Dalit Feminism and Intersectionality in the Novels of P. Sivakami

This paper focuses on the representation of Dalit feminism and intersectionality in the novels of P. Sivakami, with particular focus on The Grip of Change and The Taming of Women. P. Sivakami is considered one of the powerful critiques of caste and gender oppression in India, as she foregrounds the lived experiences of Dalit women. The term “intersectionality” has coined, by an American civil right advocate, legal researcher and critical race theorist Kimberl’e Crenshaw, in 1989 to describe how race, gender, and other social identities overlap, creating unique, and compounded systems of discrimination. It highlights the experiences of inequality that are not merely preservative but multiplicative, often leaving individuals, particularly outcaste women that are marginalized by mainstream feminist and antiracist movements. As articulated by Kimberlé Crenshaw, the paper claims that Sivakami reveals the multiple and overlapping forms of marginalization faced by Dalit women in India. The study also focuses how fictional writings of P. Sivakami, challenge both upper-caste dominance and patriarchal structures within Indian community. Dalit feminism arises as a critical response to mainstream feminism, which often supervises caste-based discrimination, and to Dalit movements that tend to marginalize women’s issues. The concept of intersectionality delivers a useful framework for analyzing how multiple identities interact to produce unique forms of oppression. In Sivakami’s fiction, Dalit women are not only victims of upper-caste violence but also of patriarchal control within their own communities.