18 Gender and Caste
Abhinaya V
Introduction
Since the earliest studies on caste, the practice of untouchability and the ideologies which uphold it, namely that of purity and pollution, have sustained the attention of social science scholars. It is now accepted that the reproduction of caste completely depends upon the control and regulation of women’s sexuality through the rules of endogamy. Despite the fact that gender is internal to the social organization of caste, studies of caste have largely been done in male-centric terms, neglecting the question of gender relations within it. However, since the 1990s onwards, there has been an increasing feminist articulation that caste and gender-based hierarchies are twin systems of oppression which cannot be understood independently of each other. This led to a renewed interest in understanding the intersections of gender and caste as they influence and shape social realities.
This module aims to explore some of the ways in caste and gender issues in India are intertwined. The first section seeks to provide a theoretical understanding developed by various activists and thinkers on the gendered aspects of the caste system. The second section discusses the aspect of violence as it affects the Dalit woman who is the site of intersection of caste, class and gender inequality. Certain important cases will be discussed in order to understand this phenomenon.
What will students learn from this module? Firstly, they will examine how gender and caste are linked. Secondly, they will learn how gender and caste intersect with other axes such as class and sexuality in order to shape reality. Lastly, they will analyse how sexual violence affects women within a caste-based system.
Section 1: Gender in Anti-Caste Movements
Some of the earliest systematic critiques of the caste system came from Jotirao Phule and Savitribai Phule in the late 19th Century in Maharashtra, closely followed by E V Ramasami Naicker (Periyar) who led the Non-Brahmin movement in Tamil Nadu in the early 20th Century. Phule founded the Satyashodak Samaj in 1873 which addressed issues of the working class, unequal division of labour between women of different castes and importantly the exploitation of the lower castes at the hands of the Brahmin castes. For Phule, the question of caste and dharma was central to his thinking, and he equated Brahmanism with Hinduism, arguing that Hindu scriptures such as the Vedas and Smritis were created by Bramnins in order to rationalize and perpetuate their dominance (Deshpande 2010). He had a dichotomous view of Indian society, which he believed was formed by two opposing groups- the Brahmins and the Shudratishudras(lower castes and Dalit). Part of his politics against Brahmanism involved the recognition of gender oppression and his works to liberate women. According to the Manusmriti, all women, irrespective of varna, had the same social position of the shudra. Based on this, Phule included all women in his notion of shudratishudra. Although he did not purport a theory of gender inequality or patriarchy per se, he believed that women challenging Brahmanical orthodoxy and oppression similar to the way shudras challenging Brahmanism (ibid). His recognition of women’s inferior position in society led him to spearhead the movement for women’s education. At a time when Hindu patriarchal mores mandated that husbands look upon their wives merely as slaves, Jotiba Phule taught his wife Savitribai Phule to read and write and encouraged her to become a teacher, and his partner in his drive to educate women and Dalit, thus exemplifying the feminist position of the personal being the political. Their efforts enabled Muktabai Salve, a young Dalit girl, who at the tender age of thirteen wrote a brief essay critiquing the role of caste and the Brahmanical ideologies it carried. Her essay, published in 1855, is significant, as it is the earliest available writing by a Dalit girl. She wrote, ‘Let that religion, where only one person is privileged and the rest deprived, perish from the earth and let it never enter our minds to be proud of such a religion’(c.f. Chakravarti, 2003). Rege (1998) argues that Phule’s project for the emancipation of the lower castes, Dalits and women from the slavery of Brahmanism stands out from other narratives of caste in that period because it recognizes the ways in which caste patriarchy exploits women of different castes. Tarabai Shinde, an activist in the Satyashodak Samaj, in her work Stree Purusha Tulana, purports that gender and caste work together to create oppressive conditions for women. Written as a response to an article condoning the sentencing of death of a brahmin woman who allegedly had an abortion, she argued that men were equally, if not more, guilty of the same vices which they accused women off. This text not only attacked brahmanical patriarchy but also the patriarchies among the ‘Kunbi’ and other non-brahman castes. Her work is particularly significant, because while it concerns itself with issues such as widow remarriage and ill-treatment of widows, which were part of the larger public debates in India at the time, she also widened her analysis to include the patriarchal ideologies which permeated Hindu society (Tharu and K. Lalitha 1991).
Similarly in Tamil Nadu, Periyar founded the Self Respect movement in 1925, a radical anti-caste movement which was active for two decades. Central to the principles of the movement was the women’s question. The most important ideas he had advanced was about marriage and family which he identified as the key institutions sustaining both patriarchy and caste. According to him, untouchability as a concept and practice was closely connected with notions of both ideological and actual control of women. He stressed on the significance of motherhood in caste society, arguing that women were required to become mothers for the reproduction of an unequal social order. Furthermore, he argued that this inscription of female sexuality within the terms of private property and caste is actualized through the institution of marriage (V. Geetha 2015). For this reason, he started the ‘self-respect marriage1’, which enabled women self-respecters to speak out boldly against caste and patriarchy (Geetha 1998). By emphasizing inter-caste marriages and widow marriages, and deliberately rejecting customary practices and the services of Brahmin priests, the self-respect marriage sought to transform the traditional caste-based,
1 Marriage, for Periyar, regulated and disciplined women’s familial and reproductive labour, and denied them their desires and self-respecting life of their choice. Tamil marriages were contrived events with the families deciding on who should marry whom, based obviously on caste codes. He envisioned the self-respect marriage to be devoid of these rules and regulations, and instead wanted it to be based upon mutual respect and desire for one another.
patriarchal family and replace it with a new egalitarian, trans-caste family (ibid). The emphasis on desire and individual choice for selection of partners, rather than caste/class, and by rendering marriage a social contract which can anytime be revoked if the partners so decide it, challenged the very basis of the caste Hindu family.
During the same period, Ambedkar, at the heights of Dalit mobilization, emphatically declared that “the real remedy for breaking caste is inter-marriage. Nothing else will serve as the solvent of caste”, (Moon 1979, 67). While dominant understandings of caste consider notions of purity and pollution as central to the caste system, B.R. Ambedkar suggests that the essence of caste is not purity and pollution, but endogamy. But how is the practice of endogamy maintained in a society? How was human sexuality and desire controlled and regulated so that the emergence of castes became possible? According to him, in order to perpetuate endogamy and thereby the caste system, four different practices were deployed: Sati, enforced widowhood, enforced celibacy and the marriage of child brides with older men and widowers (Pardeshi 1998). The practice of sati, he argued, was necessary because if the widow several other problems would be created- she may possibly marry another man from her caste group, thereby reducing the chances of other young brides from her caste group. Yet, if she married a man outside her caste, she would be breaching the strict rules of caste endogamy. Therefore the practice of sati was considered essential by the community. However since sati was rendered illegal, other practices also came to be deployed. Enforced widowhood, according to Ambedkar, was another way of controlling women’s sexuality. Practice of tonsure, sartorial restrictions, dietary restrictions, and so on were strictly set in order to make the widow undesirable. In certain cases, some widowers are forced into celibacy in order to ensure they do not break caste boundaries. Since enforcing celibacy on men is impractical, the caste group may choose a child bride for the widower so that the rules of endogamy are maintained and the caste-based morality is satisfied (Pardeshi 1998).
Section 2: Caste Patriarchy
On a parallel note, Uma Chakravarti, through her historical research into the Vedic period,similarly argued that ‘caste hierarchy and gender hierarchy are the organising principles of the brahmanical social order’ (Chakravarti 1993, 579). Her work on Brahmanical patriarchy laid the groundwork for scholarly research on the gendered nature of caste. Chakravarti (2003) argued that women’s sexuality was controlled in order to protect the purity of the caste. Thus, women were regarded as ‘gateways’ and their sexuality is regulated through strict endogamous marriages in order to maintain caste purity and ensure patrilineal succession. This interconnection between caste and gender, termed as Brahmanical patriarchy is “a set of rules and institutions in which caste and gender are linked, each shaping the other and where women are crucial in maintaining the boundaries between castes” (ibid). Further, she argued that this control of sexuality was exercised in two ways- through spreading an ideology of consent and through coercive methods. In the first case, the ideology of stridharma or pativrata (feminine ideals of chastity and fidelity to husbands) was internalized by women who thereby participated in the regulation of their own sexuality. In cases where women broke these ideological norms, patriarchal laws and customs were in place which gave her natal family or conjugal family the power to regulate her impulses. Lastly, in cases where in the family fails to control women’s choices, the King or the authority could ultimately wield his power to control their sexuality.
Prem Chowdhry’s’ research on the policing of marriage practices in Haryana in patriarchal terms reveals a continuity of the regulatory mechanisms described by Chakravarti. Chowdhry(1997) argues that kinship and caste are structurally linked at the site of marriage, where kinship ties formed through marriage provide a caste group strength, status and power. Hence, any violation of caste practices affects not only the immediate family involved, but also the entire caste group. This, according to Chowdhry, is the reason behind the strict enforcement of caste and sexual codes. Standing at the centre of these codes is the female, whose sexuality needs to be channelized into legitimate motherhood, in order to maintain the caste patriarchal concern with caste purity, status and power. Any infringement therefore, of prescribed codes result in violent responses. Taking the cases of the common “honour killings” in the North, Chowdhry argues how inter-caste marriages result in violence by the male family members on the couple in general and the woman in particular. This is caused by the notion of ‘izzat’ or honour, one of the most valued ideals in Hindu patriarchal families. It is measured by the degree of respect given by others (Chakravarti 2003). While honour may be gained or lost by the proper or inappropriate behaviour of the members of a family, it is the behaviour of the women which is most critical. Any transgression of the caste/sexual codes on the part of the woman brings dishonour to not only the family, but that of the caste group itself. At the same time, this notion of honour is understood as resting only with the upper-castes, given that lower caste women are considered to be ‘sexually promiscuous’, they have no ‘purity’ or ‘honour’ to maintain(ibid). Thus, sexual exploitation and rape of lower caste women by upper caste men, which is rampant given their economic dependence on upper caste, landholding men, is ignored by the community at large.
The control of female sexuality is also essential in order to maintain the power hierarchies within the family, wherein authority rests with the senior males and at times the senior females. When a woman breaks these codes and selects her own partner, she is undermining their power by bestowing her invaluable reproductive and labour potential on the basis of her own choice. This also reveals why senior females in the household are complicit in the violence dealt to the couple in cases of transgressions.
Some argue that Dalit women are less oppressed than their upper-caste counterparts as they do not carry the burden of the pativrata ideology and do not need to worship their husbands. Since codes of honour, respect and shame are stronger for upper-caste women, they have more pressure to maintain silence about experiences of their oppression than Dalit women do (Chakravarti 2003). However, Dalit women argue that they are at the receiving end of both brahmanical patriarchy, wherein they are oppressed by the upper caste men and women, and also Dalit patriarchy, when their own husbands and families exploit their productive and reproductive labour. Through autobiographies and personal testimonies, Dalit women presented their own interpretations of society, their views on the inherent patriarchies within institutions and practices which govern their lives, making Dalit autobiographies a vital aspect of the Dalit movement. Baby Kamble, one of the first Dalit woman writers, in her autobiography ‘JineAmucha‘ (Our Wretched Lives, 1986) explores the situation of women in a Dalit family, and their experiences of economic and social insecurity, domestic violence, male dominance and even child marriages. Guru (1995) points to how even within Dalit movements, Dalit leaders have always subordinated and suppressed any independent political expression of Dalit women. This exclusion is not limited to the political sphere, but also extends to the cultural sphere, as Dalit women have been met with criticism from Dalit male writers who do not take Dalit women’s writing seriously (ibid).
Section 3: Gender, Caste and Labour
There has been an increasing recognition within feminist scholarship that Dalit women face gender/class/caste oppression in all spheres of their lives, including that of labour. While class based inequalities may be explained by using labour theories of value (surplus), in a caste-based society, public labour also comes to represent stigma and humiliation (John 2013). This is because the status of a person in such a society is intrinsically linked to the nature of work which he/she does. One of the features of the caste system is that it is occupation based, wherein intellectual labour was performed by the upper castes while the lower castes were marked by the nature of their work- manual labour (agricultural/construction/etc). According to S. Anandhi’s research in a Tamil Nadu village, it was found that in order to break away from caste oppression, many young Dalit men began to withdraw from agricultural work, instead looking for non-agricultural work outside their villages; stemming from their heightened consciousness on the nature of their work and their low caste status(Anandhi, Jeyaranjan and Rajan 2002).
Mary John (2013:183) argues that if there is a distinctive quality to the stigma attached to (male) Dalit labour, “this quality attains a new register when the labouring body is that of a Dalit woman”. Similarly, as Meena Gopal (2012), points out that it is the very nature of work that she performs that signifies a Dalit woman as low, inferior and stigmatized. Some of the examples of labour that lower caste women perform may include manual scavenging, agricultural work, midwifery and paid domestic work. While paid domestic work, although marks her as inferior, it is still considered more respectable than forms of paid labour that are associated with public manual work (John, 2013). This is because the nature of this work also marks the lower caste working body as sexually available to men of all castes. Maitreyi Das (2011), studying patterns of women’s labour participation by caste and education found that participation was highest among the Dalits/Adivasi women with no education on the one hand, and upper caste women with higher education on the other hand. This complete lack of participation by the middle level of women in between who have some form of primary education reveals that these women ‘opt out of the workforce’ in order to distinguish themselves from the lower caste women who have no choice but to work.
Section 4: Gender, Caste and Violence
Protests, awareness campaigns and debates about violence against women have been central to the women’s movement in India, including sexual violence which women face in both the private and the public spheres. If women across different social locations (caste, class, religion, and so on) face sexual violence, can sexual violence against Dalit women be read in the same manner as sexual violence against any other women in India? Does caste have a role to play in sexual violence? Violence against women in India in general is deeply rooted in a patriarchal system which intersects with other axes of inequality such as class, religion and caste. Violence against Dalitwomen in particular is complicated by the location of Dalit women at the bottom of caste, class and gender hierarchies. Their location at the site of intersection between these three systems of inequality, combined with the dominant discourses on ‘sexual availability of Dalit women’ and their ‘loose characters’ render them more vulnerable to violence than other women. The following section will look at a few cases of caste-based sexual violence in order to understand the caste question and the women’s question are interlinked.
Bhanwari Devi Case
Bhanwari Devi who hailed from the Bhatheri village of Rajasthan, used to work as a ‘saatshin’ for the Rajasthan government’s ‘Women Development Project’. In 1992 she was gangraped by upper-caste men of the village, while her husband was beaten unconscious, as punishment for preventing a child marriage of a one year old in a Gujar family. She was from the kumhar (potter) community which is enlisted as a lower caste and backward class community. The perpetrators belonged to the Gujar (dominant caste, wielding economic and political power) caste and Brahmin caste (Mathur, 1992).
Khairlanji Case
The Khairlanji case remains one of the most brutal cases of caste atrocities documented. On September 29th, 2006, in the village of Khairlangi, four members of the Bhotmange family were brutally killed. SurekhaBhotmange (44yrs) and her daughter Priyanka were stripped naked and gangraped publicly before being beaten to death, while her two sons Roshan (19yrs) and Sudhir (21yrs) were mutilated and beaten to death by the dominant caste (Kunbis and Kalars, listed as OBCs) Hindus of the village. The violence was the result of a long-standing land dispute, combined with the increasing upward mobility of the Dalit family both economically (as landowners, since traditionally Dalits never owned land) and culturally(in terms of the educational achievements of the children).
Khopardi Case
On 13th July, 2016, a 14 year old Maratha girl was brutally raped and murdered allegedly by three Dalit men in Khopardi, Maharashtra. The Maratha caste is the dominant caste in the state of Maharashtra. This case revived long standing caste-based tensions between the Dalits and the Marathas. The Marathas united in an unprecedented show of unity, demanding amongst other things, strict punishment for the culprits and amendments to the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 to prevent its misuse by dalits.
Are these cases examples of violence against women or are they caste based atrocities? Caste is reproduced through the regulation of sexuality and kinship and vice versa. Rao (2011:622) argues, that “sexual relationships within and between caste communities are the nodal point through which caste supremacy is reproduced or challenged”. Within a caste system, not all men can view all women as potential sexual/marital partners. Dalit men are strictly barred from any relations with women above their castes. While upper caste men can marry women from their own castes, they also claim the right to sexually enjoy lower caste/Dalit women. Rao argues that sexual violence necessarily needs to be understood as caste violence because it operates as a right exclusively to upper caste men. In other words, sexual violence against Dalit women, reaffirms their position as both Dalit and as Dalitwomen (ibid). While sexual violence serves to reaffirm their position as Dalit women, it simultaneously also reaffirms the position of Dalit men. By demonstrating control and humiliating the women of a particular caste, the act also seeks to reduce/negate the ‘manhood’ of that caste. The inability of the men of a caste to protect its women is also a marker of its low status(Kannabiran, 1991; Chowdhry 1997). While upper-caste masculinity is redifined by the capacity to agress and possess the other, lower caste maleness is castrated by the inablity to protect their women (Kannabiran, 1991). In the newly formed, post-colonial nation, the introduction of democracy, policy of reservations, modern education, urbanisation, and movement of dalits into new vocations than traditional ones led to a change in relations amongst caste groups. While this resulted in relative economic and cultural upliftment of historically downtrodden castes, it also led to a reinforcement of Dalit and upper-caste patriarchies (Anandhi et al, 2002; Chowdhry 2009). “First they take our jobs, now our women” is an oft-quoted sentiment which is revealing of the exaggerated fears that the dominant castes have about the Dalits, whom they fear are taking over both their employment opportunities and luring away “their” women. While dominant castes re-assert their masculinities through violence against Dalit women(Chowdhry2009;Kannabiran and Kannabiran, 1991), Dalit men assert their newly emerging masculinities through sexually violating upper-caste women (Anandhi et al, 2002). Here, Anand Teltumbde( 2008) points out that it is not the traditionally privileged twice-born castes that are implicated in caste atrocities, but the slowly ascending social groups- Shudras/OBCs/BCs, who are still entrenched in traditional structures, that are implicated in such violence.
In the case of Bhanwari Devi, as a government worker who stepped in to prevent an important traditional event, she was clearly transgressing the boundaries of her caste status which was defined by passivity and submissiveness (Kannabiran and Kannabiran 1991). Moreover, by making a public demand, she was also transgressing the gendered public/private distinction, and claiming a right to public space which was traditionally considered a space for men. Rape, then is considered the ultimate punishment for transgressing these norms.
The judgement given in the trial courts on this case is also revealing of the dominant caste patriarchal ideology. The judgement argues that the accused are middle- aged and therefore respectable citizens, while teenagers usually commit rape. The judgment goes on to declare. “Since the accused are upper-caste men, the rape could not have taken place because Bhanwari was from a lower caste”. The categories of ‘respectable’, ‘upper-caste’ and ‘male’ were invoked to construct the binary logic of caste, and thereby relegate Bhanwari Devi to the position of ‘lower-caste’ and ‘female’, and therefore ‘non-respectable’(Patil 2016)
In the case of Khairlanji, the violation was the economic and cultural upliftment of the DalitBhotmange family. Being a Dalit family, they faced extreme discrimination from the village, being denied access to the village well, denied permission to build a pucca house and so on. Surekha Bhotmange, was a Ambedkarite woman, courageous, outspoken, giving her best to educate her three children(Teltumbde 2008). Her daughter, Priyanka, excelled at school, standing first in her school in the Class 10 exams. This, coupled with the family’s legal battle of ownership of their land, which they finally won, generated envy and resentment amongst the villagers, who became apprehensive of this clear breaking of expected behavioural codes. As many fact-finding reports later revealed, the villagers often spoke about the need to put the Dalit family in its proper place(ibid). As a result, Surekha and her daughter Priyanka Bhotmange, were dragged out of their homes, stripped and paraded in public before being raped and murdered. The brothers too were tortured and beaten to death in this public spectacle. Patil (2013, c.f. Patil 2016:64) states how “upper caste men and women dictate the sexuality of Dalit women… decide the morality of the Dalit women and regulate their bodies”. Upper caste women are equally complicit with their male counterparts in perpetrating sexual violence against lower caste women. According to V. Geetha (2012), dominant caste women have been complicit in the violence against Dalits because their own sense of self-purity and honour have been carefully constructed against the impurity/sexual immorality of Dalit women. Thus, in the Khairlanji incident, women from the dominant Kunbi and Kalar castes were watching and cheering on the spectacle of violence as it unfolded (Patil 2016).
In the Khopardi case, how do we read the rape of a dominant caste girl by Dalit men? Anandhi et al, engaging with the question of Dalit masculinity, argue that Dalit masculinities are shaped by the prevailing material conditions of their villages. Although many young Dalit men are avoiding agricultural work due to an increased caste consciousness, it has enormous economic costs, as they are often left unemployed. Further, while the ability to exercise power and aggression were considered markers of masculinity, these were traditionally denied to Dalits due to the logic of land relations and caste (Anandhi et al 2002). They are also further emasculated when helplessly watch ‘their’ women be sexually exploited by upper-caste men. In such a scenario, Dalit youths begin asserting their new masculinity by asserting control over public spaces in the village (to which they were previously denied entry) and by public displays of violence of varying degrees – ranging from petty quarrels to sexual harassment of upper caste women (ibid). These acts of violence, may in a way, challenge the power of upper-caste men, yet, at the level of gender relations, it reinforces a violent, public patriarchy.
While the demand to end violence against women has been central to feminist articulation, there still remains a discrepancy in their recognition of the issues of caste-based sexual violence and discrimination (ibid). As Rege (1994) points out, a caste-based analysis of types of violence against women reveals that dowry deaths and strict/violent controls on mobility and sexuality of women are typical practices among dominant upper-castes while Dalit women face a larger threat of rape, sexual harassment and physical violence. The caste factor then becomes essential to the feminist goal of understanding the ways in which violence is operationalized and its struggle to end it. Thus, the issue of violence cannot be understood as either a caste issue or a gender issue, but one which exists in the intersection of the two (Rege 1994; Rao 2011). Therefore, if the women’s movement seeks to work in the interests of all women, it would necessarily have to engage with the ways in which gender interacts with other structural inequalities in order to be successful.
The final section on Dalit feminism examines the ways in which Dalit women have claimed a voice for themselves, and sought to challenge the politics of the mainstream women’s movement in India which has in large part neglected the caste question in their struggle against patriarchies.
Section 5: Dalit Feminism2
2This is a short introduction to the debates around Dalit feminism in India. For a more in-depth study,you may refer to the separate module on Dalit Feminism.
In the 1990s, several independent and autonomous assertions of Dalit women’s identities began to emerge in India, which included the National Federation of Dalit Women and the All India Dalit Women’s Forum. According to Gopal Guru (1995), these organizations advanced varying non-Brahminical ideological positions, which challenge the position of mainstream feminism. Guru argues that this “difference” was essential for understanding the specificity of Dalit women’s subjugation, which was effected by both external(Brahminical patriarchy which stigmatizes Dalit women because of their caste status) and internal (Dalit patriarchy wherein Dalit men exploited the sexual and economic labour of “their” women) factors.
Similar to the black feminist assertion that their position as black women was a unique one, whose experiences were negated by both black men and white women, brilliantly captured by the title of a Black Women’s Reader, ‘All the Women are White, All the Blacks are Men, But Some of Us are Brave‘, Guru argues that Dalit women’s experiences are largely ignored by mainstream (upper-caste) feminists, and they were also neglected by Dalit (male) activists (ibid). For example, while the mainstream feminist movement focused widely upon issues of rape and sexual violence against women, Dalit women argued that the ‘caste factor’ was never seriously considered by them, resulting in an inadequate understanding of sexual violence against Dalit and tribal women. They also emphasized upon the patriarchal attitudes they faced by Dalit men, who largely subordinated/excluded them at the political arena and rejected their ideas/expressions even in cultural arenas (ibid). Rege(1998), expanding on his discussion, argues that within the new social movements of the 1970s and 1980s, constituted largely by Dalit rights movements and women’s rights movements, Dalithood came to be seen largely as male while mainstream women’s groups began to adopt the view that all women are universally victims, homogenizing differences based on social locations, thus considering all women as ‘savarna’. Rege argues that the absence of an analytic framework which would understand caste-patriarchies as intrinsically linked is evident when one analyses the women’s movements struggles against dowry and violence. While left-based women’s organizations understood dowry as part of the capitalist development of India, autonomous women’s groups theorised dowry in terms of the patriarchal violence within families. However, they failed to examine the role of brahmanization of marriage practices on the institutionalization of the dowry practice. As RanjanaSheel points out, only after the colonial government recognised the legality of the Brahma marriage over other forms of marriage, that non-brahmin castes began to practice dowry. Thus, caste is crucial to the analysis of the dowry question.
While Guru argued that the ‘position of difference’ taken by Dalit women challenged the mainstream feminist movement, Rege takes it a step further by arguing that we need to move from the question of ‘difference’ of Dalit voices to the Dalit ‘standpoint’. Just as black feminists argued that black women possess a unique understanding of reality, owing to their social position at the intersection of race, class and gender, Rege argues that a Dalit feminist standpoint is more emancipatory than other positions because it emphasizes upon individual experiences within socially constructed groups and “focuses on the hierarchical, multiple, changing structural power relations of caste, class, ethnic, which construct such a group”(p. WS 45).
Conclusion
The above discussions reveal that feminists have spent a lot of time trying to unravel the complex working of caste and gender in a highly stratified, patriarchal, caste-ist, class-ist society. Since these axes of power and inequality work hand in hand with each other, it is not enough to understand the workings of one without the other. This is especially so in the case of caste and gender, where the two axes are completely dependent on each other. While women are united by a shared experience of patriarchal oppression, they still remain divided along lines of class, caste, religion and so on (Sangari 1995). Patriarchies cannot be isolated and challenged as a single system without simultaneously addressing other systems of inequality such as caste and sexuality. A women’s movement which seeks to address the issues faced only by small groups of women would only result in an identitarian homogenizing politics that would not allow larger structures in which patriarchies lay embedded (ibid). Therefore a more meaningful and critical endeavour would be to organize struggles which concurrently attack multiple systems of inequality such as caste and patriarchy without prioritizing one identity over the other.
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