My Shackled Life: A Dalit Woman’s Autobiography

This book is the searing autobiography of Sushila Takbhaure, a Dalit woman whose life story reveals not only the brutal machinery of caste but also the intimate cruelties of patriarchy. Born into the Valmiki community of Banapura in Madhya Pradesh, Takbhaure chronicles her struggle to rise from poverty and social stigma to become a teacher, scholar and voice of resistance for her people. Her account moves from the margins of a caste-bound village to the inner spaces of marriage and motherhood in Nagpur, where oppression takes on a different, more personal form, to her life as a Dalit activist fighting for the ideals of Babasaheb Ambedkar across the country.

In her unflinching portrayal of domestic violence and emotional subjugation, Takbhaure shows how Dalit women are trapped within the double bondage of caste and gender, how they are denied dignity both by the upper castes and, often, by the men of their own communities. But the laying bare of these twin injustices in her life is far from an act of despair. Her purpose, as she says, is to show how education, self-respect and solidarity with other women can become tools of liberation.

My Shackled Life is more than a memoir of suffering: it is a courageous act of truth-telling that exposes the rot within India’s social order and asserts the right of a Dalit woman to fashion a life and an identity on her own terms.