Resistance and Resilience: A Critical Study of Bama’s Vanmam

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze how Dalit women are portrayed in literature in Bama's Vanmam. The current study looked specifically at how caste and gender interact in Vanmam, with an emphasis on how Dalit women are portrayed there. The second half of the 20th century saw a thriving output of Tamil-language works by Dalit writers, who are thought to have explored the writers' responses to issues related to the Dalit community's caste identity and its interaction with a gendered social matrix. The book being studied depicts a ten-year proactive involvement in Tamil literary discourse that gave rise to a fresh, lively voice that challenged literary and cultural clichés, establishing new benchmarks and novel perspectives on literary frameworks. Dalit women are depicted as continuously weeping, wailing, wishing for male protection, cursing their femininity, and lamenting their incapacity to maintain their chastity on their own. Instead of being portrayed as fighters like in Bama's novels, they are shown as victims. Dalit women are victims of sexual violence.