The Dalit Woman's Body as a Site of Protest: A Critical Study of Baby Kamble's The Prisons We Broke

The presentstudy explores the representation of the Dalit woman’s body as a dynamic and subversive site of protest in Baby Kamble’s The Prisons We Broke(2008) an autobiographical narrative that articulates both personal and collective histories of oppression. Grounded in the frameworks of Dalit feminism, intersectionality, and body politics, the study examines how Kamble reclaims the Dalit woman’s corporeality from its historical positioning as impure, subhuman, and socially disposable. The narrative dismantles Brahmanical constructs of purity and pollution that have long disciplined the Dalit body and rendered it a locus of social stigma and moral surveillance. Through Kamble’s powerful narration of hunger, labour, childbirth, and communal struggle, the body becomes more than a site of suffering—it emerges as a vessel of memory, identity, and defiance. The paper argues that Kamble’s text performs a radical act of self-representation: she transforms the female Dalit body into a medium of political communication that speaks against centuries of casteist and patriarchal silencing. This act of embodied narration situates The Prisons We Broke within a broader continuum of testimonial writing that challenges the epistemic violence of dominant historiography. Furthermore, by connecting Kamble’s narrative to present-day discourses on gendered violence, caste discrimination, and the sort of MeTooDalit movement, the study underscores the enduring relevance of her work. In transforming corporeal pain into political expression, Kamble not only asserts the dignity of the Dalit woman but also redefines resistance as an embodied, affective, and intellectual practice that continues to inform contemporary Dalit feminist consciousness.