Feminism And Dalit Women In India
By Cynthia Stephen
16 November, 2009
Countercurrents.org
Some Searching Questions
Indian women seem to be on a roll these days. Many important positions
are held by women – the President, CM of Uttar Pradesh, the President
of India's main ruling political party, and leading the main
opposition party in West Bengal; several women in the Reserve Bank,
ICICI bank and State Bank; our women sportspersons doing well in
several disciplines including "macho" ones like boxing, football and
weigh and power lifting; and several women including several of the
above and some NRIs figuring in international lists of "most powerful
women". But seen from another angle, India 's rankings on
international scales such as the Human Development Index (HDI), the
Gender Development Index (GDI) and the World Economic Forum continue
to drop steadily over the years. But the women's group continue to be
as active as ever, and women from India participate prominently in
international events and keep the flag flying. So where lies the rub?
Why are Indian women – despite very visible advances and many
activists and much enthusiastic promotion and empowerment-oriented
work - still not developing as they should?
As a whole-hearted participant and activist involved for about two
decades in the women's cause, one clear answer emerges to these
questions: that of leadership. The mainstream Indian women's movement
continues to be led by privileged dominant caste, upper-class, urban
feminists. The participation of women factory workers, dalit women and
urban poor are co-opted to make up the numbers. Overall, it has not
been very successful in capturing the imagination of wider society,
despite notable success in legal reform for women's rights, the
provision of some supportive services and to a certain extent in the
media – all areas of concern to the middle classes.
It is my impression that the Indian women's movement is in the
doldrums today due to the wholesale de-politicisation of the Indian
middleclass, one of the causes being globalization, which resulted in
the increased involvement of more and more numbers of professionally
educated young people from relatively privileged backgrounds who have
been hired to work on the women's issues which earlier used to be
groups led by affected women but (which have morphed into NGOs and
"research institutions" with international funding) and who are the
spokespersons for issues as diverse as girl child rights,
witch-hunting, dowry, pornography, HIV/AIDS, alternative sexualities,
etc – all of which are, in these post-modern times, seen as part of
the discourse on women's rights. In fact there has been some desultory
discussion around the subject of gender and how this concept has,
depending on how one looks at it, either widened the scope of the
debate or watered down the feminist agenda.
Thus, it is no longer considered desirable, or even politically
correct, to speak of access to basic health. It has to be couched in
language of sexual and reproductive rights. There is plenty of money
and media coverage for campaigns for redress to urban educated girls
who face violence at the workplace, but nothing, almost, for justice
to victims of caste-based atrocities faced by Dalit women, when they
are raped when working in the fields, but both kinds of violence are
lumped together under the term Violence against Women. I feel that
there is little willingness among feminists to acknowledge the reality
that violence faced by the middleclass woman is nothing compared with
the level and scale of structural violence that rural Dalits women -
the majority – face.
Dalit woman: the Perpetual Other?
I suggest that the widely held perception of the Dalit woman as the
OTHER is the distilled impact of centuries-long alienation generated
by ingrained patriarchal and Brahminical values at all levels in
society, which in turn causes the high level of exclusion, invisibity
and structural and domestic violence which is the experience of Dalit
women. Thus even among women, she is perceived as OTHER. She is at the
receiving end of a long, socially-engineered pecking order, which
asserts the relative 'superiority' of one category of human being over
another. She belongs to the 'lowest' category, as manifest in her
condition of total social, physical, economic and political
vulnerability.
This is most clearly evident in the struggle for basic needs such as
food or water, and in the submission to sexual violence for the sake
of employment. Most Dalit families are landless and precariously
dependent on the dominant castes for wage labour. "There is no girl in
our cheri who has not been coerced or raped by the dominant caste men
when they go to the fields to fetch water or for work", confided a
young girl from Southern Tamil Nadu to a Dalit woman activist
recently. Which upper-caste young woman, rural or urban, has ever had
to brave repeated rape without to keep her family supplied with water?
And remember that week earlier in 2009 in which two horrendous tales
came out of, schoolgirls who died due to what happened in school – one
a girl suffering from asthma, student of an upper-crust institution
who died though she had received some basic treatment and taken to
hospital, and the other a little slum girl who died quietly at home
after being punished by her teacher to stand in the sun in the "murga"
position? Compare the media circus in one case and the almost total
silence on the other. The girl in the second story was Dalit, poor and
"beneath" general notice.
Hence there has to be an honest self-examination by the women's
movements about whether they can accept the equal partnership , if not
the leadership of women from grassroots Dalit (or adivasi or tribal)
backgrounds. Have they really tried to groom capable younger women
from the underprivileged, working class and Dalit and adivasis
sections for leadership? If so, have these women and affirmed
supported by those from more privileged backgrounds, and have they
accepted their leadership? If not, are they justified in their claim
to speak for all Indian women everywhere? Can they be exempt from the
criticism that they are as guilty of discrimination against their
sisters on the basis of caste and class as the society they are
attempting to challenge and change? If there is no real soul-searching
or an attempt to address the issue , there is every chance of the
women's movement becoming irrelevant, in the face of such developments
as the rapid spread of religious fundamentalism and jingoistic
nationalism in India in the present day, and especially as it is clear
that that they are also not fully in tune with the larger issues of
the marginalised women who form, with their children, the largest,
most diverse and underprivileged group in this country.
I disagree with the popular idea that in hoary past, matrilineal
social organisation was the norm among Dalits. The fact is that Dalit
women have been victims of patriarchy as much as other women, and
still suffer huge impediments to a peaceful existence, let alone the
full enjoyment of their human rights. Under the circumstances, it is
rare to see a Dalit woman in a position of leadership, whether in the
home, at work or in social or political institutions. It is therefore
inconceivable to the mainstream that a Dalit woman should have power
or decision-making authority, and be free to exercise it. Hence, even
if such she manages to attain such a position, it is a most vulnerable
position - Dalit women sarpanches in Panchayats face often face
humiliation, threats and physical violence, because the community is
unable to accept a Dalit woman as a leader.
The Case for a Dalit Womanism :
Dalit women constitute almost half of India 's 160 million Dalits,
comprise about 16% of India 's total female population, and 8% of the
total population. However, there is little understanding of the
economic, religious, political and ideological isolation of Dalit
women. This is certainly true of their experience in the mainstream
women's movements, where most of them feel disillusioned and
alienated.
Despite having worked with several women's groups as an activist for
over 15 years, I had been instinctively uncomfortable with defining
myself as a feminist but never understood the reason for a long time.
But I found myself, surprisingly, recoiling from the term "Dalit
Feminism", and took time to understand the reason for this reaction. I
understood after some thought that it was because, what Feminism and
feminists in India engaged with was far removed from the lived
experiences of Dalit women. The agenda of feminism, as set by its very
well-known, senior and experienced leaders, had little, if anything at
all, to do with the lives of Dalit and other subaltern women. There
was also some literature on the term Dalit Feminism but this to my
knowledge did not ring true to type, not least because the one who
wrote it was not a Dalit woman. Add to this the stereotype among
scholars that Dalits are good at practical things like mobilizing
crowds but not very good at theorizing, vividly satirized and
categorized by Prof. Gopal Guru as "Theoretical Brahmin and Empirical
Shudra", in an article published in EPW many years ago.
But perhaps this exclusion of Dalit women from the mainstream women's
movement is not such a bad thing after all: it has caused them to
start building their own praxis, identity and agency, and build
effective working relationships and their own platforms.
What was clearly needed in its place is an articulation based on the
consciousness of the Dalit women themselves, their experiences of
suffering, exclusion and thrice-removedness - isolation by virtue of
gender, caste, and class – not to speak of religion, if one were a
Muslim or a Christian Dalit. We have a right to be seen not as objects
but as subjects, who have to play an active role in the attempt to
better their own lives. Our voices have been muted and our issues
obscured thus far. Our attempts to communicate about condition, in our
own language, using our own mediums have not been given the hearing
and audience they deserve. For instance, that their voice has to be
heard not only at decision-making levels in policies, programmes and
funding for projects for economic or social development but also in
questions of identity formation, in struggles for the entire gamut of
civil, political, economic and cultural rights and their fullest
participation at all levels of in the institutions of society at
large. We have a greater right to be heard than the privileged ones –
in fact justice and equity make it imperative that our voices be heard
and our articulations publicized.
In searching for this alternative, I discovered that black women had
had similar experiences in the US and Africa . So they came up with a
new term – womanism – to distinguish their struggles and experiences
and used in a way that may be seen as tangential to feminism. It was
one where women did not only see males as oppressors but also saw them
as victims – of racism. Soon Hispanic women in Latin America had also
found a term – Mujerita – to describe their own struggle for identity
apart from feminism which appeared to dominate the academy and the
movement for justice among women. And with a visceral rejection of the
oxymoronic term Dalit Feminism, I feel the best way to go for us is to
call our struggle Dalit Womanism. I now feel that this term is a more
appropriate term to use, though it is not very well-known in India
given the uppercaste - upperclass biases that tend to define the
discipline of Women's Studies in India and which has also appropriated
the discursive space offered by the term Third World Feminism.
The Dalit Womanist paradigm will be invested with its own meanings
from its own political and geographical location, just as
Black/African womanism is imbued with its own meaning. Dalit womanism
will be broad enough to include the experience not only of the Dalit
women in general, but also sensitive enough to provide space for the
expression of the diversity of the experiences of religious
minorities, tribal and ethnic identities who are presently termed
subaltern, and there can be no stopping the process. It will not only
build and shape theory, it will also learn to mediate the spaces as
well as build solidarity between itself and the existing Feminist and
Womanist thought and theory. It will also negotiate its differences
with and build solidarity with men from Dalit and other subaltern and
marginalised groups. Anyone who see the imperative need to change the
paradigms of society from a caste and patriarchy-dominated ethos
towards a more inclusive and equitable society will realize its
significance.
In the year 2006, just such an attempt was made in a two-day
consultation entitled "Dalit Women's Movements – Leadership and
Beyond" at the United Theological College , Bangalore . It was a
gathering of about 50 activists, students, and academics to think
together on the vexed questions of Dalit women's existence, and the
need to build a strong and vibrant movement around their cause, which
in many material terms differed from those of other women. Certain
important things happened: One, it was decided that a Solidarity
network of Dalit women be set up, called the "Dalit Women's Network
for Solidarity (DAWNS)"; two, a statement (hereafter called the DAWNS
Statement) was drafted and issued, and three, it announced the coining
of a new term, "Dalit Womanism", and explains the need for this new
entity.
The statement has been in the public domain since mid-2006, having
been posted on the website of the Women's Studies Department of the
United Theological College , Bangalore . . In its Preamble, it states:
"At a time when nascent movements of the marginalised are under siege
in India from the forces of dominant ideologies including Brahminism,
majoritarianism, and globalisation, we feel the need to affirm that
the voices of the marginalised and their aspirations should be
reflected in the rich tapestry that comprises the Indian nation. The
voices of the women and children of the populations which are pushed
to the margins are rarely heard – specifically, the Dalit women. This
consultation dedicated itself to bringing to the mainstream discourse
their voices, aspirations, and visions. As no one movement can
effectively reflect the specific issues and situations of Dalit women
whose situations vary widely across regions, states, languages and
religions, we welcome the trend of a growing number of movements of
Dalit women to take up issues and work on their concerns.
"Therefore, we have decided to come together as a Collective, termed
the Dalit Women's Network for Solidarity (DAWNS) . It will work to
strengthen the voices of Dalit women through building knowledge,
working towards ideological clarity, and highlighting the values,
visions and aspirations of Dalit Women. It will strive to put their
agendas in the mainstream, thereby giving a new shape and direction to
socio-political and cultural discourse. It is a conscious effort to
break the existing stereotype of Dalit women as mainly activists
(doers) who have little to contribute (as thinkers) to ideological
discourses in society, politics, governance, ethics, economics, and
development. To this end, it will network and dialogue with societal
change agents including academic institutions, trainers, NGOs,
Government institutions, and development groups. It will provide a
platform for solidarity on these issues to grassroots activists,
students and other civil society actors with a vision of a
gender-just, non-casteist and equitable society."
Running into five pages, the statement articulates the visions and
aspirations of the members, and describes the unique vision of Dalit
women who have decided that their experience within Feminism has not
been positive, and that the climate within the Dalit movements was
also not as favourable as they expected. Hence they feel the need to
come together to articulate their visions and build their own praxis
and theory:
- "We have been denied the right to articulate our own visions of
emancipation. Our energies have been co-opted to working out the
visions of dominant others who have shown scant respect for our
world-view or philosophy of life, by not enabling us to articulate
them or work towards achieving them.
- We value the solidarity and support of the larger movements in
society including the women's movements, and express our qualified
agreement with Feminist thought and activism. Feminism's construct of
a patriarchal, dominant 'male' and a subjugated female 'other' to the
male is necessary, but not a sufficient reflection of our realities.
We experience not just gender and class oppression, but also colour
and caste oppression. While our men do oppress us, even they
experience domination, which has its own impact on our experience of
"otherness". Many of us have opted out of the traditional dominant
religious framework and profess various faiths which are in a minority
in India , bringing in an additional dimension to our "otherness". Our
analysis or experience of society does not figure very strongly in the
existing Feminisms, even though there may be some common features with
say Third World Feminism or Black feminism or Womanism, which are
attempts to include women's experiences other than those of the
originators of Feminism.
Therefore, in all sincerity we feel the need to develop our own theory
and praxis that will work for us as the 'most' oppressed and
marginalized in a highly stratified society, as well as contribute to
the analysis of our society and ways to transform it. We therefore
feel that we need a new language to define this state of being. We
therefore coin the term Dalit Womanism to better define and understand
our lives, because it affirms us in a more holistic way rather than
the term "Feminism" which comes with a lot of baggage and which,
further, fails to be inclusive enough of our aspirations and concerns.
- Further, and even more significantly, we see a clear need to evolve
a new and creative form of mobilisation, which will be truly
representative of our aspirations, needs and visions for ourselves and
our community and society at large. This mobilisation will focus on
Rebuilding, Restoration and Reconciliation of all communities, and
especially of those which have survived oppression for centuries.
- It will be shaped by the Core Values of Equality, Complementarity
and Non-Hierarchy. We eschew the principle of Vengeance and affirm
that we need to work together for new forms of Equality. We also
reject existing models of leadership in which power is sucked away
from the people and invested in icons."
Thus, Dalit women are slowly attempting to come to grips with their
invisibility in the discourse, and are beginning not just to speak
out, but also to theorise and build wider solidarities so as to earn
the place, hitherto denied, under the sun.
Cynthia Stephen (cynstepin@gmail.com)
Nov 2009
The term womanist was coined by Alice Walker in 1983. See her book:
_In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens_(NY, Harcourt, 1983).
African-American historian Elsa Barkley Brown explains that feminism,
by its design excludes the experiences and histories of
African-American women. Feminism, as she argues, places priority on
woman, while womanism, defined as a consciousness, incorporates
"racial, cultural, sexual, national, economic, and political
considerations". The Womanism of the Dalits will be based on the
lives, experiences and consciousness of Dalit women, and include
solidarity with other excluded and marginalised groups.
The full document can be accessed at www.womenutc.com . Click on the
"dalit women" link.
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