Dalit Stree Kendrit Kahaniya is an edited volume comprising 23 stories written by Dalit writers. Each of these stories foreground important questions pertaining to the identity, dignity, and liberty of the Dalit community, especially its women. In fact, these stories go a step further and raise issues pertaining to differences across subcastes within the community, questions of solidarity, if and how upper caste women could look within and forge bonds of ethical relationality with Dalit women.
While most of the stories (Mohandas Naimishray’s ‘Yatra’, Hariram Meena’s ‘Amali’, Prahalad Chand Das’s ‘Kajali’, Ajay Navaria’s ‘Izzat’, among others) take up the theme of sexual exploitation of Dalit-Adivasi women by upper caste, middle class men, there are others like Rajni Tilak’s ‘Best of Karvachauth’ and Suraj Badtya’s ‘Gufaiyein’ that emphasize how even as Dalit women have acquired education, they are not able to liberate themselves from the shackles of Dalit patriarchy. These women are socially, economically and politically marginalized not only due to external forces of dominant patriarchy but also internal processes of Dalit patriarchy and community laws. In fact, these stories probe the dissensions among the Dalit community. In ‘Gufaiyein’, it is heartbreaking for Apoorva to learn that her Ambedkarite father who has been a staunch upholder of Dalit solidarity all his life cannot come to terms with Apoorva’s relationship with Rajan, ‘Apoorva had not even thought that the quarrel between Chamar-Jatav communities will destroy her dreams’ (p. 206).