Review Article: Sunita Sharma,Dalit Women: From Exclusion to Integration

The present review of the above book essentially deals with Dalit women’s exclusion and, therefore, the attempts to include them within the mainstream, which still has to be clearly defined. The fact that needs to be recalled is that despite their myriad protests and resilience against upper-caste exploitation and oppressive patriarchy, their social inclusion with full rights remains a far-off dream to many who believe in the principles of equity and justice. While studies on caste and patriarchy, inspired by the discourses of the intersectionality of gender and caste, have been gaining a foothold in academia, doubts still persist about whether enough attention has been given to the experiences of lower-caste women themselves. The author of the book under review candidly states that feminist organisations interested in the problems of Dalit women often fail to investigate the complexities of class, caste and gender, which often lead to new architectures of women’s subordination to male dominance. The answer to these complexities, it is believed, lies in inclusive policies, the foremost of which is education, occupying a very important position in the social development index. However, it is not clear from the book’s introduction and preface what the author is trying to project through a random reading of the scholarly works of influential academic personalities who had dealt with feminist history. There seem to be what are random references to authors and their thoughts without seemingly any attempt by the author to frame a theoretical understanding herself. Perhaps, the only legible argument that runs through the pages in the relevant sections is that Dalit women who are ‘doubly marginalised’ can enjoy some benefits of inclusion through a new pedagogic practice. This pedagogical practice is premised on the belief that it would redress the denial of agency of Dalit women and identify the discriminatory practices pursued against them. In other words, their social emancipation is sought through education, for which many contemporary Dalit activists have used the term ‘buddhi ki vikas’ (progress of the mind). It is doubtful whether such a model by itself would provide the basis for an inclusive society, devoid of gender-based discrimination. The problem that is less treated in the book is that of Dalit patriarchy, a study of which has certainly been provided in some very influential publications in recent times. Undoubtedly, this has warranted a much more discursive reading of Dalit women’s experiences and owes much to the writings of Sharmila Rege, Gopal Guru and Shailaja Paik, to mention a few.

The author has argued that the role of education acquires much significance in terms of what is defined as accessibility, retention and quality. In the author’s opinion, a range of social, familial and pedagogic factors work against the education of girls from any disadvantaged community. This unequal educational status remains both a cause and a consequence of the wide gender inequality that the existing educational curriculum and the universalisation of education can rarely overcome. The expansion of educational facilities, as has been correctly pointed out, has not provided quality education with moral values. In other words, despite the official pronouncements about girl children’s education, there has been little attempt to exclude the traditional perception of inequality from the content of education actually imparted.

The author does recount the roles played by Jyotirao Phule, B.R. Ambedkar and Mahatma Gandhi, who favoured gender and caste equality in every sense of the term. However, there were subtle differences in their approaches and ideas. Ambedkar for that matter correctly pointed out that women’s subordination in society could never be understood without considering the connections between caste, religion and patriarchy. He also believed that social security could only be attained through education. Mahatma Gandhi, on the other side, favoured an ideological consensus, and he felt that the resolution of caste and untouchability could also lead to the end of the oppression of ‘lower-caste’ women. Many of these ideas were later taken up for serious discussion by Dalit feminist scholars, who showed a great deal of interest in comprehending the intersectionality of gender, caste, class, religion and community. Dalit feminist scholarship produced powerful critiques of patriarchy while using new sources and methods to bring out hidden feminist voices. Gail Omvedt in her research often pointed to the influence of radical women’s groups, which increasingly favoured a militant ‘socialist feminist perspective’. They exposed the oppression of women, which to them was a central feature, and they therefore supported a radical liberationist stand on the issue of full and equal rights for both sexes. The very powerful writings of Rege, Omvedt, Bansode and many others have made us aware that Dalit feminism is perhaps at its strongest at the grassroot levels, where the Dalit women can deploy new methods based on their understanding to oppose the established architectures of social hierarchy and power.

Naturally, many feminist authors of recent times have been rather hostile to the ideas of Mahatma Gandhi and his followers. It has been argued that their ideas on Swaraj tended to be idealistic and philosophical, and lacked understanding of reality. Gandhi believed that the fulfilment of the idea of Swaraj could only be possible through Hindu–Muslim unity, the removal of untouchability and the uplift of women. However, his deep religious convictions prevented him from thinking that the roots of these maladies lay in the Hindu institution of caste. This explains why he never undertook a critical study of traditional Hinduism and preferred to confine his aims to a reformist programme. It did leave behind pores that could not easily be filled. Gandhi was very frequently criticised for the use of Hindu idioms and symbols that did not address the fundamental issues related to the marginalisation and social segregation of women. The author argues that Gandhian cultural nationalism was responsible for turning the marginalised groups into passive recipients of caste Hindu paternalism, which was premised on the change of heart on the part of the caste Hindus and their atonement for the sin of practicing untouchability and other forms of social segregation. It is argued that Gandhi’s own reliance on a reformed Sanatani Hinduism made it difficult for him to think of a cultural nationalism where the main actors would be the depressed and the marginalised.

In the years after Indian independence, the issue of reform gained importance in political circles. The Marxists focused on class as the main ideological fulcrum for resolving all forms of social and economic inequalities. This line of thinking was opposed by many, who thought that the divisions within Indian society could be resolved through a much broader system of reforms. Ram Manohar Lohia was a leading political personality who believed that the conservatism of Hindu society could be broken through a much more open dialogue on sexuality and marriage. The Marxists criticised him for avoiding the potentiality of class struggle, which alone could put an end to the processes through which exploitation had been institutionalised in rural India. The point that Lohia sought to establish was the Marxist neglect of caste, while he identified caste as the specific structure of oppression in Indian society. In fact, despite advocating the Dalit–Śudra alliance, he argued that a whole band of castes such as Nairs, Vellalas, Reddis, Marathas, Lingayats and Vokkilagas in the Peninsula were much like the Kshatriya–Vaishya of the North and were very often exploiters at the lower levels. Lohia was neither a Marxist nor an Ambedkarite, but was more oriented towards the Gandhian line of political de-centralisation, rejection of large-scale production and heavy industry and holding state bureaucracies and private capital to be exploitative. To him, the exploitation of the lower castes was born out of an alliance between the bureaucratic ‘high castes’ and the ‘trading high castes’. It has been correctly argued that while ‘Lohiaism’ had militancy, it lacked the revolutionary attitude of the Ambedkarites and the Marxists. Lohia’s aggregative politics of social justice was too abstract and perhaps for that reason failed to undermine the institutionalised oppression of the Dalits by any measure.

The author has also discussed a whole range of contemporary thinkers who have made significant intellectual contributions to our understanding of the highly stratified Indian society. For Gail Omvedt, there was a direct relationship between caste and nation; the radical anti-caste movements are regarded as only valid expressions of the democratic revolution in India. She was equally interested in the women’s question and felt that the women’s movement should be guided by a working-class perspective. The division between the elite and the subaltern women was exposed in her writings, where the leadership possibly could only come from the working classes, agricultural labourers and the rural poor. Scholars like Eleanor Zelliot felt that the new identity of the Dalit was, perhaps, most important for the socially ostracised communities. In her narratives of the anti-caste movement, she relied considerably on the oral narratives of the ‘untouchable bhakti saints’, who not only opposed orthodoxy but also included both women and the Śudras among their ranks. In her writings, there was a clear emphasis on the agency of Dalit women. There are others like Uma Chakravarti, who tried to establish links between caste and gender, holding the caste and gender oppression to be maintained through women’s complicity. To her, caste was responsible more than class or ethnicity in generally dividing women. Upper-caste women, despite gender discrimination, enjoyed certain privileges denied to women belonging to the ranks of ‘untouchables’. Chakravarti’s writings have assumed importance because caste tends to shape women’s everyday lives, whether high or low. While some of the contemporary scholars might have favoured a counter-view on the caste system, many felt the caste system existed because of a consensual consciousness. The point that has been established through some recent studies on gender is that women often extend their support to oppressive structures, which are invisibilised under social norms such as those of upholding tradition. Scholars like V. Geetha have also shown how patriarchy is supported by kinship structures and relationships of production. However, the influence of patriarchy is felt more in cases where land ownership decides both the material as well as the social status of individuals. The opportunity for work does not automatically grant freedom to Dalit women. The freedom that they enjoy is not always different from unfreedom, and their ‘social low-rank’ is responsible for the discrimination and subordination they suffer from.

In the last years of the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-first century, the writings of Sharmila Rege, Urmila Pawar, Leela Dube and Annie Namala lent a great deal of strength to the feminist movement and helped the younger generation of scholars to develop powerful critiques of the Dalit and women’s movement. In the early 1990s, Dalit feminist articulations, especially on the issue of quotas within quotas, challenged the conceptions of ‘genderless caste’ and ‘casteless gender’ and raised the issue of Dalit human rights. In the years that followed the Durban Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, there was a great deal of debate about whether there could be a comparison between caste and race. Dipankar Gupta argued that there was hardly any commonality between caste and race, which conceptually were different from one another. Sharmila Rege, who staunchly supported Dalit feminism, made a categorical distinction between the ideas of so-called English-educated urban-middle-class feminism and Dalit feminism, which ultimately inspired her to focus more on anti-caste feminisms. There is little doubt that the radical scholarship of these times was drawn to a more critical reading of Black and Third World feminisms, particularly in the context of the analysis of caste and gender. Urmila Pawar’s memoirs represented a significant departure from the path trodden by other Dalit autobiographies. It is a convoluted narrative by an individual who looks at the world initially from her location within the boundaries of caste, but later transcends the caste identity from a feminist perspective. The migratory history(ies) of the Mahars, describing their journeys from the rural areas of the Konkan region to the new urbanised bases like Mumbai, show how the hegemonic ideologies of caste, patriarchy, class and gender challenged the logic of development of the post-Nehruvian era. Leela Dube, in her writings, had tried to situate women as conscious acting subjects of social relationships and the processes that reproduced and modified the social system characterised by the institution of caste. Like many other anthropologists of her times, she tried to comprehend the interrelations that existed between occupational continuity and the reproduction of ritualistic patterns, including marriage and sexuality.

Lastly, the research on the intersectionalities between caste and gender has greatly benefitted from the writings of Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak, Gopal Guru, Dipankar Gupta, Mary John, K. Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu. Spivak, who is often identified as a leading Marxist-feminist-deconstructionist, entered the field of gender through her intellectual interest in French feminism. Interrogating the works of Foucault and Deleuze, she wrote critically upon a pre-supposition: ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ The real intention was to understand the agency of the subalterns when it came to addressing the challenges of male hegemony and female victimhood.

It is not clear from the author’s assertion how she could draw an analogy between Spivak’s theoretical interventions and those of the popular histories of Dalit Viranganas. The same is the case with the author’s treatment of Dipankar Gupta’s understanding of caste, debating the very issue of governmentality. The author’s intellectual engagement with Gopal Guru’s writings is perhaps far more sophisticated. The reason for it could be the author’s own interest in the issues of Dalit patriarchy and Dalit feminism. In the case of Dalit women, the struggle against hegemony was of a somewhat twin experience—the fight against upper-caste women for claiming a voice in the women’s movement and a struggle against such Dalit men as tried to marginalise women. The author’s intellectual representation of Dalit feminism in the context of the different trajectories of the Mahar movement in Maharashtra deserves praise. Kancha Illaiah had always been a strong advocate of Dalit Bahujan society, and he tried to identify Dalitwaadas as collective cultural spaces, which questioned the very ideational foundations of man–woman relations in the context of the upper-caste Hindu society. The important point that the author identifies in Illaiah’s writings is the entitlements of protest and resilience when it comes to Dalit women confronting Dalit men in a patriarchy-ridden social ambience.

Anand Teltumbde has pointed out that identity politics is conditioned by social categories like caste, and this more than often obstructs the annihilation of castes as index of identity. Identity politics is often shaped by some immediate experiences of discrimination and oppression and certainly is community-oriented. Undoubtedly, identity politics, which often led to communitarian assertions, were also influenced by global developments in the second half of the twentieth century. These movements were part of new social movements that questioned much of the old stereotype identities based on gender discrimination, class exploitation and racial marginalisation. There were also provocative academic outbursts indicating that identity politics, which had its roots in exploitation, could only be comprehended by an individual who had faced such inequalities. This, in other words, led to the increasing popularity of ethnicisation, aiming at a fusion of castes. Such ideas were based on a more emotive construct and did not consider the relative prosperity and poverty that prevailed among different caste groups. Perhaps this was one of the reasons why a single Dalit political party could not emerge on the national scene, thereby encouraging the growth of splintered political parties based on different caste identities.

The discussions of the social theorists in the book under review are interesting but lack rationale for their inclusion. There is no attempt on the part of the author to relate them to the central philosophy behind her research. As a consequence, some of the discussions appear to be haphazard, devoid of a single thread that could tie them together. The sixth chapter of the book returns to the central idea of the author related to schooling and the empowerment of marginalised communities. She takes the example of Bihar and expresses concern about whether the philosophy of Gramsci and Freire is useful in explaining educational policies. It has been argued that the legislative measures intended for the uplift of the educational standards of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes have failed to meet their expectations. While she tries to substantiate many of her beliefs through fieldwork, it is not clear how she theoretically engages with the information that has been collected. The last chapters essentially deal with the role of government agencies, particularly the National Commission on Education, to mitigate the deprivation and discrimination of the marginalised sections in the field of education. The narrative is based on certain reports, but the sources are not only scanty, the theoretical basis for understanding the post-colonial scenario is also rather weak. The book raises interesting possibilities, though the inadequacy of a theoretical framework is a rather worrying feature. The author possibly was not very clear in defining the trajectories from exclusion to integration because throughout the book the stories of discrimination, denial and deprivation constantly constitute the talking points of a grand narrative.