ABSTRACT
This chapter explores violence against Dalit women in the Pudukkottai District of Tamil Nadu in South India, as expressed in their own words. It adapts the word humanist here to acknowledge that Dalit women's agency is a deep-seated characteristic of all human beings that desires seeks and demands dignity. It is essential to contextualise Dalit women's claims to human dignity and social justice in the framework of the universally accepted mandate of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which was first adopted by the United Nations (UN) in 1948. The chapter describes how Dalits have been unable to access these very specific and basic human rights. The UN has intervened in many situations where the human rights of peoples have been violated, including, more recently, in caste-based violence. The gender identity of Dalit women and girl-children render them more vulnerable to certain forms of violence, regardless of their labour.
