Cartographies of Courage : Fictional Threads, Real Lives

Mission of the Project

Cartographies of Courage: Fictional Threads, Real Lives is an open-access spatial archive on the female survivors of selected Dalit massacres in independent India. It is the first major Digital Humanities project to study and document gendered narratives of Dalit massacres in India. The aim of this archive is to make use of digital cartography and feminist geocriticism as a hybrid methodology to foreground the narratives of Dalit female survivors of selected massacres.

The project offers a fresh perspective to understanding the space, caste and gender relations in Dalit massacres in India by offering spatial representations of female survivors curated from fictional and non-fictional narratives gathered from multiple medium and sources. It offers theoretical, methodological, legal and pedagogical framework and resources to understanding space-caste-gender relations in Dalit massacres.

The project is a work in progress and will be subjected to constant updating.

Overview

This project currently examines two Dalit massacres: 1. Kilvenmani Massacre, Tamil Nadu (1968) and 2. Marichjhapi Massacre, West Bengal (1979). The focus is on the Dalit female survivors – both historical and fictional representation of the survivors to understand the space, caste and gender relations in Dalit massacres. The project makes use of non-fictional texts, newspapers, letters, legal documents, brochures, and documentaries to identify the historical representations. Fictional texts and films are consulted to understand the fictional representations. This process further led to the creation of a spatial database of the survivors that facilitated their mapping using QGIS software. To explore the same follow the sections below.