Dalit womanhood, collective resistance, and ethical agency as represented in Bama’s Sangati: Events, a seminal text in Indian Dalit feminist literature. Situating Sangati within the intersecting frameworks of Dalit feminist theory, intersectionality, postcolonial studies, and feminist ethics, the study examines how Dalit women’s lived experiences are shaped by the mutually reinforcing structures of caste, gender, labor, and religious discipline. Departing from dominant feminist narratives that often privilege individual emancipation, the article foregrounds collective survival strategies, relational agency, and everyday resistance as central to Dalit women’s self-articulation and political consciousness. Through a qualitative textual methodology and close thematic analysis, the study explores how Dalit women negotiate gendered violence, moral surveillance, and institutional hypocrisy, particularly within familial, communal, and religious spaces. Bama’s narrative strategy—rooted in oral storytelling, episodic structure, and communal memory—emerges as a powerful counter-discourse that reclaims voice, silence, and ethical reasoning as tools of resistance. The article further argues that labor, often framed as a site of exploitation, simultaneously functions as a terrain for collective bonding, identity formation, and moral authority among Dalit women. By engaging critically with scholars such as Gopal Guru, Sharmila Rege, Uma Chakravarti, and Shailaja Paik, this article identifies a significant gap in existing scholarship regarding the ethical and relational dimensions of Dalit women’s agency. It posits that Sangati not only documents systemic oppression but also theorizes an alternative feminist epistemology grounded in communal resilience, lived ethics, and counter-spirituality. The study concludes that Bama’s representation of Dalit womanhood challenges both Brahmanical patriarchy and mainstream feminist frameworks, offering a nuanced understanding of resistance that is collective, contextual, and ethically informed. This article thus contributes to ongoing debates in Dalit studies, feminist literary criticism, and Indian English literature by re-centering marginalized voices as producers of knowledge, ethics, and transformative social critique

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