The National Dalit and Adivasi Women’s Congress (NDAWC) 2013 organised by Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Insight Foundation on 15 th & 16 th February was a much needed dialogue that had been delayed for a long time.

For a substantially harmful period of time the ‘woman’ within Indian women’s movement remained anonymous; her social locations of caste/class/religion/ethnicity were seen as rather unnecessary because all Indian women are ‘sisters linked to each other by the sole reality of patriarchal oppression’. Hooks (1986) defines sisterhood as political solidarity between women. However, more than often this ‘woman’ turned out to be urban, middle class if not rich and most importantly English speaking. This ‘caste unmarked woman’ represented and thereby crushed the voices of village women, poor women, dalit women, adivasi women, OBC women and marginalized Muslim women who came from a political orientation that necessitated the naming of one’s social location. Dismayed by non-representation and suffocation within the mainstream women’s movement led by upper-caste/savarna women, feminists from an anti-caste women’s perspective raised an alarm about the privileges enjoyed by savarna feminists and finally walked away to form their own associations. NDAWC 2013 can be traced back to these historical events and located within this anti-caste framework which necessitates the ‘politics of location’ as it moved out of the umbrella of oppressive sisterhood.

Many people were intrigued by the need for organizing separately for Dalit/Adivasi women, questions like how would it contribute to the betterment of women and what after the congress, and where will it lead to, flooded minds of many peoples. However, the congress was not just a meeting of dalit/adivasi and representatives from Muslim and OBC communities with concern for an anti-caste agenda but it was a socio-political act. While the congress denied agency of privileged (read upper-caste) feminists and men to speak for Dalit/ Adivasi women it was a space for asserting and reclaiming the anti-caste feminist legacy of Savitribai and Jotiba, Ramabai and Ambedkar, Birsa Munda, Periyar within the women’s movement. It was also a platform to forge solidarity and strengthen the fight against intersectional realities of caste and patriarchy.

In academics one is always expected to be presenting something in conferences and be the speaker, whether we have substance or not- we are privileged only because we are ‘educated’. But here was a chance to ‘listen’ to the women- the real women who are living out the reality of caste, patriarchy and various forms of domination every minute and fighting against it, putting up resistance to it every minute. The congress was a conflux of poets, activists, professionals, journalists, academicians and students from villages and cities from all corners of India. The speakers filled the heart with many emotions –rage, frustration, power and strength and most of all hope. The dream of annihilation of caste is many times shattered in India, which drives many of us hopeless at certain moments. This dream of a caste-free and gender equal India becomes blurry with agitation that trickles down as tears when we read and hear stories of men, women and children who suffer the agonies of caste and patriarchy. However, the speakers nurtured the eternal flame of ‘Hope’- for a better society through their stories of struggles and successes.

Anita Bharati’s poetry encapsulated the reality of mainstream feminist movement in a few lines when she questions the upper caste feminist for their silence on the issues of Dalit women. That is the beauty and power of poetry that refuses to speak of rivers, mountains and flowers and rather chooses to speak about women who have to cross these rivers and mountains barefoot and whose lives are not so flowery.

There were moments when the speakers got emotional while addressing congress. Emotions are often given a negative connotation within academics. The academic methodology is based on popular notions of rational and logic that reject the authenticity of emotions. It is an agreed notion within academics that if you get emotional it is your weakness, but it is the sheer intensity of the struggles that lead to these momentary breakdowns. The platform provided a space where academics was redefined for many of us, because academics cannot engage with human reality without emotion of compassion, humility, pain, happiness and hope. The congress was not purely academic but much more- it was a powerful narration of reality which made academics seem smaller. It is the sheer inability of mainstream academics in India to capture the realities of life, I say mainstream India because here it is the prerogative of uppercastes to summarize the reality of all communities and all genders without epistemological standpoint. In India there is an ‘objective’ analysis that is so detached and so ‘cold’ from the reality because the ‘experience holders’ are shunned as emotional and substituted by ‘objective and unbiased analysts’. Doing sociology in caste and gender studies, one is often left to wonder how many feminists have actually read Dalit women’s writings when they speak of Dalit feminism? Reading articles of Rege on ‘Dalit Women Talk Differently’ is not enough to help one understand their realities. Doing sociology of caste, gender and tribes, we hardly ever get to read the ‘real authors’ belonging to dalit/adivasi backgrounds who have an epistemological standpoint, this fact needs to be changed to make academics more liberated and the experience of doing academics more emancipatory -personally and professionally.

The congress addressed sensitive issues of Davadasi practice, rape and prostitution. Shobha and Iravathy, members of Mahila Abhivruddhi Mattu Samrkshana Samsthe (MASS) spoke at the Congress on the issue of Devadasi and also showcased a documentary on the same issue. MASS has been instrumental in eradicating the Devadasi practice and promotes the development and empowerment of women initiated as Devadasi. The narratives of Shobha and Iravathy challenged the popular, elite and rosy perception of prostitution as ‘commercial sex work’ which comes with agency to sexually employ one’s body for source of income. There have been to two polar stands with regards to prostitution- one stands for decriminalizing and legalizing it as an occupation, while the abolitionist stand taken by anti-caste feminists opposes the legalization. Usage of the term ‘prostitution’ is itself debated, while mainstream feminists admonish the term by stating its derogatory character, they prefer the use of term ‘commercial sex work’. Anti-caste feminists on the contrary, “reject the use of term ‘commercial sex worker’ because this implies a freedom of choice of occupation, which has always been denied to dalit women” (Sonalkar 2008). Mainstream feminists have echoed the ‘agency’ perspective taking the stand for legalization. Jayashree (2004) highlights sex workers’ rights to bodily integrity, pleasure, livelihood, self-determination and a safe working environment as worthy goals. Further she argues that sex workers “are not victims without agency”. She attributes the perpetuation of sex work to the clients’ failure of sexual fulfilment in other relationships as well as to sex workers’ lack of access to other work.” The pro-legalization feminist base their stand ‘on my body-my right’ paradigm where ban on prostitution related activities are considered as ‘moral policing’. However, “pivotal to this debate is the notion of consent – whether women can choose prostitution as a profession” (Saunders 2005). Anti-caste feminists reiterate the fact that it is lack of agency that forces women into prostitution. The violent treatment meted to women into enforced sex work in multiple forms of abuse. Safe working conditions and environments for enforced sex-workers does not ensure safety from sexual assault and beatings, unnatural sex, risk of sexually transmitted diseases and rapes within a lonely setting between the enforced sex worker and the client. The arguments in favour of legitimizing prostitution overlook the historical roots of prostitution in India where an overwhelming population of prostitutes belongs to the Dalit, Adivasi and OBC communities. According to the 1921 census of Mumbai, among 2,330 Hindu women into prostitution there were 712 women of Mahar or Gujarati Dhed caste, 208 Kalawatani women, 85 Kolhaati women and 64 Mang women followed by adivasi and OBC women (Pawar and Moon 2008). Although poverty accompanied by caste disabilities is one of the factors for being forced into the occupation, Moon and Pawar (2008) document the practice of dedicating girls as Devadasis among Mahars and Mangs. Analysing the phenomena of prostitution in India cannot be divorced from the interlinkages between prostitution and Hindu religion. Gangoli (2007) notes that feminist groups in India have addressed the issue of prostitution in essentially three broad ways – “(a) keeping silent over the issue given the primary focus of feminists in India on heterosexual monogamy within the context of marriage; (b) viewing prostitution through the prism of coercion, violence and victimhood particularly with reference to child prostitution, and rejecting the argument of sex work as labour; and (c) holding sex work as a matter of choice and identity as argued by sex worker collectives such as the DMSC and critiquing the “rehabilitating urge” of policymakers and feminists.” MASS, contrary to Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC) of sex workers, based in Kolkata, has turned around the debate of ‘agency’ and ‘victimhood’ in a significant way by redefining the concepts. ‘Agency’ became the ability to denounce the occupation and choose an alternate respectable lifestyle with securities. MASS activists opted out of the ‘victim’ mode through employing this ‘agency’ by building a movement to eliminate initiation of women into religious prostitution and securing the futures of children of the erstwhile devadasis. MASS and similar organisations de-romanticize the idea of ‘agency’ within enforced sex work highlighting the objectification and oppression of enforced sex workers. Traditional social work’s response to enforced sex-work in India has largely been superficial in its engagement with focus only on awareness spreading programmes about HIV/AIDS, making contraception available to the women, conducting case studies, conducting health camps etc. The traditional response has not addressed structural issues which retain the sex workers in the cycle of prostitution. Anti-oppressive social work, contrary to traditional social work needs to build structural responses to the issue of enforced sex-work which address issues of rescue, rehabilitation and secure livelihoods for the women and their children who are in the cycle of prostitution.

The idea of a village for a long time held the sociological imagination of Indian academics, however discourses on ‘Indian village’ are mostly by individuals who themselves are urban dwellers/ upper castes/male, even the NGO approach to ‘village development’ is so aloof from the reality of Dalits and women in the villages. Sociological works of M.N.Srinivas and Andre Beteille on village societies are highly acclaimed having emerged as ‘treatises’ on village. For Srinivas the village was the primary unit of analysing and generalising all social processes in India, and for Beteille the village reflected basic values of Indian civilization. However these studies were conducted from the upper-caste localities of the village which turned the Dalit bastis as merely antiques to be observed, again we had ‘brahminical sociological’ treatises on the village which were largely divorced from anti-caste lives and politics in the viallges. For Gandhi, “India begins and ends in the villages (Gandhi 1979b:45, in a letter to Nehru written on August 23, 1944.), for Nehru “ …the old Indian social structure which has so powerfully influenced our people…was based on three concepts: the autonomous village community; caste; and the joint family system” [Nehru 1946:244] and for Dr.Ambedkar “the Hindu village is the working plant of the Hindu social order. One can see there the Hindu social order in operation in full swing” [Ambedkar, in Moon 1989:19]. However the most popular and accepted view which often creates nostalgia in the minds of caste-Hindu Indian sociologists, amongst the three views is that of Gandhi’s. The Indian obsession with Gandhi’s idea of Gram Swaraj surfaces in very conversation and study of an ideal village. As against Gandhi’s celebration of the village Dr.Ambedkar advised people to leave the villages and go for the cities to escape the caste based life systems. For long until Sivakami spoke the words ‘I have a dream of a village’ I was against the idea of a village as it is a hotbed for the caste system to thrive. Sivakami dreams of a village with ‘common work share’ against Gandhi’s varnaashrama dharma and the 12 balutedar system which divides work according to caste. It was the first time I was hearing a ‘Dalit woman’ speak about her own idea of a village. It is such an academic irony that we hardly hear what Dalits themselves have to say about villages when majority of them live there. Never before Sivakami, had I heard of what a dalit woman thinks of the idea of a village, mostly because she is considered to be intellectually incompetent. Sivakami dreams of a playground, a meeting area where politics will be discussed and health clinics in the village for women- of all castes. Her narrative challenges the idea of Gram Swaraj in its entirety, rejecting the caste and gender based hierarchies of village. She dreams of village as a liberating space for women and Dalits both, of a village as equal and equitable space. Traditional social work has extensively worked in villages through development paradigm. Great amount of work has been done on self help groups (SHG), wife beating and alcoholism, education, environment etc. but the structures of caste were left untouched- the interventions were selective & diminutive. Urban designed experiments were tried out on different constituencies in the same village- the caste-Hindu, dalits and adivasi were addressed separately. The needs and demands of the marginalised remained unrecognised as traditional social work continued with its exclusionary development discourse. For a more inclusive rural development it is the task of Anti-caste/anti-oppressive social work to rework the popular categories of ‘people’s participation, inclusion, people centred and development’ and Sivakami’s analysis of a village could be the starting point.

Questions of fractured citizenships of Nomadic and Denotified tribes (NT & DT) were raised by Samta Mane. The NT/DT are marginalized in several ways but the most pertinent issue along with patriarchal relationships is about having a complete citizenship, land and domicile. The denotified tribes were criminalised by British government and the nomadic tribes had to stable residence, this has caused an identity crisis. She highlighted the fact that dalit and adivasi women can fight against the violence but denotified women cannot as they have no identity.

Dayamani Barla and Sunita Munda raised critical questions of notions of development and adivasi, their analysis of patriarchy was closely linked with adivasi kinship and interlaced with development onslaught that threatens the existence of adivasi communities.

Arjumand Ara brought the question of caste and patriarchy within Muslim communities, highlighting the touchable-untouchable dichotomy that had crept its ways with Muslims.

Archana Zende retold her experiences of discrimination that were subtle and nuanced. She comes from the barber community listed as Other Backward Castes (OBCs). She mentioned that her caste on the caste-certificate was written as ‘Hindu-Maratha’, her narrative highlights the Shudra claim towards Kshtriyahood which is a phenomenon of sankritization or imitation of highest castes. Zende reiterates the need for orienting our families and communities with the caste system in order to conscentize them towards social inequalities. The OBCs are discriminated by caste-Hindus through exclusion in subtle and explicit ways. However being discriminated at a level, the Shudra/OBC claim towards Kshtriyahood has violent implications which are manifested in attacks of Dalits, the claim to Kshtriyahood and savarnafication can be laid only through following caste system in its cruellest forms. Thus Zende’s narrative becomes very crucial as she exposes the contradictions of caste system.

Conclusion

The Congress has defined a space within social work, where for the first time anti-caste feminists were interacting with each other. The value of ‘payback to the society’ was reiterated by many speakers in the congress. I am reminded of Ambedkar’s quote ‘An educated man without character and humility is more dangerous than a beast’. The middle class can easily get swayed away from the goals of a just and equal society and be corrupted by the ‘rewards of an unjust society’. The congress was an opportunity to reflect on my privileged position in the society as an ‘educated middle class, non Dalit woman’ and my responsibility and contribution towards the dream of a gender just society and annihilation of caste.

References

Gangoli, Geetanjali (2007), “Immorality, Hurt or Choice: Indian Feminists and Prostitution”, Inter­national Feminist Journal of Politics, 8, 1, Routledge

Hooks Bell (1986), Sisterhood: Political Solidarity between Women Feminist Review, No. 23, Socialist-Feminism: Out of the Blue (Summer, 1986), pp. 125-138.Published by: Palgrave Macmillan Journals

Jayasree, A K (2004): “Searching for Justice for Body and Self in a Coercive Environment: Sex Work in Kerala, India”, Reproductive Health Matters, 12, 23: 58-67.

Jodhka Surinder (2002) “Nation and Village: Images of Rural India in Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar” Economic and Political Weekly August 10, 2002

Pawar Urmila & Moon Meenakshi (2008), “We Also Made History: Women in the Ambedkarite Movement”, Zubaan Publications.

Saunders, Penelope (2005), “Traffic Violations: Determining the Meaning of Violence in Sexual Trafficking Versus Sex Work”, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 20, 3: 343-60

Sonalkar Wanadana (2008), ‘Translators Introduction’ in Pawar Urmila & Moon Meenakshi “We Also Made History: Women in the Ambedkarite Movement”, Zubaan Publications.

Cited from Jodhka (2002). See references

Shudras are the present day Other Backward Castes