The women바카라s rights movement in India has had many strands and lived several lives. The most vibrant and audacious strand is perhaps represented by the Dalit women of India who have fought a parallel struggle for equality both alongside the national feminist movement and within it. Following the teachings of Savitribhai Phule which came as a boon for the education of Dalit girls initially, the historically subjugated and oppressed women of Dalit communities started absorbing the works of Phule, Periyar and eventually Babasaheb Ambedkar, who was the first to link caste oppression with gender.
In the 70s and 80s, the women바카라s movement in India was largely driven by upper-caste women. These university-educated women from upper-middle-class families were the galvanising force of the movement. This was also the same time when women from historically marginalised communities were becoming part of the larger movement. By the end of the 70s, Dalit women started to realise that their realities were not being reflected in the larger women바카라s movement narrative. In the post-independence era, Babasaheb was the only first one to mobilise Dalit women as a constituency and for the first time, they were able to build a vision of how they wanted their own emancipation.
바카라I started writing short stories in 1975-76. I wrote about my experiences as a woman. The subjugation of gender, issues like wanting male children, marital abuse and dowry. It was only after I read about Babasaheb Ambekar바카라s views on women바카라s role in the caste system, endogamy and exogamy that my perspective underwent a sea change. I realised that within the feminist argument, I am not just a woman. I am a Dalit woman,바카라 says Marathi author Urmila Pawar, a long- term member of both the feminist and Dalit feminist movements in India.
Pawar was part of the first generation of educated Dalit women who organised and mobilised themselves as a group in the literary sphere against caste-based gender oppression. 바카라I began writing about my own experiences of discrimination which I had normalised as a part of our caste till then. I wrote about the Dalit women I knew, including my mother and sister. The idea was to show that for Dalit women, the experience of oppression is compounded due to caste marginalisation바카라.
In 1972, the Dalit Panther movement emerged on the country바카라s political and cultural scene. At that time, Pawar became friends with renowned Marathi Dalit women poets and writers like Hira Bansode in Mumbai, Kumud Pawre in Nagpur and Jyoti Lanjewal, among others. She and her comrades went on to set up several key organisations like the Dalit Woman바카라s Organisation and the Samvadini Dalit Stree Sahitya Manch.
바카라The Panthers were focused on protesting on the streets. But we concentrated more on upholding the movement from an ideological perspective through articles, poems, short stories and art. We became kind of like the cultural wing of the Panthers, expressing the struggle of caste through our writings,바카라 Pawar says.
This distinction of the 바카라difference바카라 of Dalit women, noted by Gopal Guru in his paper titled 바카라Dalit Women Talk Differently바카라 and later propounded by Sharmila Rege, marked that era. The experience of patriarchy, which is universal, is not the same across women belonging to different communities. The writings of Pawar and others offer a cogent critique of feminist and Dalit politics and in the late 80s and 90s, the question of difference started coming to the fore in the organisational space.
By the 80s, pioneer Dalit feminists like Ruth Manorama and anti-caste scholars like Gail Omvedt further questioned the idea of a 바카라universal바카라 feminist movement. Omvedt raised the question of marginal, Dalit peasant women in the 70s and 80s while Manorama was the first to talk of triple discrimination based on class, caste and gender for Dalit women since the 90s, leading to a different organised space for movements of Dalit women, says Priyanka Samy, a member of National Federation of Dalit Women (NFDW).
A second-generation feminist, Samy recalls a 바카라critical discussion바카라 between feminists and comrades Kamla Bhasin and Ruth Manorama during a feminist gathering. Bhasin said, 바카라We [all women] are one바카라 to which Ruth stood up and responded, 바카라No, we are not.바카라 Bhasin told Ruth that she (Manorama) was dividing the movement by saying that, to which Manorama responded, 바카라We are already divided on the basis of caste. I바카라m only centrestaging our lived realisites.바카라 During the Autonomous Women바카라s Conference at Tirupati in the early 90s, Dalit women really foregrounded the issue of caste within the feminist movement. This was a moment in history when Dalit women started articulating the fact that women are not a homogenous group, Samy states.
While the voice of Dalit women has grown stronger and there is increased articulation of intersectionality, Samy and younger Dalit feminists feel that the Dalit women바카라s group continues to live in the shadow of mainstream feminism which is dominated by upper-caste, upper-class women. 바카라Intersectionality바카라 might be a cool word in today바카라s feminist circles but the women바카라s rights movement, be it autonomous or political or rights-based, has been largely dominated and controlled by upper-caste women. According to intersectional women바카라s rights activist and author Shalin Maria Lawrence, most upper-caste feminists suffer selective blindness when it comes to the double or triple marginalisation of Dalit women.
She uses the example of the feminist movement in support of legalising sex work. 바카라I agree that women should have the right to choose. But what about Dalit girls pushed into forced sexual work or bonded labour due to their caste? They don바카라t have any choice,바카라 Lawrence says. Shalin adds that Dalit women face a lot of vitriol on social media as well for speaking about caste, gender and/or politics. 바카라I feel that Dalit men are not abused as much when they talk about these things on Twitter.바카라
Sabari G. Rajan, President of Ambedkar Students바카라 Union, Hyderabad, agrees that marginalised women continue to be denied space in politics and social mobilisation movements and that their issues, especially the question of sexuality and sexual violence is not at all inclusive of Dalit voices. 바카라Every day, Dalit and Adivasi women and girls are raped and killed in many parts of India. Most of the time, the mainstream media fails to cover them,바카라 she says.
Even when it does, a case like Hathras where a nineteen-year-old Dalit woman was allegedly gang-raped by four upper-caste men, is often passed off as gender violence. But sexual violence by upper-caste men against so-called lower-caste women is not just gender violence. It has a centuries-long history of caste oppression in a nation that views the sexual safety of women as a matter of familial honour (read caste pride).
Rajan points out that there are many strong, independent Dalit women leaders but not many reach the stature of someone like Mayawati, the only Dalit woman to become chief minister in India. 바카라Most Dalit, Adivasi women are not in the forefront of movements and politics because they needed or wanted to contribute to the survival of their families. Unlike Savarna women, the privilege of being on the ground is not always accessible to them. But even by rearing their own children, Dalit women are contributing to nation-building, which I consider a political act.바카라
At present, women across the autonomous, organisational, political and literary spectrum of Dalit feminist movements agree that the current dispensation has made things difficult for civil society movements, be it through the curtailing of funds for rights-based organisations or the political persecution of dissenters. How the Dalit women바카라s movement바카라with its existing ideological pulls between Ambekarite and Marxist and Gandhian ideologies바카라responds to the rising wave of Hindutva politics will have a significant impact on the feminist discourse of the nation.
(This appeared in the print as 'Beyond Feminism')
