How Dalit women in India were forced to wet nurse the children of dominant castes while their own children went hungry.
“,,, Patriarchy and caste hierarchy, a structure of authority that has existed for more than 2,000 years, have had a magnified effect on Dalit women.
Dalit women - as well as those from less privileged Shudra families - were forced by landlords into wet nursing and other forms of domestic labour and were vulnerable to sexual assault by men from more privileged castes.
“They turned us into a resource and made use of anything that our bodies could provide, even our milk,” Yellamma said.
Women could not refuse to obey, knowing they risked physical, sexual, verbal and psychological abuse and retribution against their families if they did.
Time and again, those who resist caste oppression have faced brutal consequences. In 2006, after a family resisted having their land taken by members of a more dominant caste, a Dalit mother, her daughter and two sons were paraded naked, raped and murdered in the village of Khairlanji, Maharashtra. Last August, a nine-year-old Dalit boy died after his “upper-caste” schoolteacher allegedly beat him for drinking from the teachers’ earthen pot. ,,,”