ABSTRACT
This essay examines, through two disparate sites, how some men have engaged in writing histories and stories of Dalit women in north India in the vernacular, often productively aligning with a proto-feminist outlook. On the one hand, it focuses on some stories of Premchand, the leading male Hindi writer of the early 20th century, and on the other, some present-day popular Dalit male writings centring on Dalit heroic women of the revolt of 1857. While the former has been accused by critics of romanticizing Dalit femininity and marginalizing caste as an analytic, and the latter’s representations of feminine valour are often guided by archetypes of masculine heroism, the essay attempts to show through counter-readings how these writings also interrogate the gendered nature of caste, and in the process offer possibilities for a feminist enterprise.
