Legible Bodies, Unreadable Wounds: The Semiotics of Caste Concealment and the Grammar of Disclosure in Yashika Dutt's Coming Out as Dalit

Abstract

This research article examines Yashika Dutt’s autobiography Coming Out as Dalit (2019) from the three perspectives of semiotics, social performance and Dalit feminist epistemology. The research article argues that caste concealment is a planned, socially imposed language of survival. Drawing on Roland Barthes’ semiotic theory, Erwin Goffman’s social performance theory and B.R. Ambedkar’s caste abolitionist philosophy, we seek to read Dutt’s writings within a broader interpretive semiotic tradition. The research article establishes caste ‘passing’ as a compulsory performance and ‘coming out’ as a political semiotic act.