Dalit Women as “Sexual Carrions”: Multiple Jeopardy of Caste, Shame, Stigma, and Pollution

Dalit womenDalit women in IndiaIndia are a historically oppressed group. Analysis of Dalit women’s oppression requires us to look into the double bind of casteCaste and gender structuresGender structures, meta-categories that impose on their bodies huge historical and structural forms of exclusion and marginalization. Considered as “walking carrion”, Dalit women are seen not only as bearers of untouchability and impurity but also the stigma and shame of lower caste and sexually promiscuous. The chapter conceptualizes that Dalit women are often seen as “sexual carrions.” The term indicates the vulnerable condition of their sexual and gendered position as Dalit women. As untouchablesUntouchables, they are violated by caste. But as “sexual carrion”, they are exposed as sexually available even when they are untouchables. Dalit women's sexualities and bodies become sites for sexual and punitive control of Brahminical male violence. They are stigmatized as a caste groupCaste group, and they are at the lowest of the caste–gender hierarchy without any caste privilege. Hence, their bodies are openly and sexually violated through rapeRape and sexual assaultsSexual assaults. As “walking carrions” (dead animals), savarnas stigmatize Dalits with the stink, and shame. When their bodies become the carriers of violations of Brahminical patriarchal violence, it is argued that their bodies become represenatative of the image of “sexual carrion.”