Deconstructing Caste and Gender in Meena Kandasamy's Poems

Abstract

This research provides a comprehensive critical intervention into the poetic works of Meena Kandasamy. It positions her as a fundamental figure in the decolonisation of contemporary Indian literature. The paper focuses on selected poems from Touch (2006) and Ms Militancy (2010)—specifically the poems Ms Militancy, Princess-in-Exile, Backstreet Girls, and Aggression. This study interrogates the volatile intersections of Brahmanical patriarchy, caste-based discrimination, and gendered subalternity. The central problem is the historical erasure and disciplining of the Dalit female subject within both the classical Indian epic tradition and the mainstream (Savarna-centric) feminist movement. Through the theoretical lens of Dalit Feminist Standpoint Theory, as articulated by Sharmila Rege and Gopal Guru, this paper argues that Kandasamy uses "linguistic militancy" and "revisionist mythmaking" to dismantle the archetypal images of the silent, enduring woman (the Pativrata). The analysis is divided into four thematic movements. First, it explores the transfiguration of the Tamil icon Kannagi into a modern revolutionary agent, where the female body is reclaimed as a site of bodily resistance. Second, it deconstructs the Sita myth, reframing the "divine" exile as a systemic domestic displacement. Third, it maps the "backstreets" of the urban landscape to validate the lives of disreputable subaltern women who exist outside the "sanctum sanctorum" of ritual purity. Finally, it defends Aggression not as a psychological pathology, but as a rational, political manifesto for survival. By synthesising post-colonial theory with Intersectional Dalit Feminism, this research concludes that Kandasamy's poetry performs an "epistemic insurrection." She moves beyond the traditional "victim narrative" to establish a radical new archetype: the Anti-Heroine. This work contributes to the field by demonstrating how subaltern literature uses the English language, the tool of the former coloniser, to deconstruct internal colonial structures of caste, ultimately proposing a new, defiant literature of liberation that demands agency over empathy.