Remembering Dalit Women
In the early 19th century, the East India Company established British rule in Maharashtra, ushering in the blurring and increasing fluidity of traditional caste boundaries. Imperial authority was imposed not only through physical conquest but through cultural assimilation, as colonial officials inoculated their subjects with Western liberalising concepts surrounding education and gender that challenged the segregation of different caste groups. The introduction of Christianity and the administration of census reports further desecrated Maharashtra’s sacred system, allowing individuals to either escape the religious hierarchy altogether or embellish their position within it.[1] Amidst this transitional site emerged widespread discourse spearheaded by local social movements; one in which anxious upper-caste male nationalists fought to stymie the expanding hegemony of British colonialism, while opportunistic upper-caste female feminists and Dalit male reformers exploited this emergent liminality to elevate their own social station. These dialogues ultimately yielded tangible returns, as India reclaimed their independence in 1947, outlawed caste discrimination in 1950,[2] and Maharashtra became the first Indian state to formulate a Women’s Policy within their government.[3] And yet, this wave of emancipation was not all-embracing.
Dalit women continue to be discriminated against on the basis of both their ancillary gender and “untouchable” caste, despite local feminist and reformist groups procuring separate benefits in a post-colonial world. Dalit women endure economic and cultural hardship, routinely appearing at the bottom of poverty indicators, denied basic rights to water and political engagement, and suffering violence at the hands of both their husbands and upper-caste individuals.[4]This differentiated “equality” between Dalit women and other social groups was addressed in 2015 by scholars Jayshree Mangubhai and Chiara Capraro, who compared the data on sexual assault compiled by the National Crimes Record Bureau and the prevalence of unreported cases. Staggeringly, while official statistics reveal that 5 Dalit women report incidences of rape every day, 67.1% of cases still remain unreported.[5] Facing intersecting inequalities, Dalit women remain spatially and culturally segregated, as public policies tackling caste or gender discrimination fail to accommodate for their dual struggles.
In order to ascertain and explain the position Dalit women face today, a retrospective lens must be adopted. As an unnamed Dalit woman beseeched to researcher Mangubhai and news outlets, “there is no one to help or speak for us”.[6]Perhaps equally troubling is that, even when Dalit women project their own voices into modern dialogues, their identity and name remain unacknowledged. This paper, in contrast, seeks to retrieve both their voices and those who spoke about Dalit women, returning to the transitional and transformational site of colonial Maharashtra, where dialogues first began shifting.
Behind the overlooked Dalit women sits the challenge of dissecting the intersectionality of caste and gender, an unanswered complication which lies at the crux of tackling their systemic oppression. Through this investigation, accountability begins to fall onto the individualistic or self-centred pursuits of social movements, where the empowerment of one group’s status was seen to come from the detriment of another. What followed colonialism was not widespread emancipation but a compartmentalised and graded understanding of equality, bound in ideas of caste, gender, and colonial morality. In an attempt to negotiate with their colonial rulers, either to take back power or carve new prerogatives, Marathi social movements began redefining their cultural identities. Consequently, through a construction of “self” came the demarcation of “others”, with Dalit women being relegated to the latter and displaced to the margins of both caste and gender. This subsequently withheld what historian Shailaja Paik called the “doubly oppressed” Dalit woman from sharing in the spoils attained by other social groups.[7]
Challenging the Imperialism-Nationalism Paradigm
Before delving into the investigation, the parameters and scholarly context of this paper must be addressed. Explorations of culture and their inward-looking dispositions are integral to academic understandings of colonial histories, due to the import placed onto the term by locals in defiance to their enforced and rigid subservience to outward-facing arenas like political governance and state affairs. In response to their present and physical loss of control to British colonists, Marathi’s sought to develop mastery over a domain their conquerors had not yet commanded—their private and intangible psyche. This traditional and domestic form of control was then translated as a means of superiority against their colonial masters, leading to nationalist movements which claimed a right to govern their own body due to their mastery over their mind and culture. Conceptions of cultural identities therefore prevailed as the multi-layered product of marriage between colonial sovereignty and local internality in the turbulent bed of nation-building.
However, this paper refrains from falling into the “Imperialism-Nationalism” paradigm which dominates the academic scene. Historian Padma Anagol critiqued this binary in 2008, claiming that this fixation on a rigid bilateral split between the masculine coloniser and colonised led to an academic mistreatment of women’s agency.[8] Building upon Anagol’s framework, rather than analysing nationalism as a monolithic expression of collective unity, this paper approaches the concept as a form of fragmented collaboration. While different social groups shared the same umbrella goal of Indian independence, their interpretations and methods for what independence meant varied between them. The strict Imperialism-Nationalism binary homogenizes these diverse local movements, thereby prohibiting a clear and comprehensive understanding of the personalised motivations and experiences of specific groups. For instance, feminist movements sought independence on both a political and gendered scale, while the latter goal was not reciprocated by other social groups like upper-caste male nationalists. It is only within these internal disputes that reasons for the continuous disenfranchisement of Dalit women can be unveiled.
In opposition to this Imperialism-Nationalism binary, Anagol proposed a chronological shift, focusing on a distinct time unit at the zenith of the colonial period to recover women’s agency. She bases this on the prevalence of flourishing texts and petitions published by women in this period.[9] However, in her methodology, it becomes clear her focus on gender omits a careful consideration for the intersectionality of caste. Most of her primary sources were drawn from upper-caste feminists, with a lack of representation for Dalit female activists. While concurring with Anagol’s critique of the Imperialism-Nationalism paradigm which perpetuates a bias towards male nationalist perspectives and disregards female agency, this paper contends that a simple alteration of the chronological focus is insufficient.
Instead, to uncover the memory of Dalit women—a female community overlooked by Anagol—the paradigm itself should be shifted. The model of duality remains a viable framework, but instead of the traditional Britain versus India binary, it transcends to external versus internal conflicts. This abstract denotation becomes polysemous, expressing the overarching struggle between public and private spheres. This External-Internal reframing allows for further differentiation between the primary battle involving political colonizers and local cultural forces, and the secondary scrimmage engaged on the cultural field between local groups themselves. This approach enables a more comprehensive reading of the broader colonial context and internal dynamics affecting the social status of the already marginalized Dalit woman. Adopting this new abstract paradigm, this paper seeks to investigate the effects of colonisation on the construction of Dalit women’s cultural identities crafted by four indigenous groups within Maharashtra: upper-caste male nationalists, upper-caste female feminists, Dalit male reformers, and Dalit female activists themselves.
Methodology and Historiography
This article further seeks to progress the historiography surrounding Dalit women’s representations, touching upon two areas that have been previously overlooked by scholars. Firstly, the construction of Dalit women’s cultural identities within the nationalist, feminist, and reformist dialogues has mostly been analysed outside the colonial framework: either through a post-colonial focus, as displayed by sociologist Sharmila Rege,[10] or through only a brief and passing mention of the colonial effect.[11] Through an understanding of Haitian historian Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s 4 stages of historical production, this academic neglect in the South Asian historical landscape can be seen as originating from the very first stage of fact creation.[12]
The construction of sources remains imbalanced due to the disparity between the lack of primary female Dalit perspectives during the colonial period compared to the large proliferation of Dalit women’s autobiographies following the 1980s. Thus, the ensuing stages of fact assembly, retrieval, and retrospective significance become flawed as historians are attracted to compiling archives and manufacturing narratives where there exists a large corpus of evidence. As a result, the silence of Dalit women in the colonial period crystallizes into sanctioned ignorance in historiography. Historian Paik’s “doubly oppressed” Dalit woman thereby takes on another dimension, where they were marginalized not only in caste and gender, but in lived reality and academic representation. This paper, therefore, will delimit its focus to the colonial era of Maharashtra (1818-1947), investigating the immediate and short-term effects of colonisation.
Secondly, in the absence of Dalit women’s voices, historians like Tarushikha Sarvesh, Rama Singh, and Tehzeeb Alam,[13] construe that nationalist, feminist, and reformist writings which were not composed by Dalit women fail to accurately represent the community as a whole. Seen to neglect either the caste or gender identity of Dalit women, these sources were rendered less valid in the historical archive. However, this paper seeks to subvert this critique by looking into the silence about Dalit women, allowing for a more comprehensible reading on Dalit women’s cultural identities and their subjectivity. While non-Dalit-female perspectives may not represent the whole truth of Dalit women, they still offer to a historian their truth, or the cultural identity non-Dalit-female communities ascribed to the Dalit woman in order to extrapolate superiority onto their own status.
These external perceptions should not be ignored simply because they could not co-exist in the physical realm but should be read side-by-side with other primary sources to understand the theoretical and perplexing identity of a certain group. How Dalit women existed in a community’s social construct is as important to historical reconstruction as how Dalit women existed in the empirical world. Within this political subjectivity, social systems of power and meaning interlace in an attempt to delineate processes of participation and exclusion. To understand an individual, historians should not only investigate how they saw themselves, but how others saw the individual as well. The judgement and perceptions of others grants insights into motivations and understandings of why a particular individual underwent specific experiences. Within this context of social constructionism, nationalism evolves from the notion of excluding other nations to a form of chauvinism which excludes certain marginalized groups within the nation itself. Thus, to truly remember Dalit women within colonial Maharashtra, an investigation into the self-centred pursuits of local social movements is paramount.
Lastly, the paper’s limited focus on Maharashtra must be acknowledged. Taking into consideration political scientist Gopal Guru’s warning about the heterogeneity of representation, this study aims to avoid generalising one group’s experiences as a representation for the entire South Asian Dalit women community.[14] The identities of Dalit women can deviate from one another due to lived experiences and socio-geographical contexts. As such, this paper limits the investigation to Maharashtra, offering an in-depth and nuanced examination into one group of Dalit women. Consequently, this article hopes to act as a springboard, introducing new methodologies to tackle scholarly understandings of subaltern cultural identities.
Upper-Caste Male Nationalists
With an understanding of the External-Internal paradigm and the methodology employed in this paper, the following sections will examine the impact of social movements on the cultural identities of Dalit women. Following colonial rule, upper-caste male nationalists, predominantly of the Brahmin caste, grew increasingly anxious over the loosening of caste boundaries. They became especially threatened when British officials began encroaching on their inner domain of culture after solidifying control in the public sphere. Resentful of their loss of political authority, upper-caste male nationalists vehemently refused to relinquish what remaining social and religious jurisdiction they derived from their high caste position. They regarded the liberalisation and expansion of education spread by Mountstuart Elphinstone (British Governor of Bombay from 1819 to 1927)[15] as a means of bypassing the strict class structure conditioned by birth, allowing those of untouchable families to invade and pollute areas restricted to upper-caste individuals. Education was seen as a birthright, one only a few privileged were born into. Western notions of “civilised sympathy” and Victorian morality bequeathed by the British were thereby perceived as disruptive; a transgression of traditional and divine laws which permitted the rigid stratification between castes to become permeable on the basis of an outsider’s emotions and culture.
With colonialism further eroding caste boundaries between upper-caste and lower-caste females by abolishing traditional practices which were symptomatic of an upper-caste female’s purity like sati, and by sanctioning inter-caste marriages which broke down endogamy,[16] this triggered an upper-caste nationalist movement which sought to challenge these obscurities and regain their authority through the continued debasement of Dalit women. Through historian Uma Chakravarti’s “Brahmanical Patriarchy”,[17] the purity and respectability of a woman—tied to their body through notions of chastity and honour—denoted the caste status of their accountable male counterparts. The less accessible and polluted a wife’s body was, the higher the husband’s caste. Thus, amidst the broader political struggle for independence, a secondary battle was unfolding, where upper-caste male nationalists sought to both maintain and regulate their cultural monopoly by marginalizing Dalit women. Only after consolidating their ancestral charge, could they effectively challenge the political dominance of their colonial rulers. Controlling the domestic was thereby seen as paramount to the construction of an independent nation.[18]
This reactive anxiety was articulated by Vishnushastri Chiplunkar (1850-1882), a Brahmin highly involved with the nationalist movement in the 1870s, whereby he equated the erosion of caste to the erosion of nationality.[19] This highlights the consternation among the upper-castes, which gave rise to a Brahmanical desire to return to the pre-colonial “Golden Ages”.[20] In doing so, upper-caste male nationalists began to reinforce the cultural identities of Dalit women ascribed in pre-colonial religious texts like the Manusmriti.[21] Thus, Dalit women and their bodies were cemented as ritually polluted while upper-caste women were restrained as pure, in order to justify the sacrosanctity of the faltering Brahmin dominance.
One such Brahmin nationalist, Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856-1920), founded the Mahratta newspaper in 1881, publishing didactics against the colonial curriculum and the expansion of women’s education.[22] Tilak confined women to the private sphere, attesting to the difference of gender roles.[23] He went on to argue that educating upper-caste women in English would corrupt “their precious traditional virtues” and “make them immoral”,[24] counselling that they should instead be taught domestic disciplines like needlework or religious instruction in “chaste, wifely conduct”.[25] In acknowledging Tilak’s silence about the education of lower-caste women, his articles can be read as a warning to upper-caste women of the dangers of losing their purity and caste privilege through the adoption of the English language, thereby rejecting colonial rule and solidifying a Dalit women’s cultural identity as something to shun and avoid. This is supplemented when Tilak writes that if schools were only attended by low-class or low-caste girls, “it cannot even be expected to maintain that high moral tone”,[26] further dividing Dalit and upper-caste women on the basis of purity and virtue residing in their bodies. Dalit women’s inability to learn decency or respectability was not construed as a choice on their own part, but an indelible corruption designated by their birth.
The conservative rhetoric of upper-caste nationalists thus reduced Dalit women to a simplistic and derogatory caricature, defined purely by their external and polluted bodies. Since their own bodies were politically controlled, upper-caste male nationalists endeavoured to control the bodies of private Dalit women. Held captive in this pre-circumscribed and immutable archetype, Dalit women were barred from any cultural identity tied to their sense of agency or internal mind, thereby stripping them of their ability to hold virtue in the first instance or develop morals in later stages. Both regressive and reactionary, upper-caste male nationalists strove to reinforce the pre-colonial cultural identity of Dalit women in both caste and gender as eternally polluted and ritually inferior, in an attempt to safeguard and regain their own authority from encroaching Western liberalising programmes.
While the existence of Brahmin reformers in Maharashtra who advocated for women’s education must be acknowledged, such as Mahadev Govind Ranade (1842-1901) and Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866-1915),[27] their construction of Dalit women’s cultural identity will not be addressed in this paper. This is not an indication of their marginal relevancy or significance, but rather a statement on the purpose of this paper. This article does not purport to be a report on all Marathi groups’ construction of Dalit women, but instead a honed examination into four specific social groups.
Upper-Caste Female Feminists
Nevertheless, the construction of Dalit women’s cultural identities varies across distinct social groups as a result of their diverging pursuits. While upper-caste male nationalists reified the subordinate nature of Dalit women’s caste and gender to enforce their own traditional authority, an investigation into upper-caste female feminists reveals a conflicting conception. Incited by colonialism and the introduction of missionary schools for girls—which nurtured Victorian morals and bourgeois “civilising” concepts—upper-caste female feminists claimed to advocate for the educational and social inclusion of all women. However, as scholars Guru and Rege have observed, upper-caste female feminists neglected caste distinctions in their advocacy, subsequently failing to integrate Dalit women into their liberalising programme.[28] This paper seeks to build upon Guru and Rege’s framework, advancing that this neglect was both intentional and systematic, enabling upper-caste female feminists to achieve their own social promotion.
Situated within a highly androcentric and traditionally masculine socio-political order, upper-caste female feminists were acutely aware of the precarious and volatile route they were approaching through their advocacy for gender equality. For that reason, they strategically mapped out their designs for liberation within the confines of the existing caste system, choosing to challenge one orthodox hierarchy through the support of the other. This led to a paradoxical reconstruction of Dalit women’s cultural identity, where they were at once subordinated through a reinforcement of their pre-colonial caste position and yet simultaneously elevated through a promotion of their gender status.
This complex dynamic was distinctly demonstrated by Pandita Ramabai (1858-1922), a female social reformer from a Brahmin family. In 2022, Historian Renu Pandey investigated Ramabai alongside Savitribai Phule (1831-1897), a lower-caste Marathi feminist. However, Pandey’s methodological desire to draw comparisons between the two figures from distinctly polar caste positions, led to the formation of broad and leaping generalisations. Pandey posits that Ramabai championed the rights for women of all castes, citing Ramabai’s marriage to a Dalit man as evidence for her concern for both gender and caste inclusion.[29] However, this view is quickly dismantled through a survey of Ramabai’s actions, where she: published a protreptic book in 1887 titled the High-Caste Hindu Woman;[30] opened Sarada Sadan, a school for high-caste child widows; and founded the Arya Mahila Samaj, a society for high-caste Hindu women.[31]
Ramabai’s initiatives predominantly uplifted the social position of upper-caste women while largely ignoring her Dalit sisters. She championed the rights of upper-caste women to enter the public domain and pursue careers as teachers, governmental employees, and even doctors—a profession she held.[32] However, these rights were not without charge. Ramabai stipulated that women could claim this right through education, advocating that female teachers should be proficient in both their native language and English, once again attesting to the influence of colonialism. And most notably, she also regulated the distribution of rights to women who were “correct in their conduct and morals” and were “of respectable families”.[33] Thus, by excluding Dalit women in her reforms, Ramabai perpetuated the stigma of Dalit women as unrespectable and unteachable in internal morals, confining them to their caste and polluted bodies by birth. Despite disagreeing with the upper-caste male nationalists’ warning against the English language and colonial influence, upper-caste female feminists still mirrored the ideologies of Tilak in reinforcing caste hierarchies. As such, upper-caste female feminists constructed the cultural identity of Dalit women as one in which their gender identity was equal to men and not restricted to domestic roles, but their caste identity remained inferior, which thereby excluded them from the same rights afforded to upper-caste women. Once again, Dalit women were condensed into a physical and reductive caricature that discounted their spiritual autonomy.
This caste prejudice was not limited to Ramabai. In 1928, Marathi Dalit women spoke out about their treatment during the All India Women’s Conference, where they were met with a “distant, cold, mean, and of lowly attitude” by their “Savarna sisters”.[34] Despite the conference’s professed goal of promoting education and social welfare for all women, lower-caste women were still discriminated against and asked to “sit aside” during lunch.[35] These altercations highlight the persistent stigmatization of Dalit women’s polluted bodies, as upper-caste female feminists continued to avoid damaging their purity through proximity.
In the process of promoting their own cultural identity, upper-caste female feminists strategically complied with certain notions of either Brahmanical caste hierarchies or colonial “civilising” conceptions of Victorian purity, positioning themselves as holders of these traits through a contrast with the “other” Dalit woman. It is important to note that Victorian morality and “Brahmanical Patriarchy” shared a common dichotomy of sexuality and hierarchy, as exemplified by the 1890s Anti-Nautch Campaigns incited by the British in South India. Both the traditional and colonial authorities emphasized the importance of bodily purity for women. Thus, upper-caste female feminists exploited this purity to justify their physical incursion into the public sphere, gaining credibility from the liberal nature of the West while still working within the established traditional sphere. In demonstrating their virtue, the Dalit woman became their scapegoat, employed as an injurious benchmark against which upper-caste female feminists could measure and demonstrate their own elevated status. As a result, upper-caste female feminists elevated the gender sphere of Dalit women’s cultural identity but reinforced their inferior caste through their systematic silence.
Dalit Male Reformers
Presenting an inverse reflection to upper-caste female feminists, Dalit male reformers elevated the caste status of Dalit women but reinforced their inferior gender identity. Spurred on by Mountstuart Elphinstone’s liberal education policy and the increasing flexibility of caste distinctions, Dalit male reformers sought to advance the standings of the Dalit community. However, their stance on the women within their community was more convoluted.
Historian Paik contends that Dalit male reformers both emancipated and disenfranchised Dalit women at the same time.[36] To bring his point to bear, Paik presented two leading lower-caste male reformers: Jyotirao Phule (1827-1890) and Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891-1956). While Phule was not Dalit, his station within the lower-caste Shudra family and his coining of the epithet “Dalit” in the late 1880s prove him indispensable to this investigation.[37] In his pursuit to abolish the caste system, Phule founded the Satyashodhak Samaj (Society of Truth Seekers), rejected the process of Sanskritization, and demanded for equality rather than faux-imitation for the lower-castes.[38] Paik elaborates further, citing Phule’s writings which stressed men and women as equal and “capable of enjoying all human rights”.[39] After collapsing an anti-caste ethos into an expression of universalism, Paik revealed the paradox between Phule’s professed ideals and his empirical observation, where Dalit male reformers continued to subscribe to certain gendered duties of the household.
This was displayed through Ambedkar, a prominent Dalit reformer and founder of the Independent Labour Party in 1936, who wrote: “you gave birth to us [men] and we are treated worse than animals”.[40] Masked in themes of universal suffrage and women’s welfare, this accusatory tone persists as a recurring motif. During the Mahad women’s meeting in 1927, Ambedkar once again placed the onus on Dalit women, claiming that “the task of removing untouchability belongs not to men, but to you women”.[41] While painting them as equal sufferers of caste discrimination, Dalit male reformers had also shifted the responsibility to Dalit women, rousing them to fix the problem that they had caused. It was imposed that a woman’s duty was to cleanse the pollution from their bodies and educate themselves, enabling them to properly rear their children and usher the Dalit community into a new civilized era. However, Paik reiterates that this responsibility and domestic role was burdened upon women as it enabled Dalit radicals to pull women into the political public sphere and look upon them as “equal partners” in their fight for civil rights.[42]
At first glance, Paik convincingly navigates this paradox, contending that Dalit male reformers emancipated Dalit women by dismantling the caste system and imbuing them with masculine traits like autonomy and dhamak (willpower and daring), while still maintaining a strict hierarchy that separated women as ancillary to “a man’s primary political task”.[43] The division between man and woman was narrowed, but not abolished. However, this paper seeks to disprove Paik’s conception of a “Masculine Dalit Womanhood”. Dalit male reformers may have uplifted the caste status of their women, but they had no intention of liberating their gender. Instead of challenging the traditional patriarchal family structure, as Paik contests, Dalit male reformers capitalized on the gendered roles of women in the formulation of “Brahmanical Patriarchy”. In 2021, historian Rohini Dahiya shed light on the function and significance of women in the preservation of the caste system. Caste was separated and bound by hierarchies of purity, with women serving as markers of morality and social stratification for their families, due to their associations with marriage and childbirth.[44]
With this understanding, it becomes apparent that Dalit male reformers were not seeking to abolish the caste system, but rather to exploit it. Although Phule claimed to reject the process of Sanskritization and challenge the cultural modus operandi of Brahmanism, this was not mirrored in the actions of the Dalit male reformers. If they truly endeavoured to eliminate caste, they would have dissolved their own ideas of pollution, instead of attempting to make their women “purer” and work within a system they claimed to hate. Ambedkar displays this compliance by proclaiming, “realize that you possess much virtue, character, and purity like that of a Brahman woman”.[45] Despite rejecting caste as a system, they didn’t reject the role of female bodies in constructing their social position. Instead, Dalit male reformers negotiated with Victorian morals and Brahmanical constructions of the binary of wife and mother by asserting that to be civilised was to be pure. The adherence to this rhetoric was of intentional design, as Ambedkar had previously demonstrated his understanding of the importance of sexuality and the regulation of women’s bodily autonomy in constructing caste. He even asserted that women were the “gateways to the caste system” and proposed inter-marriages as the only true solvent to breaking caste.[46] Like Brahmins and upper-caste female feminists, a superior cultural identity was tied to conception of sexual purity and morality, which Dalit women were seen to lack. However, Dalit male reformers diverged by claiming that Dalit women could shed their external polluted bodies and gain these values through education and the cultivation of their internal mind, which in part would enhance the cultural status of Dalit men.
Thus, historian Paik is erroneous. Through a more extensive analysis, the paradox collapses into hypocrisy, and the motivations of Dalit male reformers are made clear. Although Dalit male reformers espoused grand ideologies for an egalitarian society grounded in gendered political consciousness, their actions instead demonstrated an equality driven by personal and sectarian interests. They had no intention of imparting masculine traits onto their women, when subscribing to the gendered notions of “Brahmanical Patriarchy” remained an easier path to upward mobility. Control over Dalit women’s sexuality and bodies remained prevalent among Dalit male reformers. Ambedkar’s call to action to pull women into the public sphere should not be approached as an attempt to develop their dignity and individual conscience, but as another mechanism to regulate and control them. Echoing upper-caste nationalists and feminists, Dalit male reformers continued to condense Dalit women into a corporeal and reductive caricature. Choosing instead to amend the nature of the archetype, Dalit male reformers replaced the stagnantly libidinous and primitive categorization with a superficially positive definition of progress, purity and self-sacrifice. Both groups continued to dictate Dalit womanhood through the regulation of her body, imposing arbitrary standards that diminished her spiritual agency. While the governance of her identity transitioned from an authoritarian to paternalistic moderator, her autonomy and self-determination was still ignored.
This is exemplified within the micropolitics of the household. Chandrika Ramteke, a Dalit woman, describes in her interview about her treatment when attempting to engage with Ambedkar’s Dalit movement in the 1930s. She recounts how her Dalit husband would physically abuse her, police her in her duties in the movement, and criticise that she was going out “to make many husbands”.[47] This was one of many similar testimonies,[48] highlighting how Dalit male reformers continued to profit from entrenched gender hierarchies. Thus, Dalit male reformers elevated the caste status of Dalit women (and themselves) by continuing to reinforce their women’s inferior gender and regulate their bodies as markers of social elevation. Like the upper-caste female feminists, in an attempt to achieve liberation, they chose to challenge one orthodox hierarchy through the support of the other. While upper-caste female feminists challenged misogyny through the maintenance of Brahmanism, Dalit male reformers confronted caste through the preservation of traditional gender roles. Both sides exploited the interconnected nature of caste and gender, while largely ignoring the marginalized group that lived in the interstices of both realms.
Dalit Female Activists
As the nationalist, feminist, and reformist discourses proliferated throughout the colonial era, numerous constructions of Dalit women’s cultural identities were being reified and reformulated. With regards to the new abstract Internal-External paradigm, the primary battle between colonised and coloniser has been expressed above: where upper-caste male nationalists sought to control women, in order to control caste, and therefore project superiority in the internal domain of culture over the external political arena dominated by the British. However, this new paradigm also offers a layered approach to tackling the agency of a heterogenous group of locals, revealing a secondary conflict ensuing within the native cultural field. The Marathi’s were not a united front, and Dalit female activists sought to elevate their own status within this selfish dialogue which continued to strip them of equality. This compelled them to assert control over their inner domain of self after losing control of their external body to social movements. However, the degree of agency Dalit women held within this dialogue remains a subject of scholarly debate.
Historians Nibedita Priyadarsini and Satya Panda argue that Dalit women merely followed the positive path laid out by male reformers like Jyotirao Phule and Dr. Ambedkar. They base this interpretation on the autobiography of Babytai Kamble (1929-2012), a Dalit female activist who cites Ambedkar as her source of inspiration.[49] However, Priyadarsini and Panda’s analysis presupposes that Dalit male reformers were primarily motivated to improve everyone’s rights, irrespective of gender or caste. As shown above, this was not the case. Instead, the influence of Ambedkar becomes romanticised and exaggerated, as Kamble was undoubtedly inspired by Ambedkar’s advice to start a business and engage in politics, but she also wrote about her disdain towards the expectation of being a pure and civilised wife alongside running her business. [50] Kamble did not blindly follow the ideologies of Dalit male reformers, instead selectively appropriating concepts which benefited her status. She embraced positive interpretations of her ability to intrude into public roles, but refused to define her inner self through metrics of purity imposed on her body.
Meanwhile, historian Paik concedes a degree of agency to Dalit women, recognizing that there were some women who “chose instead to critically engage and contribute to the movement”.[51] Nonetheless, Paik frequently prefaces this argument with qualifiers like “however limited” and “not entirely”,[52] undercutting the impact of Dalit women’s contributions. Thus, Paik paints these women as predominantly characters without agency, mindlessly mirroring and following Ambedkar’s ideologies as well.
This paper seeks to dispute these two existing historiographical strands, advancing instead that Dalit female activists utilized the ideologies of Dalit male reformers as a launchpad, elevating their own position beyond the confines of gender to state that their cultural identity was indispensable to the reformation of society. As shown by Babytai Kamble, Dalit women began to question their roles as mothers and wives. Instead of placing the blame upon themselves and their bodies, they began to represent themselves as part of the true liberators. This can be seen with Kumari Anusuya Shivtarkar, a Dalit female activist writing in 1934. Although she writes that “we should work under the leadership of Ambedkar”, she also emphasizes that “Our future’s in our hands”.[53] By employing the Marathi collective “aaplya” (“our”), Dalit female activists visualised a collective Dalit political consciousness unburdened by gender distinctions or duties. Thus, Dalit female activists worked under Ambedkar not as a result of his gender but due to his authority, and they amended the Dalit male reformer ideology of responsibility and liability to grant themselves shared equity and social precedence. Instead of focusing on the gender roles of women, they appropriated certain feminist undertones from upper-caste women and stressed their cultural identity as equal to men and deserving of knowledge.
Furthermore, most Dalit female activists refused to be defined by their bodies, and their writings steered clear from discourses of sexuality and chastity. This can be seen with Mukta Salve, a Dalit female writer educated at Phule’s school. In 1855, she wrote About the Grief of Mahar and Mangs, which although references how through the “medicine of knowledge” Dalits could “become righteous and moral”, she abstained from Brahmanical Patriarchal constructions of the pure woman.[54] Morality and respectability in this sense were not concerning their body, but in relation to their svaabhimaan, or “self-respect”. In 1920, Anusuya Kamble, another Dalit female activist, wrote an article in the Mooknayak, highlighting how education would “light the wick of self-respect”.[55] Thus, Dalit women’s respectability was constructed through their inner humanitarian values and not through their external bodies. Babytai Kamble’s autobiography underscores this perspective, where she delineated the external process of social transformation as originating from internal and personal change.[56]
As such, Dalit female activists constructed their own cultural identity by addressing both caste and gender inequalities. They contested their stigmatization through a refusal to be defined by their bodies. They adopted Western notions of morality and respectability, but amended it to forms of self-respect, attained through education. The importance of colonialism in this endeavour is stressed by Mukta Salve who praises the “benevolent” and “merciful” British government who supported schools for lower-caste girls.[57] Thus, in this liminal battlefield, Dalit female activists sought to elevate their position in both gender and caste by breaking out of the entrenched and traditional systems. In a similar manner to upper-caste male nationalists, they fought back against their external “masters” by fortifying and redefining their internal domains. However, their outcome was not met with the same success.
Conclusion
The continued discrimination of Dalit women can be traced back to the divergent pursuits of social movements. With the advent of colonialism arose a shared desire for liberation. However, the definition of emancipation and equality was ambiguous and varied. Whether it was taken as an expression of Indian Independence, women’s suffrage, or caste reform, the rights of Dalit women were not wholly embraced as a constituent. Suffering from dual forms of oppression, Dalit women were left behind as social movements only targeted the singular nature of inequalities. In their pursuit of individualistic empowerment, social movements reinforced or complied with other traditional hierarchies, which benefited their upward mobility. Upper-caste male nationalists strove for Indian independence through a regression to pre-colonial caste and gender hierarchies which subordinated Dalit women; upper-caste female feminists complied with caste discrimination in order to legitimize their entry into the public sphere; and Dalit male reformers co-opted the traditional gender framework to uplift their social standing. As a result, Dalit women were continuously constructed as the “other” figure, a reductive caricature confined to bodily metrics of purity, and weaponized as benchmarks of elevation.
The Internal-External paradigm introduced in this article visualises the multi-layered struggle within Maharashtra: where just as the upper-caste male nationalists sought to promote their superiority through their control of self and culture, thereby controlling women, after losing authority over their body and political governance to the British; Dalit female activists sought to promote their equality through their control of self, after losing authority over their body to the social movements. Dalit female activists, pulled into the dialogues, used this to transform blame into shared prerogative, refusing to define their identity through their body and elevating their dual identity of caste and gender by contesting both traditional systems through claims of “self-respect”.
While there were people speaking for and about Dalit women, they were often too preoccupied with their own pursuits to address the complexities that arose from Dalit women’s intersectionality. Dalit women, therefore, sought to help themselves and speak up, exploiting and negotiating with the shifting dialogues, but this was futile in the face of numerous oppositions. In the end, India won the primary battle against their colonisers, thereby demonstrating their mastery over the cultural sphere. But as a result, Dalit women lost their secondary battle against the social movements. Dalit women may have been freed from foreign conquerors, but their subjugation at the hands of locals is far from over.
Chantel Thora Chesney is currently in the 2nd year of a BA in Ancient, Medieval and Modern History at Durham University (Josephine Butler College).
Notes:
[1] Charu Gupta, The Gender of Caste: Representing Dalits in Print, (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016), pp. 109-110, 52-85, 166-207; Parimala Rao, “Educating Women and Non-Brahmins as ‘Loss of Nationality’: Bal Gangadhar Tilak and the Nationalist Agenda in Maharashtra”, Centre for Women’s Development Studies (2008), p. 3; Uma Chakravarti, Gendering Caste: Through a Feminist Lens, (India, SAGE Publications, 2018), pp. 110-113.
[2] Sarah Taylor, “The struggle to challenge India’s caste system remains real, still”, ABC India Now, June 27, 2022, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-28/struggle-to-challenge-indias-caste-system/101185772 (last accessed 7th September 2024).
[3] Government of Maharashtra, Women’s Policy (Women & Child Development Department, 2001), p. 1.
[4] Jayshree P. Mangubhai and Chiara Capraro, “‘Leave no one behind’ and the challenge of intersectionality: Christian Aid’s experience of working with single and Dalit women in India”, Gender and Development 23, no. 2 (2015), p. 264.
[5] Mangubhai and Capraro, “Leave no one behind”, pp. 264-265.
[6] Soutik Biswas, “Hathras case: Dalit women are among the most oppressed in the world”, BBC news October 6, 2020, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-54418513 (last accessed 7th September 2024).
[7] Shailaja Paik, “Forging a New Dalit Womanhood in Colonial Western India”, Journal of Women’s History 28, no. 4 (2016), p. 28.
[8] Padma Anagol, “Agency, Periodisation and Change in the Gender and Women’s History of Colonial India”, Gender & History 20, no. 8 (2008), pp. 603-604.
[9] Anagol, “Agency, Periodisation and Change in the Gender and Women’s History of Colonial India”, pp. 611-614.
[10] Sharmila Rege, “Dalit Women Talk Differently: A Critique of ‘Difference’ and Towards a Dalit Feminist Standpoint Position”, Economic and Political Weekly 33, no. 44 (1998), pp. 39-46.
[11] Rao, “Educating Women and Non-Brahmins”, p. 3.
[12] Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, (Beacon Press, 1995), p. 26.
[13] Tarushikha Sarvesh, Rama Singh, and Tehzeeb Alam, “Dalit Women in History: Struggles, Voices, and Counterpublics,” Journal of International Women’s Studies 22, no. 10 (2021), pp. 91-102.
[14] Gopal Guru, “Dalit Women Talk Differently”, Economic and Political Weekly 30, no. 41/42 (1995), pp. 2548-2550.
[15] Lynn Zastoupil, “Mountstuart Elphinstone and Indian Education,” in Shah Mahmoud Hanifi and William Dalrymple (eds.), Mountstuart Elphinstone in South Asia: Pioneer of British Colonial Rule (Oxford Academic, 2019), pp. 167-182.
[16] Chakravarti, Gendering Caste, pp. 110-113.
[17] Ibid., pp. 36-61.
[18] Partha Chatterjee, Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and PostColonial Histories, (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 73.
[19] Rao, “Educating Women and Non-Brahmins”, p. 3.
[20] Ibid., pp. 5-6.
[21] Rohini Dahiya, “Torture on Dalit Women in India: Case of ‘Double Jeopardy’”, in Melbourne Law School Online Conference (ed.), Combating Torture in Asia: Law and Practice (India: Social Science Publishing House, 2021), p. 7.
[22] Sukeshi Karma, Oxford Bibliographies, s.v. “Bal Gangadhar Tilak”, https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780195399318/obo-9780195399318-0214.xml (last accessed 7th September 2024).
[23] Parimala Rao, “Women’s Education and the Nationalist Response in Western India: Part II--Higher Education”, Indian Journal of Gender Studies 15 (2008), pp. 141-148.
[24] Bal Gangadhar Tilak, “Higher Female Education”, Mahratta (7 September 1884).
[25] Bal Gangadhar Tilak, “Curriculum of the Female High School”, Mahratta (18 September 1887).
[26] Bal Gangadhar Tilak, “Female Education”, Mahratta (13 November 1887).
[27] Parimala Rao, “Women’s Education and the Nationalist Response in Western India: Part I--Basic Education”, Indian Journal of Gender Studies 14, no. 2 (2007), p. 308.
[28] Guru, “Dalit Women Talk Differently”, pp. 2548-2550; Rege, “Dalit Women Talk Differently”, pp. 39-46.
[29] Renu Pandey, “Two Distant Feminist Standpoints in Nineteenth-Century India: Case Studies of Savitribai Phule and Pandita Ramabai”,Indian Historical Review 49 (2022), pp. 96-119.
[30] Pandita Ramabai, The High-Caste Hindu Women, (Philadelphia: Jas. B. Rodgers Printing Co., 1887).
[31] Pandey, “Two Distant Feminist Standpoints in Nineteenth-Century India”, p. 101.
[32] Ibid., 107.
[33] Ramabai, The High Caste Hindu Woman, p. xiii.
[34] Sharmila Rege, Writing Caste/Writing Gender: Reading Dalit Women’s Testimonios, (New Delhi: Zubaan, 2006), p. 55.
[35] Ibid., p. 55.
[36] Shailaja Paik, “Forging a New Dalit Womanhood in Colonial Western India”, p. 14.
[37] Rowena Robinson, Christians of India, (New Delphi: SAGE Publications, 2003), pp. 193-196.
[38] Chakravarti, Gendering Caste, p. 114.
[39] Jyotirao Phule, “Sarvajanik Satya dharma”, in Y. D. Phadke (ed.), Samagra Vangmay [Collected works of Mahatma Phule] (Mumbai, 1991), pp. 149-153, 449-451.
[40] Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, “Women’s Responsibility in the Uplift of Untouchables”, Bahishkrut Bharat (3 February 1928), pp. 11, 14-15.
[41] Ibid., pp. 11, 14-15.
[42] Paik, “Forging a New Dalit Womanhood in Colonial Western India”, p. 26.
[43] Ibid., pp. 26-7.
[44] Dahiya, “Torture on Dalit Women in India: Case of ‘Double Jeopardy’”, pp. 54-75.
[45] Ambedkar, “Women’s Responsibility in the Uplift of Untouchables”, pp. 11, 14-15.
[46] Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis, and Development (Bombay: Education Department, Government of Maharashtra, 1969), pp. 1-22; Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, “Annihilation of Caste,” in Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and Valerian Rodrigues (eds.), The Essential Writings of B. R. Ambedkar (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 263-305.
[47] Paik, “Forging a New Dalit Womanhood in Colonial Western India”, p. 32.
[48] Urmila Pawar and Meenakshi Moon, We Also Made History: Women in the Ambedkarite Movement (New Delhi: Zubaan, 2008).
[49] Nibedita Priyadarsini and Satya Swaroop Panda, “Caste Patriarchy and the Dehumanization of Dalit Women in Indian Society: Phoole-Ambedkarite Perspective”, Contemporary Voice of Dalit 15 (2021), pp. 61-74.
[50] Babytai Kamble, The Prisons We Broke, translated by Maya Pandit (Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 2008).
[51] Paik, “Forging a New Dalit Womanhood in Colonial Western India”, p. 33.
[52] Ibid., p. 33.
[53] Kumari Anusuya Shivtarkar, “What Should Woman Class Do?” Janata (14 April 1934), p. 3.
[54] Mukta Salve, About the Grief of Mahar and Mangs, translated by Pamela Sardar and Braj Ranjan Mani (India: Mountain Peak, 2008).
[55] Anusuya Kamble, Mooknayak (11 September 1920), p. 4.
[56] Kamble, The Prisons We Broke.
[57] Salve, About the Grief of Mahar and Mangs.
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