Journeying into the Light

This book presents lucid and extensive study of six life narratives written by dalit women from Maharashtra. It offers a comprehensive exploration oftheir inspirational journeys towards self-assertion, their dilemma between Dalit solidarity and feminist thought as they fight their marginalization in the dalit discourse as well as the sidestepping of their issues by the women’s movement, to foreground their dual resistance. It shows how by challenging their selective representation in the dalit discourse and despite several levels of oppression, which operate as agents of censorship: poverty, lack of access to education, exposure to wider world and finally, the control of their own community, these writers have depicted their struggles and triumphs in domestic and public sphere in a socio-culturally repressive world. Even as they bring to life an entire culture with its superstitions, festivals, fairs, rituals and so on presented with flair in the colorful dialects replete with local proverbs and idiomatic expressions, they also critique the narrow, inward looking identity politics adopted by the dalit leadership in Maharashtra.