Representing the Subaltern in Baby Kamble’s The Prisons We Broke through Dalit Women’s Voice Caste Resistance Identity and the Pursuit of Social Justice

Author

Dr. V. Chandrasekhar Naik


Abstract

 This paper examines the politics of representation in Baby Kamble’s autobiography The Prisons We Broke, focusing on how the narrative transforms Dalit women from objects of social discourse into speaking, resistant subjects. Using Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s Subaltern Theory the study looks at how Kamble builds a group voice that goes beyond stories to show the shared life of Mahar women. The paper looks at caste and patriarchy as two ways that push Dalit women into subaltern status and shows how these forces together make Dalit womens limits hard to see if you only look at caste or only at gender. By reading the text and focusing on subaltern voice, caste exclusion, gender, group identity and resistance the study says that Kamble’s storytelling is itself resistance turning silence into a record of history. The paper ends by saying that Kamble’s text goes past just showing hurt; it claims dignity, power and a call, for treatment that comes from Ambedkarite ideas.



Keywords

Dalit Literature, Subaltern Theory, Caste and Patriarchy, Collective Identity, Narrative Resistance, Ambedkarite Consciousness



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References


  • Kamble B. (2008). The Prisons We Broke. New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan.
  • Lewis, Helen. Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights. Jonathan Cape, 2020.
  • Patel, Gaurang Bavchandbhai. “A Marginalized Voice in The Prisons We Brokeby Baby Kamble: A Critical Analyses.” Knowledge Consortium of Gujarat, no. 39, Dec. 2020– 2021, pp. 1–4. https://share.google/yxZsdblsVcePOFoOC
  • Tak, Atul Kumar. “Voice of Marginalized Women in Baby Kamble’s The Prisons We Broke.” Remarking An Analisation, vol. 10, no. 10, Jan. 2026, Paper ID 21165. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18654871.
  • Yogisha, and N. Kumar. “Resistance and Recuperation: Developing a Dalit Feminist Standpoint in Baby Kamble’s The Prisons We Broke.”Contemporary Voice of Dalit, vol. 9, no. 2, 2017, pp. 214–223. https://doi.org/10.1177/2455328X17722683

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