ABSTRACT
Dalit women's autobiographies take up the challenge against the polluted identity defined for them in Hinduism, and as the polluted roles re-emerge in the Dalit liberation movement. This chapter focuses on Baby Kamble's autobiography The Prisons We Broke and Urmila Pawar's memoirs The Weave of MyLife: A Dalit Woman's Memoirs. Beginning with the history and context of the religious sources that define Dalit women's bodies as polluted, this chapter considers how Dalit women writers use their bodies in autobiography in order to disrupt this definition. As Dalits, their caste, assigned at birth, carries untouchability through polluting occupations which mark their bodies, regardless of a change in occupation. In their writing, Dalit women include their bodies as human bodies, and reject the concept of their female bodies as polluted and polluting. As the Dalit women claim their place in the realm of intellectual production and truth-telling, they simultaneously refuse to leave their polluted bodies out of the text.
