Abstract

The violence on the bodies of Dalit women often becomes an instrument by which the dominant castes try to subjugate Dalit communities and preserve the age-old casteist hierarchy of society. As a watertight economic structure, the caste system allows the upper castes to acquire an abundance of wealth by exploiting the impoverished Dalit groups as a cheap labour force. Taking a cue from Achille Mbembe’s theoretical framework of necropolitics that problematizes the usage of violence in the suppression of racialized others, the paper whips up the modus operadi of the caste system in sexual exploitation of Dalit woman through Mahasweta Devi’s short story- A Fairy Tale of Rajabasha. As an epistemic ideology, caste dominates the social experiences of different castes in India. The social space in India is a place where hegemony is (re)produced with the standards and rules of upper castes. In this caste-ridden space, a Dalit woman, a triply marginalized subject, poses a challenge to this Brahminic hegemony with her body and lived experience. The current article aims to demonstrate how Henri Lefebvre’s multiple spheres space theory can be potentially helpful in analyzing the conflicts between various castes in India by drawing on his triad space theory. For the present purpose, the paper investigates Devi’s Dhouli to illustrate the constant tussle between the lived space of dominated Dalit women and the conceived space of caste hegemony in Indian society.