The Weight of What We Carry: Shame as Survival in Two Histories of Oppression

Abstract

This essay argues that in Daya Pawar’s Baluta and Gaiutra Bahadur’s Coolie Woman, shame is not just a residue of oppression but an inherited survival technology. Across caste and indenture, it organizes speech, desire, kinship, and mobility while acting as strategic quiet that protects the vulnerable. Through close readings, it pairs Pawar’s internalized caste shame with Bahadur’s reclamation of “silence” as intentional protection. Narrating shame—via autobiography and archival recovery—converts stigma into testimony, proposing “learned shame” as a transhistorical tool repurposed into resistance.