Silent Echoes: Dalit Women and Environmental Justice—A Literary Exploration

Abstract

Dalits, historically known as the outcaste in India’s hierarchical social order, endure systemic discrimination that intersects with gendered oppression, subjecting Dalit women to compounded vulnerabilities. Their lived experiences—shaped by caste and gender dynamics—remain strikingly absent from mainstream environmental discourse, despite disproportionate exposure to ecological degradation and resource deprivation. Using intersectional feminist frameworks, this chapter analyses the nexus of caste, gender and environmental justice (EJ) through the autobiographies of two seminal Dalit writers: Baby Kamble’s The Prisons We Broke (1986/2008) and Bama’s Karukku (1992). Kamble and Bama demonstrate how caste-based spatial segregation confines Dalit communities to environmentally hazardous peripheries, systematically denying access to clean water, arable land and sustainable livelihoods. Through close textual analysis, this chapter reveals how hegemonic power structures distribute environmental resources along caste lines, enforcing Dalits’ relegation to toxic scarcity. Emphasising on Dalit feminist perspectives, the chapter critiques homogenised EJ frameworks, advocating for intersectional policy approaches to develop inclusive and sustainable solutions. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2026.