Testimony as Resistance: A Postcolonial and Dalit-Feminist Reading of Bama's Karukku and Sangati (MLA 9)

Testimony as Resistance is an MA English Semester 4 project that reads two landmark Tamil Dalit texts — Bama's Karukku (1992; English translation by Lakshmi Holmström) and Sangati (1994; translated by Holmström) — through postcolonial and Dalit-feminist lenses. The central question is simple to state and rich to argue: how do these texts turn personal and community testimony into a form of resistance against caste and patriarchy, and what happens to that resistance when it travels into English?

Karukku is an autobiographical narrative of a Dalit Christian woman's growing awareness of caste within the village, the school and the convent. Sangati moves from "I" to "we", assembling the voices of several generations of Paraiya women and their everyday struggles and pleasures. Read together, they show a shift from individual testimony to collective memory — a shift the project traces through close reading.

The theoretical frame combines postcolonial theory (Spivak on the subaltern and representation; Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin on abrogation and appropriation of language) with Dalit-feminist standpoint thinking (Gopal Guru's argument that Dalit women "talk differently"; Sharmila Rege's work on Dalit women's testimonies). The method is close textual analysis supported by a thematic reading log, and all documentation follows MLA 9.

The bundle gives you the research question, chapter plan, a coding scheme for passages, a reading timeline, the University of Madras project rules, a 12-slide presentation and a viva bank that anticipates what a literature panel actually asks.

Abstract

This project examines Bama's Karukku and Sangati, read in Lakshmi Holmström's English translations, as testimonial texts that resist caste and gender oppression. Using postcolonial theory and Dalit-feminist standpoint theory, it argues that Karukku uses the individual voice to expose institutional caste in church, school and village, while Sangati dissolves the single narrator into a chorus of women's voices, turning testimony into collective memory. It also considers how translation into English — with its retained Tamil words, glossary and translator's introduction — both amplifies and reframes these voices for a national and global readership.

Introduction

Dalit literature in Tamil gained wide visibility in the 1990s, and Bama's work is among its most taught texts in Indian universities. Karukku takes its title from the palmyra leaf, whose serrated edges cut like a double-edged sword — an image Bama uses for her own experience. Sangati, meaning "events" or "news", is built from anecdotes, conversations and incidents in the lives of women in a Paraiya community.

Review of existing criticism

Existing criticism reads Karukku largely as Dalit autobiography and conversion narrative, and Sangati as a feminist text about violence and resilience. Postcolonial readings often apply Spivak's "Can the Subaltern Speak?" to argue about the limits of representation. Fewer studies read both texts together as a movement from individual to collective testimony, and fewer still examine the translated English text itself — its code-mixing, glossary and paratext — as part of the argument.

Research questions

1. How does Karukku construct the testimonial "I" to expose caste in institutions?
2. How does Sangati's collective narration change the politics of testimony?
3. In what sense do these texts answer Spivak's question about subaltern speech?
4. How does the English translation shape the reader's access to Dalit women's voices?

Methodology in brief

Close reading of both texts, a thematic reading log coding passages under six themes, and a comparative argument across four chapters. Documentation in MLA 9.

Feasibility

Both translations are in print and widely available; key critical works are available through the university library, Shodhganga and the Economic and Political Weekly archive. The project needs no fieldwork and fits comfortably within one semester.

Bama's Karukku and Sangati are prescribed in many Indian MA English syllabi, but they are often taught as isolated examples — one as "Dalit autobiography", the other as "Dalit women's writing" — without asking how the two texts differ in the way they make testimony political. Readings that apply postcolonial theory frequently stop at quoting Spivak's claim that the subaltern cannot speak, without testing it against texts written by a Dalit woman in her own idiom.

At the same time, most English-medium readers encounter these texts only in translation, yet the translation itself — its retained Tamil words, glossary and introduction — is rarely treated as part of the meaning. This project addresses these gaps by reading Karukku and Sangati together, through postcolonial and Dalit-feminist frameworks, to show how testimony moves from the individual to the collective, and how translation mediates that resistance for new readers.

In scope

• Bama's Karukku and Sangati in Lakshmi Holmström's English translations (Oxford University Press editions).
• Postcolonial theory (Spivak; Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin) and Dalit-feminist standpoint theory (Guru; Rege).
• Close reading of structure, narrative voice, language, imagery and paratext (introductions, glossary).
• A comparative argument across the two texts.

Out of scope

• Bama's later works (such as Vanmam) except for brief mention.
• A linguistic comparison with the Tamil originals line by line (acknowledged as a limitation unless the researcher reads Tamil).
• Fieldwork or interviews with the author or community.
• A survey of all Tamil Dalit literature.

Research design

A qualitative, text-based literary study using close reading within a comparative framework. The texts are the primary data; theory provides the lens; the argument is built chapter by chapter.

Steps

1. First reading of both texts without notes, recording immediate impressions.
2. Second reading with a reading log — every significant passage is entered in a spreadsheet with page number, a short quotation, and one or more theme codes.
3. Theory reading — Spivak, Ashcroft et al., Guru and Rege, with notes stored in Zotero and tagged by concept.
4. Coding and clustering — passages are grouped by code to see patterns and contrasts across the two texts.
5. Argument building — each chapter answers one research question with three to five close readings.
6. Drafting and revision with the supervisor through three internal presentations.

Coding scheme for the reading log

Timeline (20 weeks)