ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the nature and types of violence, harassment, humiliation, ridicule, etc., which Dalit women suffer in the caste hierarchy of Hindu social order. It demonstrates how Dalit women differ from so-called general caste women specifically on the structural location in the Hindu social order, the occupations they are forced to perform, and the nature of physical and sexual violence they are exposed to, etc. In this context it highlights how the violence is embodied at each of the previously said levels on the basis of data extracted from Dalit women biographies, narratives, and empirical data from the field and government records. By recording such socio-cultural realities, this chapter also analyses the claim made by a number of social scientists that Dalit women are highly exploited on the basis of caste, gender, and class. Along with this, we would also like to understand what is the nature of Dalit patriarchy, whether it is the same as the so-called upper caste patriarchy or qualitatively different.
