At a time when there is increased assertion of their rights by the lower castes, as well as women and the LGBT community, this book emphasises the need to study the intersection between the two. It isn’t possible to condense the nuanced reasoning available in the essays that form this reader, but it is important to acknowledge a lasting impression: that the oppression of a group, as also their attempts at upward mobility is marked by attempts to control the movement, and above all sexuality, of women.
Given the context of the sexual exploitation of Dalit women by the dominant castes, and their negative stereotyping as uncultured and shameless, Charu Gupta’s essay points out how among the urban sweepers of Uttar Pradesh in the 1930s, the assertion of their economic rights led to Dalit men attempting to restore respectability to their women too “by drawing on the vocabulary of the dominant castes” — advocating partial segregation, and ruling on appropriate clothing.
The same, we find in Anupama Rao’s essay, was true in Maharashtra in the 20th century, where “withdrawing their (women’s) labour and physical presence from the public, became a status marker for Maratha families claiming elite kshatriya status.”
The centering of a community’s honour around the body of a women is, of course, a starting point for the book itself. Edited by Rao, these scholarly essays go in diverse directions, explores the minutiae of the topics, so much so that some essays can seem like the introduction to a more complete study.
S. Anandhi turns to what she says is the silence of studies on Periyar’s Self-Respect Movement in Tamil Nadu on attempts to emancipate women, even his call to abolish marriage, a key institution sustaining the enslavement of women. The essay underlines a sustained effort required for change to be effective and permanent.
Within this movement, Anandhi notes, the regressive patriarchal ideas “asserted itself when opportunity rose.”
V. Geetha’s forward-looking essay looks at how the family and household spaces are complicit in keeping caste identities alive, and calls on feminists to examine B.R. Ambedkar’s premise of a different form of social fellowship.
The most sparkling piece here is a conversation between Dalit transwoman Living Smile Vidya and Nair transman Gee Imaan Semmalar. They present the complex gendered spaces and identities they’ve negotiated and challenged. “Maintaining the myth that any oppressed community is ‘different’ is essential to the continued dehumanisation of those communities,” Gee states on why they chose to tell their own stories in an otherwise academic book. And we should hear them.
Gender, Caste and the Imagination of Equality ; Edited by Anupama Rao, Women Unlimited, ₹990.
