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Dalit
Women of India Explored in New Book by Barnard Professor Anupama
Rao
 New
York, NY— The Dalit minority of India is today an increasingly
powerful presence in Indian politics, although for centuries
the group suffered as "untouchables." A new collection
of essays, Gender and Caste: Contemporary Issues in Indian
Feminism, edited by Barnard historian and anthropologist
Anupama Rao, explores the struggles of Dalit women, in particular
their exclusion from mainstream feminism.
Comprising anywhere between 16-20 percent of India’s
population today, the term "Dalit" means "ground
down" or "broken to pieces," a militant term
of self-identification that alludes to their past history
of suffering and intense discrimination.
"Dalit women are making a double critique," says
Rao, who specializes in the history of the Indian caste system,
as well as gender issues and feminism on the sub-continent.
"One of mainstream feminism and one of the male-dominated
Dalit movement. And they are arguing that they suffer from
the triple burden of gender, class and caste."
Gender and Caste is the first of a five-project book
series of issues in contemporary Indian feminism and was published
by Kali for Women, a feminist press in Delhi.
India’s constitution abolished the caste system in the
1950s and a set of affirmative action policies called ‘reservations’
were put in place to eliminate pernicious discrimination and
caste practices. After the 1950s, these cultural practices
came to be redefined as a form of political inequality. Since
then, the Indian state has become more involved in promoting
equality, especially for Dalits but also for other so-called
lower-caste citizens.
"We see a new politics of caste that has emerged in response
to the growing visibility and importance of caste issues both
electorally and more broadly, at the social level," Rao
explained. Caste issues have become central to democratic
politics, and Indian politicians compete for the political
representation of Dalits. New political parties have formed
to represent Dalits, such as the Bahujan Samaj Party in the
North, which has been very effective in its representation.
Dalits comprise about 160 million of India’s 1.1 billion
population. "Especially since the late 1980s, caste politics
have assumed new significance and we can see a growing trend
on the part of Dalits to focus on caste humiliation and to
engage in a politics of identity and self-representation,"
Rao said.
"In the book, I wanted to capture some of this political
upheaval and use it to reflect back on the past – to
go back and excavate how we could historically trace the relationships
between caste and gender, which has been ignored by historians
of both caste and gender."
In her own research, Rao undertakes this kind of historical
revision of how we understand both caste and feminist politics.
She is trained as an anthropologist and historian of South
Asia. Her research and teaching interests include the anthropology
of violence, the history of caste, gender, and nationalism
in South Asia, historical anthropology, human rights, and
colonial and non-Western histories. The subject of her upcoming
book The Caste Question: Untouchable Struggles for Rights
and Recognition engages with collective Dalit struggles
for human dignity and social justice, and argues for the centrality
of debates about caste and personhood in the way democracy
and equality were imagined in the context of colonial and
postcolonial India.
Her other research interests include colonial bodies and histories
of governance, issues of gender and sexuality, anti-colonial
nationalism, historical anthropology, and human rights.
She is in the midst of editing a special issue of the journal
Gender and History on the topic of violence and vulnerability,
and is the editor of a forthcoming volume Discipline and
the Other Body, forthcoming from Duke University Press.
At Barnard, she teaches South Asian politics and history,
and topics focused on gender, colonialism and human rights.
Petra Tuomi, Public Affairs, 212-854-7907, ptuomi@barnard.edu
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