ABSTRACT
Challapalli Swaroopa Rani is one of the most widely published and translated Dalit women writers in Telugu, who has raised crucial Dalit feminist question and has offered a counter-discourse to the mainstream feminist movement in Telugu. This essay on the Yellamma story is taken from Challapalli Swaroopa Rani’s collection of essays that touch upon several aspects of society and literature, titled Astitva Gaanam (2012). Swaroopa Rani chooses to discuss the oral tradition of Dalit communities in order to analyse the mother stories and motherliness that are instrumental in the cultural life of Dalits. Challapalli Swaroopa Rani chooses one of the most powerful stories that has various versions in people’s lore in order to discuss the women-centric societies of the lower castes in contrast to the upper castes conditioned in the name of ritual purity as the basic characteristic of womanhood. Her academic training as a historian, her ideological stand as a Dalit feminist, her religious choice as a Buddhist and her conviction for the cause of the suffering and the discriminated is revealed in this essay by way of reinterpreting the performance of a caste purana and an origin myth from a gender perspective and a gender from the marginalised context in that.
