Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

This paper explores Indian feminism, particularly, Dalit womanism in the poetry of Meena Kandasamy, the first Dalit woman poet writing in English, in the light of Alice Walker’s ”Womanism.” Her poetry is the fight against existing social, political, and religious norms that not only are hostile to but also dehumanizing to the “marginalized”—woman. The focus of her voice of protest and resistance is against gender inequality, violence against Dalit women in particular, and systematic subjugation and denigration of Indian woman. Her poetry is clear-sighted, fearless, and a scathing attack on the perpetuation of the social, political, economic, and religious exploitation, injustice, and oppression of women and minorities. Her poetry not only exposes, but also denounces social mechanisms, arrangements, customs, and institutions that act as covert modes of establishing and perpetuating the subjugation of women. Kandasamy, in her poetry, censures the male-dominated society of the South Asian region that deprives women of their basic rights as human beings. Women are denied the right to make decisions about their own lives and are not even considered worthy to be treated as human beings, rather they were and still are, viewed as the “Others.” Hers is a mordant attack on the social malaise of the systematic domination of the female sex. Through her witty arguments and polemical style, she subverts and destabilizes the predominant culture and retells Hindu mythology from the feminist and liberal humanist perspective.