A Study of Sangati Events by Bama : An Attempt to Carve Self- Assertion for the Diminishing Identities of Dalit Women

Abstract

Language and literature have proved to be a very effective and powerful medium of self-expression of the suppressed identities and individualities of the dalits or the outcasts. Sangati is an excellent effort in this direction. It is a startling insight into the lives of dalit women who face the double disadvantage of gender and caste discrimination. It weaves various narratives together to explore the oppression, atrocities and the unfair treatment of these women within their own caste and society in a larger perspective. Some of the narratives also depict strong female characters who try to break the long with held conventions of passivity and subjugation due to the factors like caste and gender. Through this work Bama has tried to put forth the agony, the heart rendering struggles of the suffocated and ignominious existence of dalit women. The language used by the author is lucid, expressive and realistic, challenging the conventions of language as well. It very well suits the social and emotional ambience and undertone of the situations and characters thus presented. It is a feministic work brimming with realism, voicing the rights and the freedom of the people who have been marginalized and considered as an outcast by the society which is caste and gender dominated. Females have always been treated as an inferior sex by the so called patriarchal society of India irrespective of the caste and creed. Similarly, the weaker and backward sections of our society have also been oppressed and denied equal rights by the upper caste people. Sangati deals with the expected hardships and difficulty of survival when a person has the double misfortune by being both.