Resistance and Recuperation: Developing a Dalit Feminist Standpoint in Baby Kamble’s The Prisons We Broke Yogisha 1 Nagendra Kumar 1 Abstract India has been a democracy for over six decades, and it has progressed by leaps and bounds in different spheres, from roads to the moon; it has proved its charisma and calibre in contexts of discoveries and new theories. But do its social credentials stand up to scrutiny? No, in spite of progressing this much, inequality soared to the highest levels in some areas, and it has not translated into greater welfare for the majority of the Indian population. Dalit community is one of those unfortunate people who are lacking in social honour because of their class and caste. As of now, their literature is the most circu- lated means to know about their situation, and we will see that most of the literature available is in the form of their biographies and autobiographies. Here, I am looking for the cultural dynamics and power relations responsible for the crippled existence of ‘a Dalit female’ and how they get a Dalit female standpoint to speculate over the situations and strive for betterment by analyzing a Dalit female narra- tive The Prisons We Broke by Baby Kamble. Keywords Dalit, Mahar, female, standpoint, Ambedkar Introduction There are yawning gaps between the haves and have-nots, rich and poor, upper caste and lower caste, males and females, etc. in India. All these differences have given rise to certain social maladies and inequalities, and these gaps present challenges to the existing national society; but as the time moves on, things take a turn and powerless people try to get to the pinnacle, try to swap their place to the centre, where there is already the established authority of the powerful and superior upper-caste people. Dalit people are now protesting through their literature and trying to sensitize the society towards their Article Contemporary Voice of Dalit 9(2) 214–223 © 2017 SAGE Publications India (Pvt) Ltd SAGE Publications sagepub.in/home.nav DOI: 10.1177/2455328X17722683 http://vod.sagepub.com 1 Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India. Corresponding author: Yogisha, Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee 247667, Uttarakhand, India. E-mail: yogishachauhan5@gmail.com