Marginality

In the wake of the reported rape and murder of a 9-year-old Dalit girl in the metropolitan capital of Delhi, it is paramount to discuss marginal girlhood. Marginal girlhood refers to alternative accounts of non-hegemonic girlhood which does not find a voice in mainstream literature and the story of the girl. Commentators on social media conveniently refer to her being a “girl-child” rather than a Dalit to dismiss the specificity of instances of caste violence against Dalit girls. This pushes the public rhetoric into a pitfall which increases the probability of misidentifying caste-based violence as gender-based violence. The fact that Dalit girls are the most vulnerable among an already marginalised group due to their caste location remains incontrovertible. The Brahminical lineage of the history of the girl child alludes to why we are robbed of a language which can effectively capture the gravitas of this case.