Most Dalit women, rural or urban, educated or not, with resources or without, carry these traumas in their bodies. The body retains the memories of these battles and transactions, losses and small, hard-wrested gains, carried out for generations when their mothers, grandmothers, sisters, female relatives or themselves had to physically wrestle with this society that only allows them to exist as examples of exploitation to seize their dignity as fully realized humans. It’s not romantic, heroic or valorous, these freedom exchanges. It’s the price we pay to live. But should we have to?
