A Reading of Urmila Pawar’s The Weave of My Life: Concerns of Dalit Women Remain Different

Abstract

The feminist concerns of the dalit women in India remain different
from those of the mainstream higher caste women. The existence of patriarchal
forces pervading through at all levels in the lives of mainstream women offers
them with a scope to struggle for certain rights that remain peculiar to their caste
and community. It has been claimed by many critics as well as the readers of
dalit women’s writings that the women of this community bear the brunt of
‘double oppression’ and ‘double marginalisation’ i.e. they remain subjected to
their victimisation at the hands of the caste system, being dalit women as well
as to the oppression at the hands of the internal patriarchal forces. Therefore,
they remain ‘doubly victimised’. A critical reading of Urmila Pawar’s memoir,
The Weave of My Life, which has often been viewed as a text with dalit feminist
concerns, proves an otherwise picture of the dalit community and its treatment
of the women. The present paper has attempted to study some of the aspects
presented in the memoir to construct a viewpoint that since the lives of the
women of the two communities and the social rules governing their lives, remain
different, their concerns remain different and therefore their rights remain
different.