Volume VI Special Issue VI September 2026

Name of Author : Pratibha Singh

Title of the paper : Weaponizing the Well: Eco Casteism and the Gendered Politics of Water in Subaltern Spaces

Abstract: This study examines eco casteism, the use of caste hierarchy to govern access to natural resources, and its intersectional impact on marginalised women in South Asia. Environmental labour is not evenly distributed water collection remains a profoundly gendered task, further restricted by Brahmanical notions of purity and pollution. Focusing on the systemic denial of water access to subaltern communities, this paper argues that wells, rivers, and other water sources become sites of spatial abjection and structural violence against women. Drawing on Mahasweta Devis Water and Shanta Rameshwar Raos Children of God, the study traces how the female body becomes the site where ecological exclusion and caste violence converge. Using an intersectional ecofeminist framework, the paper contends that subaltern struggles over water constitute localised, embodied acts of environmental resistance and self assertion.

Keywords : Eco Casteism, Intersectional Eco feminism, Water Hegemony, Subaltern Literature, Spatial Abjection.

DOI :

Page Number : 341-345