Dalit women and Politics in India

Scholar's Paradise (ISBN: 9781980446330), 2017

The dilemma of Poverty is ecumenical and arduous altogether. It has become an indomitable concern at global platform. Generally Poverty is considered as a condition where a person standpoints his insufficiency to conform to his basic amenities of life like food, cloth and shelter. In today’s globalized world the ambit of poverty has aggrandized from inadequacy of basic needs to deficiency of human development aid facilities such as education, health and public security. The poverty is a backing feature of one’s class in society. The reactionary Varna and caste system has been a part of Indian Hindu Society from ancient times. Today only in India such a caste system prevails. The source of Ancient Hindu Law, Manusmriti, lays downtrodden existence of the out classes namely Shudras and women. The caste oppression and gender inequality has hounded India. The class exploitation comes as another hindrance towards the goals of equality. India has been an overly patriarchal and caste dominating society. The vulnerable people in India can be understood as the group of persons who are exposed to absence of decent livelihood on account of disability, ailment, age and so on. Women have to face the humiliation of three fold discrimination because they are hindered by their gender, class and caste. Dalits hold attention as the dejected rundle of the civil ladder. They have been incarcerated to debasement and coercion by the elevated classes in the caste biased Indian society for centuries. It is a blot on the landscape that this merciless practice still perseveres in various parts of India. The author has attempted an effort to make visible the hidden exploitation of Dalit women to the readers. Keywords: Dalit Women, Violence, Vulnerable People, Poverty

2018

Since long ago, Dalit women in India have been living in silence through the centuries. They have remained and acted as mute spectators to their exploitation, oppression, and barbarity done to them. They do not have control over their own bodies, earnings, and lives. Instead, somebody else controls them. The extreme expression of violence, exploitation, and oppression against them is visible in forms of hunger, malnutrition, diseases, physical and mental torture, rape, illiteracy, ill-health, unemployment, insecurity and inhuman treatment. The collective forces and the effect of Feudalism, casteism, and patriarchy have made their lives a living hell. An overwhelming majority of them live under the most precarious conditions. In the present age of modernism and post-modernism they are still living in the dark age of savagery. Caste has played an instrumental role in raising issues related to the more marginalized among women ie Dali women. In a highly hierarchical society, women belo...

2020

Contemporary India is a backward capitalist society with a number of feudal cultural remnants. When we contextualise the institution of caste in the contemporary political and economic structure, we understand a clear dichotomy in the positioning of "man" and a "woman" in it. Any theoretical account of gender power equation and women"s oppression must be firmly located in the social power context. Dalit women in India are situated at a very crucial juncture right now where they have to cross three thresholds simultaneously: class, class and patriarchy. These are the three hierarchical axes of social structure which are crucial to the understanding of gender relations and the oppression of Dalit women.The roots to this lie in the first millennial traditional Brahminical law code, the Manusmriti, which continues to shape the unwritten norms in Indian society. It enjoins social, economic and political practices as a religious duty which are severely discriminat...

New Academia: An International Journal of English Language, Literature and Literary Theory, 2020

The aim of this paper is to locate the journey of a few aspirational women from the Dalit community, the most persecuted group in India, from the fringes of society to its centre, carving for themselves a life of dignity and prosperity.In fact, it may even be argued that the Dalits of India have suffered a similar fate with that of the Afro-American community, living for centurieswithin the 'margins', being an unacknowledged and derided part of society as the 'unwanted insiders'. As Bell Hooks observes in her seminal work Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984):'To be in the margin is to be part of the whole but outside the main body.'In current sociological and literary epistemology, Dalit Studies has emerged as a new, interdisciplinary mode of assessing and situating the Indian Dalit community. In this respect, this paper takes a few short stories from the Rajasthani Dalit writer Ratan Kumar Sambharia as frameworks to assess the Dalit woman's situation in India and her constant struggle to form a narrative alterity. The Dalit woman faces the double-whammyas a sociological 'other', not only because she is a Dalit but also because she is a Woman. The Dalit woman is under constant pressure to abide by the set social praxis and follow a preordained trajectory, the transgression of which unleashes a multitude of challenges along her path. Therefore, it is important to look at the Dalit Woman as a separate entity, with struggles unique to her social reality. This paper takes a look at some of these pressing issues that have plagued Indian society since generations.

Economic and Political Weekly of India, 2018

All India Dalit Mahila Adhikar Manch (AIDMAM), 2018

The reality of the caste system and all its manifestations in every sphere of life denying dignity and full humanity to the oppressed cannot be disputed. What is also significant is the cruel erasure of those buried under the pain of caste apartheid. How often have we read research reports, studies, articles and journals which carry a narrative of abject victimhood; the subject of which is often the victim - survivors of violence? Dalit women have for long attempted to break this patronising projection of our violated bodies and families and have therefore organised ourselves systematically to be part of a process of building our own trajectory and asserting our own narratives. We bring with us a long history of oppression and a resilient struggle for human dignity and life. It is this history that makes us who we are and therefore all our thoughts and actions are geared towards self determination and freedom for all. On a daily basis we battle multiple forms of discrimination and atrocity and through it all, we continue to push for some semblance of justice. Often the criminal justice system and institutional mechanisms offered by the State are like a facade, meant to obfuscate or render meaningless the rights that are ours. We are fully aware of the deep-seated institutional caste bias that exists all around us. We have seen and experienced it in the process of our movement building and of course the lives that we live. Being aware of this is crucial for us as Dalit women, so as to place an authentic lens to our analysis; to constantly check ourselves as we navigate the various communities we are from, taking into account various intersectional frames of disability, sexuality, class and urban-rural realities and our differences even as we come together as a unified voice against the oppressive structures that seek to dehumanise us. Caste atrocities of various forms and sexual violence in particular has been the most difficult to combat. On one hand, dealing with stigma, trauma and health issues with limited resources and on the other, battling the legal systems for justice is a crumbling experience. Despite all these barriers, we push forward, with a hope that we can leave behind a world that offers happiness, justice and security for our daughters.This hope is not an illusion. The urgency of uplifting our narratives along with our claim human rights is here and now. Tackling structural forms of violence perpetrated for centuries is a long haul process, but the belief that one has to make a transformative change in our lifetime is at the core of our organising. We present this report to you with great pride in enabling voices of Dalit women leaders who are battling all odds to counter oppression and support vulnerable communities; even as we organise ourselves. The journey for each of us has not been easy and often, we feel burnt out by the relentless violence that we dalit women face as a community. Learning and unlearning everyday to play an enabling role for each other is key to our existence. The writing of this report was one such process that has brought in new perspectives and opened up spaces for collective thinking and articulation. We view it as a significant part of creating our own history. Often faced with humiliating and debilitating experiences for many of us activists and survivors; we can only gaze inwards and seek help from one another. This report is a reflection of that internal struggle attempting to trace the underlying factors for our extreme vulnerability as dalit women and also the exploration of strategies used to advance the resistance. Jai Bhim

Blue Ava Ford Publications, 2021

Being Dalit and women, Indian Dalit women experience the triple jeopardy of caste, gender, and class. They are not only exploited, tortured, and harassed by their men and but also subjected to a series of atrocities by the upper castes Hindus. They are treated as men's possessions, properties, and sexual objects. Dalit men often imitating the Hindu patriarchy subordinate women and treat them inhumanly. As Dalit women are denied equal rights, they often suffer the pangs resulting from utter poverty and become the victims of men's lust when they struggle to earn their livelihood. Dalit women are exploited, tortured, and harassed by Dalit men as well the upper castes Hindus. The upper castes Hindu women become the victims of gender prejudices in Hindu patriarchy, but Dalit women suffer the triple jeopardy of caste, gender, and class. The present paper aims at analyzing the caste, gender, and class oppression the Dalit women are subjected to. The attempt has been made to explore the plight of a Dalit woman before and after her husband's death.

Global Justice : Theory Practice Rhetoric

As the lowest in the caste hierarchy, Dalits in Indian society have historically suffered caste-based social exclusion from economic, civil, cultural, and political rights. Women from this community suffer from not only discrimination based on their gender but also caste identity and consequent economic deprivation. Dalit women constituted about 16.60 percent of India’s female population in 2011. Dalit women’s problems encompass not only gender and economic deprivation but also discrimination associated with religion, caste, and untouchability, which in turn results in the denial of their social, economic, cultural, and political rights. They become vulnerable to sexual violence and exploitation due to their gender and caste. Dalit women also become victims of abhorrent social and religious practices such as devadasi/jogini (temple prostitution), resulting in sexual exploitation in the name of religion. The additional discrimination faced by Dalit women on account of their gender an...

Contemporary India is a backward capitalist society with a number of feudal cultural remnants. When we contextualise the institution of caste in the contemporary political and economic structure, we understand a clear dichotomy in the positioning of " man " and a " woman " in it. Any theoretical account of gender power equation and women " s oppression must be firmly located in the social power context. Dalit women in India are situated at a very crucial juncture right now where they have to cross three thresholds simultaneously: class, class and patriarchy. These are the three hierarchical axes of social structure which are crucial to the understanding of gender relations and the oppression of Dalit women. The roots to this lie in the first millennial traditional Brahminical law code, the Manusmriti, which continues to shape the unwritten norms in Indian society. It enjoins social, economic and political practices as a religious duty which are severely discriminatory of women and the non-dwija (twice-born, privileged groups). For instance, it says that the " untouchables " should only live in huts, not own any domestic assets, only cook in clay pots, wear only cast-off clothing, and own no property. The twice born had the first rights over their labour and anything they own, as they are created to be slaves. This continues to have a lingering impact on the totally deprived life experiences of Dalits, especially women, who still struggle to access drinking water from the common water