Rethinking Knowledge, Unthinking the Brahminical Dalit Feminism and Gender-Caste
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Abstract
This article introduces a Dalit decolonial feminist standpoint as an epistemic and political framework that redefines feminist thought through four interrelated pillars. It argues that decolonial and postcolonial frameworks remain constrained by their inability to recognise caste as the meta-structure that organises social relations, epistemic hierarchies, and modernity itself. Building on Dalit feminist thought, the article situates the Dalit decolonial feminist standpoint as a methodological and conceptual intervention that locates the entanglement of Brahminical patriarchy and coloniality as the constitutive core of modern knowledge. It proposes that decolonisation without debrahminisation reproduces the logic of caste within the emancipatory vocabulary of decoloniality. Among the standpoint’s pillars, the analytic of gender-caste assumes central significance, positing that any theorisation of gender in South Asia must acknowledge caste as meta to its construction and lived expression. Together, these pillars foreground Dalit women’s lived and theorised experiences as epistemic interventions that challenge the universalising tendencies of both colonial and Brahminical modernities, reworlding feminist thought towards a decolonial future.
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