• Chestha Padia
• Prof. (Dr.) Hemant Kumar Jha

This study examines how Dalit women's resistance writing changed over more than a century. It compares Mukta Salve's 1855 essay on the suffering (dukkha) of the Mang and Mahar communities with Baby Kamble's autobiography, The Prisons We Broke (Jina Amucha), published in the 1980s. Salve wrote her essay as a student at one of Jyotirao Phule's schools. She addresses her readers directly, building a moral and rhetorical case for why caste oppression is unjust and must be corrected. Her writing argues for a premise that had not yet been accepted in public life. Kamble wrote more than a hundred years later, when the Ambedkarite movement had developed a powerful political language for challenging caste oppression. Her writing does not foreground the argument against caste in the way Salve's essay does. Instead, she narrates her own life and the collective experience of Mahar women directly, offering testimony more than argument. The difference between the two writers, this study argues, is not simply a matter of genre, from essay to autobiography. It is a difference in rhetorical function. Salve's writing foregrounds persuasion, while Kamble's writing foregrounds witness, though neither text is purely one or the other. Reading these two works together shows how the political and social space available to Dalit women writers changed between 1855 and the 1980s, and how that change shaped the very purpose their writing would serve.

Dalit Feminism, Mukta Salve, Baby Kamble, Testimony, Rhetoric, Dalit Autobiography, Ambedkarite Movement

"From Dukkha to Testimony: The Rhetoric of Resistance in Mukta Salve and Baby Kamble", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.13, Issue 10, page no.a635-a639, October-2026, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2610069.pdf

"From Dukkha to Testimony: The Rhetoric of Resistance in Mukta Salve and Baby Kamble", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.13, Issue 10, page no. ppa635-a639, October-2026, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2610069.pdf