Dalit and the Women’s Movement

The NFDW is chronologically a post 1980's phenomena and has been active in a transnational arena with its particular presence in Durban 2001, it has been analysed by social scientists in a transnational framework. I have not overlooked the transnational significance of the movement, but, looked at it in a historical context of India's history and modernity, the place of dalit women and men within this history and how has 'the history' been challenged by dalit women.

The main argument put forward by dalit feminists is that dalit women are a different category in their own right and they should not be subsumed within the category of dalits or women as a whole. Dalit feminists have asked both the dalit movements and women's movements in India for an internal critique because both these movements have neither been able to represent dalit women nor paid attention to their specific structural, social and cultural location within Indian society. Indian society is ridden with multiple and overlapping inequalities which affect women in general and dalit women in particular, in different ways.

Dalit feminists have also argued for an analysis of patriarchy within dalit communities because of external and internal factors. "Dalit women justify the case for talking differently on the basis of external factors (non-dalit forces homogenizing the issue of dalit women) and internal factors (the patriarchal domination within the dalits).

The dalit women's movement has a crucial role to play in the analysis of dalit feminist approach because as Chaudhuri points out it is "almost impossible to separate the history of action from the history of ideas. In other words the conceptual debates themselves embodied the history of doing, and vice versa." therefore what "constitutes conceptual history", arises "in the context of history of doing" (Chaudhuri: 2004: xii)

The first part explores the historicity of woman's question in India, dalit women's participation in early anti-caste movements is established now but they do not figure in the women's movement led by the AIWC as the women's movement started with a group of bourgeois women who believed in homogeneous womanhood. The second part looks at the question of difference and the articulation of this difference by dalit women through what Rege has called the dalit feminist standpoint (DFS), and the further debate around the DFS. The third part looks at the NFDW in particular.

The fourth part tries to locate the DWM in different theoretical frameworks which have been put forward to explain the movement locating it in the present national and international scenario.

The questions this paper will explore are:

Why is it important to see the dalit women's movement as separate from the Indian women's movement and dalit movement in general? What are the main features of dalit women's movement, particularly the NFDW? How the revolving and overlapping axis of caste, class and gender have affected dalit women in particular?

The related concepts are:

Patriarchy

Patriarchy is defined as "Literally, 'rule of the father' the term was originally used to describe social systems based on authority of male heads of household." (A dictionary of sociology 2009/1994:551)

The nature of control and subjugation of women varies from one society to the other as it differs due to the differences in class, caste, religion, region, ethnicity and the socio-cultural practices. Thus in the context of India, brahmanical patriarchy, tribal patriarchy and dalit patriarchy are different from each other. Patriarchy within a particular caste or class also differs in terms of their religious and regional variations. (Ray: 2006)

Mary E. John argues that there are not separate, multiple patriarchies but "multiple patriarchies, the products of social discrimination along class, caste and communal lines, are much more shared and overlapping than diverse…the growing disparities…would tell a different story, one of unequal patriarchies and disparate genders.

Gender

According to Ann Oakley " 'sex' is a biological term: 'gender' a psychological and cultural one" further she says "if the proper terms for sex are 'male' and 'female', the corresponding terms for gender are 'masculine' and 'feminine'; these latter may be quite independent of (biological) sex."

Dalit

Romila Thapar traces the roots of 'Dalit' in Pali literature in which Dalit means "the oppressed". (Quoted in Guru and Geetha: 2000) "Dalit is not a caste; it is a constructed identity… Dalit (oppressed or broken) is not a new word. Apparently, it was used in the 1930s as a Hindi and Marathi translation of 'depressed classes', a term the British used for what are now called the scheduled castes…The word was also used by B R Ambedkar in his Marathi speeches. The 'Dalit Panthers' revived the term in their 1973

Dalit women

It has been pointed by dalit activists and intellectuals that dalit women suffer the triple burden of caste, class, and gender they have been called the "dalits of the dalits" , the "downtrodden amongst the downtrodden" and the "the slaves of the slaves". However such a construction has been challenged by Shirman as "fetishising of dalit women's suffering which tend to reify the living social relationships that constitute dalit women's lives, and to locate dalit women as objects of pity."

Social movement

A social movement can be thought of as an informal set of individuals and/ or groups that are "involved in confliction relations with clearly identified opponents; are linked by dense informal networks; [and] share a distinct collective identity

Feminism

Kumari Jayawardena defines feminism as "embracing movements for equality within the current system and significant struggles that have attempted to change the system". She asserts that these movements arose in the context of i) the formulation and consolidation of national identities which modernized anti-imperialist movements during the independence struggle and ii) the remaking of pre-capitalist religion and feudal structures in attempt to

Nation-State

""Nation," it is clear, is not the same as "state." The latter refers to an independent and autonomous political structure over a specific territory, with a comprehensive legal system and a sufficient concentration of power to maintain law and order. "State," in other words, is primarily a political-legal concept, whereas "nation" is primarily psycho-cultural. Nation and state may exist independently of one another: a nation may exist without a state; a state may exist without a nation. When the two coincide, when the boundaries of the state are approximately coterminous with those of the nation, the result is a nation-state. A nation-state, in other words, is a nation that possesses political sovereignty. It is socially cohesive as well as politically organized and independent."

The space of dalit women in the women's movement and the dalit movement in India.

Chaudhuri has observed that the early women's movement comprised of the women from upper caste and class strata who distanced themselves from party politics and confrontational mode of assertion. The theme of "woman as an individual in her own right" did not crop up till very late. The theme that emerges is "the naturally non-antagonistic relationship of the sexes in India as compared to the west…" (Chaudhuri: 2004:119)

Chaudhuri discusses that the All India Women's Congress were in favour of joint electorates and rejected the communal award, "women" the leading members continued to argue, were all "sisters under the sari" and the institutions and ideals that governed their lives were similar. Chaudhuri also observes the "propensity of gender issues to be dispensable while larger political battles are being fought has been a constant of sorts in the history of modern India."

"Throughout the nineteenth century different versions of female emancipation came to be tied to the idea of national liberation and regeneration. The early colonial constellation of the arya woman is a sternly elitist concept in class and caste terms, and finds its nationalist shape in social and political thought, literature and a dominant historiographic model of India… the recovery of tradition throughout the proto-nationalist and nationalist period was the recovery of the 'traditional' woman…the vedic woman, both in her own time, and after her appropriation by upper castes and classes in the nineteenth century, is built upon the labour of lower social groups and is also a mark of distinction from them."

Following these historical developments there has been an ambivalence in india towards feminism, Chaudhuri argues that we cannot exclude women who were pushing feminist agendas without calling them feminists because we cannot impose current notions of feminism on the past thereby assuming an ideal notion of the 'correct' kind of feminism.

Another question that Chaudhuri points out is the westernnes of feminism and its subsequent perception by feminists in India. She claims that "there is no turning away from the questions regarding the 'westerness' of feminism has been a constant theme. In a hierarchical society often gender oppression is linked with oppressions based on caste, class, community, tribe and religion, and in such multiple patriarchies "men as the principal oppressors" is not easily accepted

Manuela Ciotti in a field study done with BSP and Hindu right women activists in UP has drawn attention to the role played by "women's husbands or other male family members, who are often not only responsible for women's 'release' into public life, but also act as a source of advice, experience, encouragement and financial support for their political activities."

The history to which the dalit women's movement traces itself is of Ambedkar and Phule (both men) whose approach however was (unlike that of the early Indian women's movement) confrontationalist as well as pronouncedly antagonist to brahmanic patriarchy. To Phule and Ambedkar, gender issues were not dispensable.

This history also brings to light the fact that dalit women were not historically absent from movements but their history has been neglected until recently. They worked side by side dalit men but they have started to organize separately from dalit men with different movements only post the 1970s.

Ambedkar not only spoke for and agitated for the rights of Dalits but also Dalit women. He argued that "practices of sati, enforced widowhood and child marriage come to be prescribed by Brahmanism in order to regulate and control any transgression of boundaries, i.e., to say he underlines the fact that the caste system can be maintained only through the controls on women's sexuality and in this sense women are the gateways to the caste system [Ambedkar 1992:90]" (Rege: 1998)

Meenakshi Moon and Urmila Pawar have recorded the participation of dalit women in the early 20th century movements against caste exclusion and oppression, "in the following decades women's activities developed from mere participation as beneficiaries or as an audience, to the shouldering of significant responsibility in various fields of activity in the Ambedkar movement."

Moon and Pawar's research has thrown light on the unknown facts of the dalit women's participation in the early anti-caste movements, Dr. Ambedkar " saw to it that women's conferences were held simultaneously with those of men. By 1930 women had become so conscious that they started conducting their own meetings and conferences independently." In the Mahad satyagraha of 1927 "women not only participated in the procession with Dr. Ambedkar but also participated in the deliberations of the subject committee meetings in passing resolutions about the claim for equal human rights."

Their research also reveals the "experiences they (dalit women) had in the field as well as in the family as mother, wife, daughter; what was the effect on their life of Ambedkar's movement and speech

Even the women who were illiterate subscribed to Ambedkar's journals to keep the publications alive. They paid four annas to eight annas when their daily wages were hardly a rupee daily. Some women courted arrest with the men in the satayagrahas. Some had to face beatings from their husbands for participating in the movement. At such times they took their infant babies to jail, some carried all their belongings, even chickens. Taking in consideration the extremely backward social atmosphere the achievements of these women were most commendable.

The analyses of dalit women's presence in anti caste struggle has brought out the sharp contrast between their participation in movements and their visibility as leaders and decision makers in political parties or dalit movement itself. "Dalit women do not play any important role in the political leadership of maharastra"

Vimal Thorat laments that "Dalit identity politics articulates caste identity sharply but resists, deliberately, understanding and articulating the gender dimensions of caste itself (that sees all women not just Dalit women) in a certain light…The Dalit movement has thrown up so many women but articulate women are not invited by Dalit forums, especially the political parties."

Ruth Manorama is of the view that dalit women have to challenge dalit men to reah the leading posts within their own movement. She explains that dalit men have been discriminated throughout their lives by high caste men as well as high caste women. The dalit men now are scared of dalit women and think that they are the same as the high caste women. Now when they have finally grasped the leadership positions they will not part from them. You have to understand them.