Memu Kuda Charitra Nirmincham

About This Book

Originally published in Marathi in 1989, this contemporary classic details the history of women’s participation in Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s Dalit movement for the first time. The book describes the social conditions of Dalit women’s lives, daily religious practices and marital rules, the practice of ritual prostitution, and women’s issues. Drawing on diverse sources including periodicals, records of meetings, and personal correspondence, the latter half of the book is composed of interviews with Dalit women activists from the 1930s. These first-hand accounts from more than forty Dalit women make the book an invaluable resource for students of caste, gender, and politics in India, and makes it a fundamental text of the Ambedkarite and modern women’s movements.