Dalit Women

Honour and Patriarchy in South India

Clarinda Still

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351588188
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History
• Index: History

One of the only ethnographic studies of Dalit women, this book gives a rich account of individual Dalit women's lives and documents a rise in patriarchy in the community. The author argues that as Dalits' economic and political position improves, 'honour' becomes crucial to social status. One of the ways Dalits accrue honour is by altering patterns of women's work, education and marriage, and by adopting dominant-caste gender practices. But Dalits are not simply becoming like upper castes; they are simultaneously asserting a distinct, politicised Dalit identity, formed in direct opposition to the dominant castes. They are developing their own 'politics of culture'. Key to both, the author argues, is the 'respectability' of women. This has significant effects on gender equality in the Dalit community.

1

Introduction

Standing in the centre of Nampalli, outside the school with its statue of Gandhi in the courtyard, one can hear the pupils reciting letters of the alphabet and the teacher’s shrill reprimands over the general classroom hubbub. Opposite the school, there are two grocery stores and a public phone kiosk, overlooked by a tall concrete water tower. The shops are filled with sacks of flour and rice, biscuits and cigarettes, jars of fluorescent sweets and strings of betel nut sachets, which fall like curtains over the front of the shop. Men in white dhotis collect outside the shops to chat and read newspapers. Passing the tea stall, one might notice a small communist monument bearing a red hammer and sickle next to a large neem tree, whose trunk is wrapped in turmeric-stained threads, the shade of which provides upper-caste men with a cool meeting place. Not far from the barber’s shop stands a small shrine to the goddess Gangamma and the temples of Siva and Visnu set in their own grounds surrounded by a high compound wall.¹ The temple is located in what used to be Nampalli’s Brahmin neighbourhood and every morning the low-pitched chant of the Brahmin priest’s prayers can be heard echoing out from the temple chamber.

The Siva temple faces onto the heart of the upper-caste (Kamma) neighbourhood, where some of the largest houses in the village can be found. With its three stories, air-conditioning, marble floors, mirrored exterior glass and ornate gates, the village president’s (sarpanch) house is the most opulent of these. Here, the streets are wide, clean and shaded by coconut trees. All the houses are concrete darbars, and some have their own courtyards enclosed by an outer wall and gate. In the early mornings and at dusk, the streets hum with life as children weave in and out of the houses and plump women gather outside their houses in between chores. In the centre of the Kamma area there is a newly-constructed Rama temple and a small post office. At the eastern limits, a cremation ground and a pond look out onto flat tracts of farmland stretching out into the shimmering distance.

Turning south one passes the Panchayati Office, a new church in the Other Backward Classes (OBC) community and a rice mill. Here, the roads begin to narrow and deteriorate until one reaches the Madiga colony in the southeast corner of the village that was my home during the sixteen months of fieldwork on which this book is based.

To reach the Madiga colony one must step over the road which divides the Nampalli’s Dalit castes from the rest of the village. At this point, one leaves the uru (the main village) and enters the palli (the Dalit colony). The palli is again divided in two, the Madiga palli in the southeast and the Mala palli in the southwest. The roads are narrow and the houses are a mixture of small cement darbars and thatched huts with electricity cables hanging precariously above them. Buffaloes are tethered to the houses and dung pats dry on the sides of walls in the hot afternoons. In the daytime all the labourers are at work and the palli is empty except for old people, the odd truant child, housewives and new mothers. But in the evenings the palli heaves with life, thick with the aromas of jasmine, coconut oil, chilli and tamarind, the acrid smell of kerosene, tobacco smoke and the stench of the blocked drains. Sounds of Telugu hit film songs and television soap operas fill the air. Groups of labourers sometimes huddle under the streetlights to calculate their wages, children run from house to house and old women pick stones out of trays of rice. Men lie on cots massaging their aching joints as their wives stoke fires to boil rice and heat water for baths.

This sketch is intended to give an impression of the social geography of ‘Nampalli’ and to create a general sense of the village in which I conducted fieldwork. But written from the standpoint of a western observer and in anthropology’s infamous ‘ethnographic present’, the description may convey a sense of traditional village India, unchanging and timeless. This is not my intention. For this book is centrally concerned with processes of social change and people’s own attempts to grasp and direct it. In this book, I am not concerned with all villagers, but rather with just one section of them: Dalits (formerly known as ‘Untouchables’), and especially Dalit women. The book centres around the stories of three Dalit women in particular: Leela, my fictive ‘younger sister’ in the household in which I lived; Vani, a mother of two and grandmother of four who was my neighbour during fieldwork; and Kalyani, the indomitable leader of the village’s women-only micro-credit savings groups. I have chosen to focus on these women because in various ways their life stories illustrate better than anything else the social processes which are transforming Dalits’ lives in this area.

During my fieldwork in 2004–5, it was obvious that Dalit men and women were directing the course of social change by turning their attention to gender relations in their own community. Their efforts to improve their standing as former ‘Untouchables’ were focussed on improving the reputation of women. The argument in this book, then, is that in Nampalli, one of the principal ways that Dalits are attempting to raise their social status is through the pursuit of ‘paruvu-pratishta-gowravam’ (prestige-honour-respect) and the a tangible effect of this on the women of the community.

Paruvu-pratishta-gowravam is a constellation of embodied, appropriated values, which shape actions and aspirations in everyday life. Much of this book will be taken up with the meaning of this notion and the way in which it manifests itself in the everyday lives of Dalits in Nampalli. Although, as we shall see, paruvu-pratishta-gowravam is comprised of various components and is gained and lost in a variety of different ways, one of its most important constituents is the control of female sexuality. To my informants the question itself, ‘what is prestige?’ would be taken as an invitation to talk about ‘good’ or ‘bad’ women, either to defend women in their own family or to expose women outside it. Indeed, anthropologists of the paradigmatic ‘honour and shame’ region, the Mediterranean, convince us that wherever it is found, honour is always closely linked to sex and gender (Delaney 1987, Gilmore 1987, Peristiany 1965, Pitt-Rivers 1965).

My informants’ concern with paruvu-pratishta-gowravam has not come out of the blue. Not only has it historical antecedents, it is also intricately bound up with the current socio-economic and political trends occurring in coastal Andhra Pradesh and rural South India generally. Whilst in relative terms, Dalits in this part of India remain at the lowest level of the social hierarchy, they have nonetheless experienced major educational, economic and political changes over the last three generations. These changes have altered the self-image and aspirations of Dalits, even if they have not drastically altered their position in relation to the dominant castes. Claims to a status which fits this new self-image have resulted in cleavages within the Dalit community itself and competition between families. One of the ways Dalits lay claim to superiority (over each other and over members of the upper castes) is by recourse to the ‘respectability’ of their women.

Why it is that women have become such a key feature of the Dalit pursuit for respect and dignity? My proposition is that for Dalit men especially, to control women is to achieve ‘civilisation’ and acquire ‘culture’. Since Dalits have been seen for generations as uncivilised people, lacking in ‘culture’ and ignorant of the proper way of doing things, this is seen as an important step towards recognition and acceptance in society at large.

We can only begin to appreciate the Dalit desire for what they call civilisation when we understand a little of what it is to be seen as outside of civilisation and ‘culture-less’; in other words, by attempting to get to grips with what it means to have suffered the exclusion of Untouchability. Some scholars argue that it is impossible for non-Dalits to comprehend the experience of Untouchability and have instead advocated a phenomenological approach (Guru 2002, 2009; Sarukkai 2007). I am sympathetic to this viewpoint and I accept that this kind of book could not possibly convey what it is actually like to be Dalit. I do think, however, there are some salient features of Untouchability (discussed in the following chapter) which may help us grasp the depth of Dalits’ desire for recognition and the means by which Dalits are attempting to fulfil their aspirations. The theorisation of humiliation by Gopal Guru (2009), for instance, helps us see that it is entirely logical that those who have suffered some of the most extreme forms of subordination should be the most eager to acquire dignity and a sense of belonging when conditions begin to allow it.

It may seem surprising that ideas of prestige, honour and respect occupy centre stage in a book about South Indian Dalits. Honour (and more sensationally, honour killing) is normally associated with the affluent upper castes in North India, not the poor lower castes of the South. Dalits, those at the bottom of the caste system, are generally thought to be the least burdened by honour-related obligations. This is still the case to a certain extent; a cursory look at this community would suggest that life is so work-oriented that there is little time for the cultivation of honour. But as Dalit families are becoming slightly more economically secure and much more politically confident, they are concerned to improve their social standing. This means that paruvu-pratishta-gowravam is playing an ever more important role in shaping the direction of social change.

In certain respects the phenomenon described here follows a familiar pattern of gendered upward mobility in South Asia (Berreman 1993, Den Uyl 1995: 195–218, Deshpande 2002, Kapadia 1995, Liddle and Joshi 1986: 57–69, Mukhopadhyay and Seymour 1994: 6, Srinivas 1962: 46–48) which in turn is linked to much older debates about gender inequality in relation to the wider economy (Boserup 1970, Goody 1976, Engels 1972 [1884], Rosaldo 1974). According to the South Asian model, there is generally greater inequality among higher status groups in India and less inequality among lower status groups (in which women work). The further one moves up the social scale, the less likely women are to work, the more likely they are to be restricted and the more patriarchal gender relations become (Berreman 1993, Drèze and Sen 1995: 178, Jeffery 2000). In other words, at the higher end of the social scale, gender relations are unequal whilst at the bottom, gender relations are relatively egalitarian, with Dalit and tribal gender relations being the most egalitarian of all (Berreman 1993, Deliège 1997, Searle-Chatterjee 1981, Gough 1993: 173).² As social status improves, ‘sanskritic’ values are adopted and gender equality among the low castes and Dalits diminishes (Deshpande 2002, Pillai-Vetschera 1999: 232). Those groups attempting to move up in status become especially patriarchal: ‘constraints on women are an essential part of a rise in caste hierarchy’ (Liddle and Joshi 1986: 59) so that ‘the most severe gender inequalities of all are found among the poor, low-caste groups which are striving for upward mobility’ (Berreman 1993: 370).

What’s notable is that among certain sections of the population, liberalisation and advanced capitalism in India today may in fact be exacerbating this patriarchal trend rather than ameliorating it. In their analysis of this trend, Harriss-White and Nillesen (2004: 329) argue that accumulation strategies to keep wealth and property within the family result in an emphasis on dowry and a preoccupation with ensuring the correct paternity of the child for inheritance purposes (the ‘wealth effect’).³ In landless poor families who derive their income from labour, labouring women are more valued (the ‘wage effect’) (ibid.).⁴ Harriss-White and Nillesen (2004) predict that as poor families emulate rich families, the wealth effect will outweigh than the wage effect. This leads them to conclude that economic development will be accompanied by an increasing bias against females. A consequence of economic reforms, then, will be greater, not lesser, female disadvantage (Harriss-White and Nillesen 2004: 330).

Harriss-White and Nillesen’s (2004) work shows that rather than being seen as an anachronistic remnant of a moribund ‘traditional India’, the patriarchal nature of upward mobility is persisting and growing with contemporary changes. Indeed, other scholars have shown that it is in precisely those areas where capitalist development has had most impact that women’s traditional rights and status have been most weakened (Banerjee 2002, Kannabiran and Kannabiran 2002: 2, Kapadia 2002). Karin Kapadia’s work (1995, 2002) shows this decisively. She argues that despite positive trends for women in terms of literacy and employment, capitalist modernity has destroyed gender parity and has resulted in ‘a strengthening of male-biased (patriarchal) norms and values across all castes and classes’ in recent decades (2002: 4). In Tamil Nadu, Kapadia links the traditionally high status of non-Brahmin women with the fact that women shared agricultural work with men. Now, ‘city sophistication’ demands that families seek a ‘prestige’ marriage with a non-kin outsider and that women withdraw from work (Kapadia 1995: 253). Women’s withdrawal from work leads to a weakening of their position within the household, the loss of equal status and preference for males: ‘the status of women falls when that of the husband rises’ (ibid.: 251).

India’s ‘excess female mortality’ is probably the starkest indication that this is exactly what is happening. As the imbalanced sex ratio in the 2011 census indicates, there are signs that sex selective abortion is becoming more widespread with the increasing availability of (illegal) ultra-sound tests.⁵ Building on the work of Jha et al. (2006) and Sen (1992), Bhalotra and Cochrane’s (2010) recent study estimates that nearly half a million girls are aborted each year, a practice most prevalent among affluent and educated Hindu families.⁶ Although studies show that male preference is strongest in north India among the more prosperous and propertied social groups (Agnihotri 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, Bhalotra and Cochrane 2010, Dyson and Moore 1983), the deepening demographic imbalance seems to be spreading to sections of the population who previously showed little preference for sons, groups such as South Indian Dalits (Agnihotri 2000, 2001, 2003, Banerjee 2002, Miller 1982, 1997: 203). All of this work suggests that upward mobility makes low-caste and Dalit women worse off than they were before.

But the situation is more complex than this. Other literature argues that development and upward mobility is good for women in lower-income households, showing the gendered benefits of education, increased household incomes, improvements in female healthcare, better housing and sanitation, employment opportunities, and women-centred government programmes such family planning and micro-credit schemes. A good example of this is the work of the economist, Judith Heyer. Using longitudinal data, collected from micro-level studies in rural Tamil Nadu in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, Heyer (2014), points to a similar trajectory of Dalit upward mobility as the one described by Kapadia (1995, 2002). She describes how Dalit women married to men employed in the new industrial economy have given up agricultural wage labour to become housewives. But Heyer argues that compared to the arduous conditions they suffered as agricultural labourers, Dalit women are healthier and more assertive once they escape wage labour. For Heyer, it is the quality and quantity of work which affect levels of autonomy: when work is menial, exploitative and poorly remunerated, it can be disempowering overall. On the whole, far from women’s status falling, Heyer’s research suggests that these women are in fact better off.

The same social, economic and political processes that Kapadia and Heyer describe are clearly evident in Nampalli: some Dalit men have found employment outside the village and have thereby escaped patron-client dependency and agricultural labour. Levels of education for both sexes are dramatically increasing in each generation; child labour is disappearing, the housing and physical conditions of the palli are improving. A few Dalit women are for the first time able to become housewives, an occupation that both men and women view as infinitely more desirable than agricultural labour.

The fact that Kapadia’s, Heyer’s and my own findings are similar is not surprising given that the local changes we describe are part of broader common trends. However, although empirically we are describing more-or-less the same processes, our interpretations differ. Clearly, what is meant by the terms ‘better’ or ‘worse’ off is determined by our own values and views as researchers. Although this book is inevitably shaped just as much by my own values, I have com...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Contextualising Dalit ‘Shame’
• 3. Dalit Women and the Politics of Culture
• 4. Dalit Women’s Everyday Life, Work, Kinship and Shame
• 5. Honour and Shame in the Madiga palli: Leela’s Elopement, Possession and Marriage
• 6. Women’s Education, Marriage, Honour and the New Dalit Housewife
• 7. Alcohol, Violence and Women’s ‘Suffering’: ‘Adulterer, tramp or thief, a husband is a husband’
• 8. Kalyani: ‘Development’, ‘Civilisation’ and ‘Women’s Empowerment’
• 9. ‘Culture’, ‘Civilisation’ and Citizenship
• Biblography
• Index