Despite the end of the colonial era in India, the traditional hierarchies and the essential social order in the Hindu society with its multiple layers of graded inequality still remains untouched. The concept of ‘caste’ almost seems self-perpetuating, which roots itself in the economics of class, privatisation of property, and other structures of oppression, including Brahmanical patriarchy: debates and conversations that came up as we woke up to the rape and death of the young Dalit girl in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras in September. On December 17, CBI filed a charge sheet against the four accused in the rape and death of the 19 year old girl.
Uma Chakravarti, a feminist and a historian, in her book Gendering Caste: Through a Feminist Lens, argues that the systematic and structural oppression of women needs to be acknowledged in order to fully understand caste. A myriad of patriarchal practices within the larger framework of autonomy, kinship, labor, sexuality, access to material resources, and caste as a product of the consistent sustentation of endogamous marriages, have overtime moulded the relationship between gender and caste.
The prevalent rhetoric that views caste as a consensual system weaves the socio-political, economic and cultural domains of Indian society into one fabric needs to be discarded, since on the contrary, the rather oppressive ‘caste ideology denies the subjectivity to Dalits by depriving them of dignity and personhood’.
Also read: Towards A Dalit Feminist Standpoint – The Emancipatory Project For All Women
Owing to the social silence, oppression and inequality as a consequence of caste and patriarchy still remain eminent in the Indian society. Uma Chakravarti believes that the understanding of ‘caste’ should not be restricted only to the notion of purity and pollution, but it should be broadened to include other modes of oppression such as Brahminical supremacy, tyranny, and exploitation based on unequal access to material resources.
Uma Chakravarti builds on Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s work, and reiterates that class-based discrimination is universal, however, the perpetuation of endogamy has been crucial in the ‘unbroken reproduction of caste’, resulting in a form of inequality that is unique to India. She cites an incident at the anti-Mandal agitation where some upper-caste women protested on behalf of their ‘potential husband’ with placards that read: ‘We don’t want unemployed husbands!’
This inter-caste divide is so entrenched in the Indian society that the mere idea of marrying employed men who came from depressed castes seemed absurd to the protestors. Uma Chakravarti argues that this self-imposed unwritten law, that one should only marry within their caste, was what fuelled the continuance of the caste structures.
This inter-caste divide is so entrenched in the Indian society that the mere idea of marrying employed men who came from depressed castes seemed absurd to the protestors. Uma Chakravarti argues that this self-imposed unwritten law, that one should only marry within their caste, was what fuelled the continuance of the caste structures.
Such caste and gender divisions, subsumed within individual identities, echo the term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw: intersectionality, which refers to the overlapping social and political identities resulting in multiple levels of oppression and social injustice. Crenshaw’s ‘trickle-down’ approach to social justice states that without the correct frames to see how all the sections of a group are affected, many fall through the cracks of a movement and are left to suffer in virtual isolation. Uma Chakravarti, on similar lines, argues that the identity of Indian women is not homogenous.
The Indian feminist movements are often criticized for failing to acknowledge, appreciate, and include the diverse struggles and multiple layers of oppression faced by Dalit women, which cannot be studied through a single theoretical framework. Historically the concept of purity did not burden the Dalit women since they worked as labourers in the public sphere. However, they were entrapped by triple-jeopardy due to their socio-political location in the society: a female labourer from the lower caste, and the operation of this three-fold oppression or Brahmanical patriarchy can only be understood by appreciating how gender and caste are structurally and inextricably linked.
According to a National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report, the crime rate against Dalits has increased by 6 percent within a decade with over 3.91 lakh atrocities being var wc_order_attribution={"params":{"lifetime":1.0e-5,"session":30,"ajaxurl":"https:\/\/feminisminindia.com\/wp-admin\/admin-ajax.php","prefix":"wc_order_attribution_","allowTracking":!0},"fields":{"source_type":"current.typ","referrer":"current_add.rf","utm_campaign":"current.cmp","utm_source":"current.src","utm_medium":"current.mdm","utm_content":"current.cnt","utm_id":"current.id","utm_term":"current.trm","session_entry":"current_add.ep","session_start_time":"current_add.fd","session_pages":"session.pgs","session_count":"udata.vst","user_agent":"udata.uag"}} Skip to content