Shikshan Sanshodhan : Journal of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Abstract: Bama's groundbreaking Dalit autobiography, Karukku (1992), exposes the Dalit Christian womb as a visceral arena of caste hierarchies, where reproductive violence—such as menarche shaming, forced pregnancies in the fields, communal miscarriages, denial of obstetric care in convents, and menstrual blood taboos—turns marginalized women's bodies into marked somatic records of intergenerational trauma. This paper contends that Bama transforms womb-trauma into a subversive decolonial narrative, presenting scarred uteruses as posthuman ecologies that disrupt savarna endogamy and purity-pollution binaries through fluid kinship—where menstrual blood and fetal clots serve as material texts of resistance. By integrating Dalit feminist intersectionality, trauma theory's unclaimed embodiment, pain-world dialectics, and cyborg hybridity, the analysis examines Karukku's vignettes: Naicker gazes taint puberty, malnutrition results in weak offspring, and ecclesiastical control silences births. The literature review identifies gaps—Dalit feminism abstracts corporeality, trauma theory overlooks caste somatics, and posthumanism disregards reproductive specificity—while Bama scholarship describes suffering without theorization. This intervention addresses the gap, linking biopolitical historicization with posthuman gynecology to position Karukku as a cornerstone of life-writing that challenges humanist reproductivity. Resonating transnationally with Black maternal hieroglyphs, Karukku calls for somatic shifts in Indian literary criticism, connecting Christian-Dalit hybridity to global reproductive justice against race-class-gender oppressions. Ultimately, Bama's return to her village—where education breaks chains—transforms wombs into contested ecologies, urging scholars to amplify subaltern bodily testimony for abolitionist scholarship that centers non-savarna embodiment, decolonizes Eurocentric trauma paradigms, and acknowledges scarred uteruses as dynamic repositories birthing futures beyond caste oppression.