Doings of Caste: An Analysis of Inter-Caste Violence among Dalits in Bama’s Novel, Vanmam: Vendetta

Abstract

Caste carries a sort of symbolic value. For those who are at the top in the hierarchical Indian caste system have positive symbolic value of caste and those who remain in the bottom have negative value of it. It is so infectious that everyone in this system wants to assert his supremacy over the next one and this hierarchy goes on till the lowest of the low. Dalits are no exception to this rule. Dalits as a community has been victims of caste-based atrocities since the inception of caste-system but they do not hesitate to apply the same sort of caste rules among themselves. Having been beguiled by the Brahmanical ideologies, Dalits have divided themselves into many castes on the basis of high and low. By doing so, they have unknowingly reinforced their own torture in the hands of their oppressors. Bama is a prolific Dalit writer who has touched upon this very sensitive issue of inter-caste violence among Dalits in her third novel, Vanmam: Vendetta. In the novel, she has underscored how Dalits fight among themselves in the name of high and low caste falling prey to the ideologies of their oppressors. In this researcher paper, a genuine effort has been made to highlight how castebecomes functional in promoting inter caste violence among people of two Dalit castes in a village of Tamilnadu.