Caste and Gender in Contemporary India: Power, Privilege and Politics 9781138062344

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CASTE AND GENDER IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA

This book explores the intersectional aspects of caste and gender in India that contribute to the multiple marginalities and oppressions of lower castes, with particular reference to Dalits, Muslims and women. It moves beyond the conventional accounts of experiences of women in unequal social and political relationships to examine how caste as a system and ideology shapes hegemonic masculinity and feminisation of work and thus contributes to the violence against women. The volume looks at their everyday lived realities within and across diverse social and political contexts – families, education systems, labour, communities, political parties, power, social organisations, the politics of representation and the writing of the subaltern women. With a range of empirical work, it brings forth the complexities of identity politics and further analyses its limits in regional and historical frameworks. This book will be of interest to students, scholars and specialists in caste and gender studies, exclusion and discrimination studies, sociology and social anthropology, history and political science. It will also be useful to Dalit writers and people working in the development sector in India. Supurna Banerjee is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata, West Bengal, India. She completed her PhD in 2014 from the University of Edinburgh in Sociology. Her monograph Activism and Agency in India: Nurturing Resistance in Tea Plantations, based largely on the PhD work, was published in 2017. She has also published in journals such as the International Law Journal, Journal of South Asian Development and in edited collections. She has co-edited a special issue in SAMAJ on “Debates on Caste–Gender Intersectionality.” Her primary research interests are gender, work, intersectionality, caste, migration and cities.

Nandini Ghosh is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata, West Bengal, India. She obtained her PhD degree in social sciences from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences Mumbai in 2008. She has published a monograph, Impaired Bodies Gendered Lives: Everyday Realities of Disabled Women in 2016. She has edited Interrogating Disability in India: Theory and Practice (2016) and Pratyaha – Everyday Lifeworlds: Dilemmas, Contestations and Negotiations (co-edited with Prasanta Ray, 2015). Her other publications include “Bhalo Meye: Cultural Construction of Gender and Disability in Bengal” in Renu Adlakha (ed.), Disability Studies in India: Global Discourses, Local Realities (2013) and “Sites of Oppression: Dominant Ideologies and Women with Disabilities in India” in Tom Shakespeare (ed.), The Disability Research Reader: New Voices (2015). She has also co-authored a chapter entitled “Girls with Disabilities in India: Living Contradictions of Care and Negation” published in the India Social Development Report entitled Disability Rights Perspectives (2016). Her areas of interest are qualitative research methodology, sociology of gender, marginalisation and social exclusion and social movements.

CASTE AND GENDER IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA Power, Privilege and Politics

Edited by Supurna Banerjee and Nandini Ghosh

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 selection and editorial matter Supurna Banerjee and Nandini Ghosh; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Supurna Banerjee and Nandini Ghosh to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-06234-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-43409-9 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

CONTENTS

List of tables Notes on contributors Acknowledgements Glossary

vii viii x xi

Introduction: interrogating intersections, understanding identities

1

N A N D I N I G H O S H A N D SUP URN A B A N E RJE E

1 Thinking about caste: an autobiographical journey

23

U M A C H A K R AVA RTI

2 Negotiating with patriarchy and access to higher education

43

VA N DA N A

3 Kaarigars, karkhaanas and the art of embroidery

68

BIDISHA DHAR

4 Negotiating gender: caste and disability identities of women in India

95

NANDINI GHOSH

5 Caste identity and community feast among Yadavs: an interpretation D E V I P R A SA D

v

113

CONTENTS

6 The Hindutva politics of Uma Bharati: challenges to women’s movements

134

N A N D I TA B A N ERJE E DH AWAN

7 Nationalism of exclusion: gaumata and her unholy sons

151

S U P U R N A B A N E RJE E

8 ‘Chandalini-r Bibriti’: interrogating caste and gender in contemporary Bengali Dalit literature

179

P R A S K A N VA S I N H A RAY

9 Bama’s Karukku: a beaded string of gender, caste, religion

196

A M R I TA B A S U ROY CH OWDH URY

10 Caste–gender intersectionalities and the curious case of child nutrition: a methodological exposition

213

S I M A N TI N I M U KH O PADH YAY A N D ACH IN CH A K R ABORT Y

Index

238

vi

TABLES

3.1 4.1 4.2 5.1 10.1

10.2 10.3

10.4

10.5

Muslim caste structure as elaborated by Ansari (1960: 35) Statewise distribution of disabled population of SC by sex and type of disability Percentage of total scheduled caste disabled workers W.R.T. total disabled workers Profile of the respondents The intersection of gender with religion, caste and economic class in the determination of child stunting in India Prevalence of stunting (%) in different social settings in India Population share, nutrition share and inequality in different subgroups of the population of children below 5 years in India Share of ‘between-group’ and ‘within-group’ components in total inequality by the traditional method of decomposition Decomposition of concentration index for heightfor-age Z-scores of children