Social Movements and Portrayal of Caste Race and Gender in Dalit and Black Womens Selected Autobiographies a Comparative Study

Abstract

In this present research work an attempt has been made to examine the newlineautobiographies of the two marginalized groups, Dalit women in India and newlineBlack Afro-American women in the United States. This research work newlineexplores on the various social movements led by numerous organisations in newlinethe context of women s liberation that shows its influence on articulations of newlinecaste, race and gender in selected Dalit and Black women s autobiographies. newlineWomen s systematic marginalization is an old story. Women have been newlineregarded as submissive to men for a long time. Most of the marginalized newlinegroups all over the world have a particular system of oppression in their social newlinecontext. In India it is found under the structure of the casteism and in the newlinewestern world it is found under the name of the Racism. Inequality, newlinediscrimination was the main source of this marginality which led to insecurity, newlineinjustice and exploitation. Marginalized sections were always on the periphery newlineand kept away deliberately from the power centers. So the emergence of the newlinemarginalized literature has a great historical significance. newlineBoth Dalit and Black literature has aroused out of the literature of newlineslaves and the other from the literature of untouchables . The Dalits and the newlineBlacks, who were considered the most disenfranchised and disadvantaged newlinegroups where ever in the world, they faced an oppression based on a newlinecircumstance as absurd as the accident of birth. The term Black refers to newlinepeople with a specific skin colour who were forced to migrate from the African newlinecontinent to the United States and were therefore known as Afro-Americans . newlineThe term Dalits refers to people belonging to numerous castes that are at the newlinelowest rungs of the Indian social ladder of caste system. newlineThe social movements discourse played an important role to influence newlinethe auto-biographers to understand their life experiences which are based on newlineinequalities. This work tries to reveal a crucial distinction between newlinevii newlinearticulations of caste, gender and racist experiences and articulations