The Prisons We Broke Summary

The paper discusses the status of a Dalit woman in Indian society who faces the double marginalization of being a Dalit and a woman. Moreover financial deprivation or poverty adds fuel to fire and makes her even more vulnerable. She is a caste victim, she is a gender victim and her victimization gets enhanced when she is exploited, tortured and plundered not only by the upper caste men outside her community but also by her own men inside the community.

Baby Kamble’s in her narrative The Prisons We Broke, brings out the worst form of exploitation and physical torture that was inflicted on the Dalit women by their male counterparts. Gopal Guru in the after word to the book finds that the narratives of Dalit women destroy the myth which certifies Dalit patriarchy as a democratic one. The physical torture that a Dalit woman goes through not only involves physical injuries but also inflicts deep psychological wounds and pain, leaving a scar of humiliation in the minds of Dalit women. Babytai recalls, “Everyday the Maharwada would resound with the cries of hapless women in some house or the other. Husbands flogging their wives as if they were beasts would do so until the sticks broke with the effort. The heads of these women would break open, their backbones would be

In rural areas, Dalit women work as landless labourers where the landlords and the other powerful men of the villages find them an easy prey to satisfy their lust without any fear of the legal system or the police who usually remain indifferent towards such cases. Sometimes even the policemen themselves rape these poor Dalit women when they go to them for lodging the FIR where these policemen, instead of listening to these poor women, arrest them on any false pretext to fulfill their intention and help the