Avva: A slab at the doorway

- Jupaka Subhadra

Original: maa avva dukkalni dunniposukunna tokkudubanda

From the Telugu Dalit Writing blog – A Shared Mirror blog featuring a selection of Telugu Dalit Writing in Translation

Avva, my mother

she is not a wick-lamp, that’s protected

she is the sun that went astray in sky’s rug

she is the famine in the stretched out sari-end^*

of the mother earth

Avva

she is a timeless full moon,

the embodiment of struggle sans dawn.

Her head placed in the mortar,

she is an empty grain bounced against the pestle.

The sun that rises at the cockcrow warms itself in her eyes

She sweeps the stars at the dawn,

smears dung-water on the front yard

wakes us, feeds us, and leaves for work.

Neither the cow in the forest

nor the calf at home would long for each other.

Avva

she is a slave unrecognized.

Quite often she falls in the furnace of ayya, father’s anger

because of over or under cooked rice

because of a sand grain or hair in the rice

or to grab her wages for drinking.

Avva

she is like served platters for us all.

A seed in the furrow,

she sprouts into green crops

planting and weeding in the knee-deep mud fields

even after the dusk,

that’s my avva!

It’s my avva

who blows the song into the village holding a spade.

Carves tunes shaping ridges in paddy fields.

When avva is at work,

her sweat turns into fountain in a desert-sink.

She becomes un-extinguishable fire in the mud stove.

I had no memories of clinging to the waist of my avva

I never heard lullabies or tales while being fed baby-food

with her soot-formed,  hardened hands.

I had no occasions of sleeping in her lap, yawning.

The memories of my screech for food

holding a dented bowl are not yet put out.

My avva

she is a drumbeat on the broken drum

she is a tune denied of crop.

Having taught the earth to bloom and to give fruit,

having become leather for the sandals,

hers is the agony of the top

to escape from the string in the hands of the landlords.

Though she fed the mother-earth by her breast,

they kept her at a distance from the plough.

My avva,

she is a slab at the doorway that gathered sorrow.

As an unfastened bundle of history,

having tightened the sari-end around her waist,

my avva is a question with a flaunting sickle in her hand.

The wretched alphabet!

It never accessed even the peripheries

where my avva had walked.

* * * * *

^*Dalit and sudra women stretch out their sari-ends forming like a bowl when offered grains, food etc

Translated by K. Purushotham

Read the poem on the Telugu Dalit Writing blog here

Krishnaveni’s story

The post that follows first appeared on the Prajnya blog and forms part of the series on panchayat presidents.

Observations and notes from a visit to Nellai and Madurai districts in Tamil Nadu by a team – Ravichandran, Randeep Singh, Roshan Sharma and Malarvizhi Jayanth – in the second week of July 2011 with the purpose of making a documentary on the attack on panchayat president Krishnaveni, and the continued attacks on dalit panchayat presidents in Tamil Nadu.

This is the story of Krishnaveni – an Dalit woman of the Arunthathiyar caste who did not finish school, mother of two, who became Panchayat President. She decided to contest the elections as an independent in Thalaiyuthu Panchayat, Nellai district, when it was declared reserved for dalit woman candidates. She won by a margin of 700 votes. Some people did not like this. They thought it demeaning that they had to take orders from a dalit woman.

In five years, many people in her village warmed to her. They talk, with admiration and respect in their voices, about how she laid roads, built a library, created infrastructure with amazing speed, how she did not take bribes, how her honesty and straightforwardness kept getting her into trouble. She filed more than 15 complaints against people including the vice-president and ward members of the Panchayat. They were obstructing her work because she did not allow them to skim public money. They did not like the fact that a dalit woman was standing up to them. The district administration and the police did not care.

A few young men came to her house many times that day, June 13, 2011. They asked her children, ‘Where is your mother? Where is your father?’ She had worked a long day at the panchayat office. She took an auto home around 9 p.m. On the street next to her house, at the turning past Karuppansamy temple, they attacked her. Opposite the library she had built, upon the road she had laid, they stopped the auto. The auto driver leapt out and fled. They clamped her mouth and eyes shut. They had already broken the streetlight on the road to ensure perfect darkness. They pulled her head back by her braid. They cut off the braid. They cut off a ear. They hacked at her, all over her body.

In photographs, she stands bold, straight and beautiful, radiating confidence and strength. She receives awards for good governance, for excellence, for merit. A minister leans in to listen to a point she makes. MLAs, collectors, policemen, all the people she had petitioned for protection, all the people who did not come through for her, infest her albums. In every picture, she stands straight, shoulders square, her courage writ large upon her posture.

In hospital, she lies on a stretcher, both her arms and legs, her body covered in bandages. Her head shaved, the scar of the lost ear turning a sickly yellow, a blood stain on the bandage on the left hand, her sister holding up the bandaged right hand because it hurts too much to put it down. ‘I am afraid now‘ she says. Krishnaveni, the brave. Krishnaveni, the strong. Panchayat president Krishnaveni, the woman who was given the title of Veera Penmani (Heroic Woman) by the women of her village. Panchayat president Krishnaveni, first woman panchayat president in the state to be attacked with such cold-blooded brutality.

Her husband refuses to talk to the camera. ‘They transferred me, they accused me of corruption so that they could get back at her. I told her to never back down. We did what we had to, no regrets or fear,’ he says, later. The dean at the hospital refuses to allow filming. Filming the outcome of injustice could cause a law and order problem apparently.

The streetlight is back on that street corner. That dark corner, place of bloodshed, is now paved with golden light on a windy evening. The people are hesitant to speak. In front of Jaggamman temple, an old woman, eye-patch flapping in the wind, mouth rimmed with blood-red betelnut, eyes rimmed with rage, is willing to speak. ‘They want us to keep cleaning toilets,’ she says. ‘That’s why they hacked my daughter-in-law mercilessly. Jaggamma will exact our revenge..she will..she will,’ she flings a curse at the skies. The men around her are afraid to talk to the camera. The women, too. ‘We were not afraid earlier. We would walk around our village at any time. Now we are scared.’

‘We don’t have toilets. The women can go behind the bushes, very early in the morning or late in the evening. Some men won’t let us do that even in peace. They will shine torches into the bushes when we are squatting there. They would call out vulgar things,’ they said. She tried petitioning the government for funds to build a toilet. There was no response. She went around the village, asking for money to build a toilet, she raised Rs. 1 lakh from the people who elected her. She asked for their opinions on where a toilet could be built. They chose a spot together. It was on poromboke land. A man from the dominant caste had encroached upon the land near the chosen spot. He didn’t want a toilet in that location. Most people are sure that he is responsible for the attack, that he is in cahoots with the vice-president.

If the president is dalit and the vice-president is not, it is obvious that there will be problems, say activists. Both of them have to sign cheques together. Witholding a signature will mean that panchayat workers won’t get paid, development projects will be stalled.

‘We can’t listen to just one person,’ says a bureaucrat with an oily manner. He received Krishnaveni’s petition for protection. He did nothing about it. As she lies in hospital, he says, ‘This was a clash between individuals. Caste? Caste is a set of imaginary lines we are imposing on the situation. Caste does not exist.’ Outside a friend from the Aathi Thamilar Peravai – which seeks to politically mobilize the Arunthathiyar – says, ‘Oh that man is dalit. That lady, his deputy seated next to him, is Thevar. He won’t take a stand on a caste issue in front of her.’

Many of the village’s non-dalit residents acknowledge that Krishnaveni worked without fear or favour, that she implemented schemes benefiting several communities, that she laid roads where none existed. The magnitude of her achievement shines in comparison with other villages where panchayat presidents had learnt to ‘adjust’ and ‘compromise’. Some of the other panchayat presidents have learnt the ‘ways of the world.’ They have learnt to skim funds top and bottom, keep the vice president and ward members happy, buy themselves a Sumo. ‘That is the mark of the corrupt president,’ the people say. ‘The ones that start driving around in Sumos months after getting their post. Did Krishnaveni drive around in a Sumo?’ they ask indignantly, ‘What crime did she do to deserve this?’

Some panchayat presidents are hapless rubber stamps. They told Thangavelu that his mother was ill, brought him back to his native village when it was declared reserved for dalit candidates. He left behind his daily wage labour in Mumbai and came. They made him stand for elections and made sure he won. They made him pay a bribe to his own vice-president to get his own government allotted house. His wife is not at home, when the team visits. She has gone to get her wages under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. He is at home. The president is not required to disburse funds, only his laboriously printed signature is needed. ‘They don’t tell me about anything,’ he says, ‘They only ask for my signature.’

Other ‘smart’ dalit panchayat presidents in the district have learnt to keep the dominant castes happy with judicious helpings of public funds. Caste draws lines across everything. How smart you can be. How much money you can spend on your village. How much courage you are allowed, how much pride, and how much dignity. The ‘smart’ ones say that she was too ‘stubborn’, that she didn’t know how to ‘compromise’, didn’t know how to ‘adjust’. Given her location on the hierarchy – the unsaid words imply – she should have compromised and adjusted much, much more.

Inside Thalaiyuthu, ‘We need to lose this generation for our people to find freedom,’ said a young woman. ‘We have been brought up to be slaves,’ says another young man. ‘We need to lose this generation. Death can come only once,’ said a young man, ‘What is the point of living like this? We need to arm ourselves,’ said another.

The stories about her courage are legion. The best is of the minister who walked into her office and tried to order her around to do a favour for members of the dominant castes. The minister then tried to sit in her chair. ‘Madam, this is my office,’ she told the minister. ‘This is my chair. Please don’t order me around.’ The minister backed down after that. In a world where Panchayat Presidents are not even allowed to sit in their chairs (because the dominant castes believe that dalits should not aspire to such things), such stories are nectar to the ears.

125 panchayats in Nellai are reserved. Forty dalit panchayat presidents have received threats to their lives. Nellai is proud runner-up in the game of ‘Which district has committed most atrocities against dalits?’ The collector received a petition signed by 40 dalit panchayat presidents saying their life is in danger. He saw Krishnaveni when these Panchayat Presidents came to submit this petition. He didn’t care.

Panchayat president Servaaran had come to see Krishnaveni. He had told her, ‘You are doing many brave things, I am afraid for my life.’ They killed him the next day. They killed him for the crime of being a dalit panchayat president.

They killed panchayat president Jaggaiyan on a main road at dawn, beating him with the head of an earth-breaking spade. Lives were broken, democracy was murdered, caste was kept alive.

Three dalit panchayat presidents – all Arunthathiyar – have been attacked in Nellai. Servaaran and Jaggaiyan died. Krishnaveni battles for life.

Somewhere in Nellai, verdant fields unroll till a horizon crowned with blue mountains. The wind sculpts fields into long rippling waves of tender green. There is a smell of rain in the air. What looks like a roadside shrine turns out to house statues of the Thevar, a dominant caste in the region. Two blood-red sickles with red drops dripping off their sharp tips are painted on one white wall. ‘Ekkulamum vaazhanum, mukkulathor aalanum,’ says the caption. Threat and benevolence woven deftly into one sentence. ‘All communities should live, the mukkulathor should rule.’ And if they don’t…the sickles are wordless threats. The aruvaal – the sickle – is a weapon of harvest. Used frequently and often to harvest each fresh crop of bloody caste privilege. A tool of agriculture synonymous with murder – but only in the hands of the dominant castes.

After the attack on Krishnaveni, the women are afraid. ‘Is there anyone else who can be a model of governance like her? Only Krishnaveni can be that model,’ says Muthumari, friend of panchayat presidents across the district. Her questions to them are warm with affection and knowledge of their lives. Muthumari helps panchayat presidents get training that is due to them from the government, she helps mobilise Arunthathiyar women. ‘My brother is the only Arunthathiyar to own a shop on this street,’ she says, pointing at a shop in the bustling heart of Nellai town. Gleaming glass frontage, ice cream parlours, grocery stores and caste line the street.

Our commerce, our rulers, our food, clothes, roads, houses, languages, lives – all produced by caste. A caste economy which regulates who should be alive and who should not, who should be allowed to sit on the Panchayat president’s chair and who should not, who should chop off whose head, who should sell their labour and who need not, who can eat off that labour and who cannot, who should be touched and who should not.

Servaaran’s widow weeps, remembering the 65-year-old man who was cut down for standing up to the dominant castes. The Thevar, each time she mentions the caste name, she lowers her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. Her daughter scolds her in the Telugu of the Arunthathiyar people. ‘Why won’t you talk openly about it? If we don’t talk about it, who will? Tell them that the Thevar did it. What have we got to lose now?’

(The communities associated with scavenging in several states do not speak the dominant language among themselves, they are usually considered ‘outsiders’. Then what does that mean for linguistic nationalism? asks Ravichandran, the research scholar in the team.)

Everywhere, people are afraid to talk about caste. Muthumari does not give an interview at home, because it is a ‘non-dalit area.’ Jaggamma’s devotees in Thalaiyuthu won’t talk because ‘what if they cut us down like Krishnaveni?’ Inside their ‘own area’, in their street, they are loud in anger and grief.

Mallika touches the arm of the strange woman from the city and jumps back, ready to run if admonished. Her eyes are wonder-struck when no whack follows. ‘See, I can touch her,’ she tells her friends, who frisk about while the widow of Servaaran – the murdered dalit panchayat president – weeps at the camera. Mallika prods the arm of the strange woman again and jumps back again. Then she holds out her arm. ‘Will you touch me?’ she asks.

‘Do you speak our language?’ asks Mallika of the strange woman. ‘No? But you will talk to me, right?’ she asks. They play the game of ‘one for amma, one for appa, grandma, brother and sister,’ folding little fingers into a clenched fist. Then ‘here comes the crab, here comes the fox, here comes the crab, here comes the fox,’ and tickle, tickle, tickle. Mallika dissolves into giggles, her sunny smile the only warmth in a world where dignity, democracy and the right to life splutter and go out in the wind.

In 1997, a murderous gang hacked off panchayat president Murugesan’s head in Melavalavu, near Madurai. The head went thudding down the steps of the bus he had been sitting in. One of the murderers picked it up and ran away. Now, Samathuvan describes how the massacre at Melavalavu happened. Along the road that makes its way through fields, he points out the place where the bus was stopped. Where panchayat president Murugesan’s head was hacked off, where dominant caste murderers ripped open dalit bodies and garlanded themselves with the intestines. The dalit people had bought some land in a temple auction, that was intolerable to the dominant castes. ‘How can Dalits be allowed to own land? they thought. That led to the violence,’ he says. In Melavalavu now, there is a memorial built with the free labour of the dalit people of the area – one of the very few in the country to the victims of caste violence – to the memory of those six people and two more who were murdered. One for participating in a roadblock to protest the murders and another for playing an Ambedkar song. There are no photographs of these men, only paintings, rough approximations of the faces of those who could not afford photography in real life, but have been memorialised in death. ‘The Melavalavu dalits are hated in this region,’ says a young man. ‘They think we are the reason for the rising dalit assertion, for the improved reach of the Dalit Panthers. The police slap cases against us for no reason. We don’t get work easily.’

The violence never ends.

These are the lessons from Krishnaveni’s story:

Political work is valuable, is empowering, is the only hope of the marginalised. We have been socialised into leading cossetted middle-class lives by our caste-ist families and by our overwhelmingly upper-caste media, into believing that politics is a bad word, that politicians are evil, that the practice of politics is hopelessly corrupt. The practice of caste is the most evil, corrupt thing in this country. We practice it shamelessly and blame ‘politics’ for evil and corruption.

The memorial at Melavalavu to those murdered by caste is an exception. We usually don’t acknowledge how caste enables murder. Caste is our own private holocaust – the one we don’t want the UN to acknowledge – where people are outright murdered with the connivance of the state, denied the right to work, to food, to health, to life, to education, to dream, to political representation, slowly starved, worked to the bone, and cast off – and no memorials mark their passing. Only the privileged lead more privileged lives, the roads grow wider, the buildings in the cities taller. This is a country that is built, fed and watered by Dalit blood and sweat. ‘We don’t practice caste anymore,’ some posh city dwellers claim. Sure, we don’t practice caste anymore, we can afford not to, now that we are perched prettily and corruptly on top of a pyramid of caste privilege. Since the harvest of privilege is officially ours, others can carry the aruvaals and do the actual murders for us now.

That’s all.

***
Links to more material on the theme of discrimination and violence against dalit panchayat presidents is available at http://writingcaste.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/90-days-of-writing-caste/
via The PSW Weblog

Marrying for love – II

Priya* works as domestic help. She washes vessels and clothes, sweeps and swabs floors, chops vegetables and performs other housekeeping chores daily in three houses in Madurai, Tamil Nadu. In conversation, she shares her experience of marrying outside caste. Translated excerpts from an interview dated 15.07.2011. Read the first part here

We moved to the area next to one my parents were in. They would look at me but they wouldn’t talk. After I became pregnant, a year later, my father would come and talk to me. My father-in-law wouldn’t accept us. ‘They filed a complaint in the police station,’ he said, about my parents, and refused to let us into the house. Then I said, ‘I had a reason to write and give that I don’t want my parents, if I hadn’t given in writing, they would have beaten you up. Now when my parents come of their own accord and talk to me, I can’t refuse them. When I said this, he asked ‘Don’t you want your husband?’ Both of them started fighting. I said, ‘I won’t visit them if you don’t want me to but I definitely will talk to my parents.’ After my oldest son was born, they started visiting and talking. My mother-in-law would also talk a little. After a year, these problems were solved.

People appreciated that I had taken a stand at this young age. ‘Others would have been afraid and given up their love,’ people told me and started encouraging me. Friends were good to me. Only my parents’ relatives refused to accept me. They would stand on the road and talk to me but they won’t come into the house, they won’t eat, they won’t even drink water because we were SC. When we went to their house, they would take care of us. But they would never eat in our house.

My mother’s friend’s daughter was also my friend. She fell in love and ran away with her lover. They came and asked me, ‘Where is Manjula? She was your friend. Did she tell you anything?’ I hadn’t even known that she was in love. She had loved within her Parayar  caste only but they didn’t accept it. They said, ‘Why should she choose that boy?’ She refused to come home and married that boy. Her in-laws looked after her well. She started going to work and she is happy now.
…

Please ask all parents to let their children marry whoever they want. Please write that very strongly. If they give their consent, there will be no problems. Most of the problems that happen in love marriages are because the parents don’t consent. Tell parents to stop clinging to caste.

…

Now my oldest son is studying for his degree by correspondence. He is also a photographer in a studio. He is of marriagable age and he is also in love. We know about it. We told him about all the difficulties we faced. We told him to marry the girl we find.

After we married, there was opposition on both sides. My father-in-law chased us away. ‘Let me see how you will survive, I cannot give you food,’ he said. They caused lot of difficulties. My son says, ‘What would you have known at 15? I am 22. I can take my decisions. That girl is also 19.’ I told him, they would face difficulties. The girl is Servar caste (a Thevar sub-caste), we are SC. We cannot face any problems if they should arise. I told the girl this also. She said, ‘I can face any problems that come. I know you are SC. Its not like I  didn’t know when we were in love.’

I have told my children these things, they should know the problems I faced. The other three are in school.

If people should fall in love, they should have parental consent. Running away is difficult. You will only have the clothes on your back. My younger mother-in-law and I were pregnant at the same time. They would not make food in the morning. I would have to starve till evening. I was struggling for a few years. They did not feel that I had come away from home, that they should look after me. They felt that they should give food only when we give money. My husband was plying a rickshaw then. I was 15, working in a school as an aayah.
…

Earlier work used to be divided by caste – people who wash clothes have to come only by the back door. They could not drink water in the same tumbler, employers would ask them to drink water from the tap. Now it’s not like that – people of all castes – Konar, Servar, Nadar, – all come for housework. Employers are also better now. In some places, work is still divided by caste. In the 15-20 years since I started doing housework, people have also started treating us as human beings.
…

The area I lived – Ponnaandi Veethi – was an SC street only. It was supposed to be for the people who burned corpses. There was also a ‘Nadar Compound’ on the same street – the really poor people lived there, mostly SC people like Sakkiliar, Parayar, Kuravar, also Nadar and Muslim were all there – but it was called Nadar Compound only.

When we look for houses for rent, they ask for caste. SC people could only ask SC houseowners. Things are changing now. In the house I am in now, the owner is Kallar. Recently when we went house hunting, I told the house-owner that I was Nadar. That house-owner is Konar. He said ok. He knew my husband, knew he was SC. AFTER we came and set up house there, he made it a caste issue. We had to vacate the house. The older people are like that, middle-aged people like us don’t bother much. The older people cling to caste. My relatives still won’t take food from us.

***

*Name changed on request

Marrying for love – I

Priya* works as domestic help. She washes vessels and clothes, sweeps and swabs floors, chops vegetables and performs other housekeeping chores daily in three houses in Madurai, Tamil Nadu. In conversation, she shares her experience of marrying outside caste. Translated excerpts from an interview dated 15.07.2011

I was born in Madurai. My parents are from the same place. I had a love marriage. So I married and settled in the same town. I am 40 years old. I have four children. My husband drives an auto.

I had a carefree childhood. I would ride my cycle and roam around like a boy. After I had my period, things changed. My father would not mind me much. My mother would say I should not cross the threshold of the house. I did not like school much either. So I would stay at home. But it was difficult being cooped up. I would go out with friends immediately after my mother left and get back just before she got back. If she came back before I did, she would grab me by my hair and thrash me. She would say, ‘Why did you go? I told you not to. Why do you keep company with those children? Don’t you have brains? You have become a big girl now.’ As she said this, I thought ‘Why are my parents are talking to me like this?’ Then the thought came to me that I should fall in love, choose my husband. There was my neighbour’s son. I knew they were SC, I chose to love him.

I knew about my caste from when I was a little child. My parents would say ‘We are Nadar’. When they told us not to talk to people of lower castes, my parents will tell me this. They will say ‘Don’t talk to people who don’t have huts, they will go the wrong way.’ Whenever my mother said this, I would go and play and talk with those children only. My parents changed me. Then the thought came to me, my thought to love.

I fell in love with my neighbour’s son. He loved me too. I used to go to their house and talk. My elder brother used to visit them also. I used to talk to his parents very well, but not to him. We did not get to roam around or go to theatres or do things like that. We used to look at each other and smile, we didn’t even talk much. I was 15, I had been of age for 2 years. He was 19.

He was thick friends with my elder brother. He would not come to my house. Because he was of lower caste, they wouldn’t allow him into the house. My brother and I used to go to their house. I used to go without my mother’s knowledge, my brother went with my parent’s knowledge.

My family came to know that I was in love. My husband’s name is Duraipandi. I had scratched his name ‘Durai’ with a safety pin on my arm. Another neighbour saw this while I was filling water at the tap. It was the government tap only, where everyone came to take water. They told my father and he started beating me. He said ‘You know what caste they are. They are of lower caste. You have gone and loved him.’ He began torturing me and beating me. Even my other neighbours (of the same caste) started beating me after my mother told them to look after me when she went to out to work.

Then I thought, ‘See how they are humiliating me. I had only felt what anyone of that age would have felt, maybe a little earlier, that’s all. Why should they humiliate me like this?’ The entire street knew by now. We still saw each other but did not talk. In our street, they started to say that I was pregnant. Talk went in that direction. My father said, ‘They say this. Let your uncle come, I will make him beat you. If you haven’t done anything wrong, why will people say such things?’

Then I thought my uncle is also going to humiliate and beat me, and I went to see my mother-in-law. I told her ‘They are saying things like this. My family has come to know that I am in love. Please take me away, please marry the two of us.’ My husband said ‘No, this is not right. We are not old enough, go home.’ He came to beat me too. My mother-in-law had now begun to desire that I marry him. She said, ‘Let us not worry about age’ and she took me away to another village where they had relatives. They finished the wedding there. We were there for a day.

When my mother-in-law and father-in-law returned, my parents immediately filed a complaint saying they had taken me away under false pretences. ‘They are SC. Why will she go with them? We are nadar,’ they said. My in-laws brought us back. In the police station, the sub-inspector(SI) asked ‘You are not old enough. What do you say about this?’ I told him ‘Sir, it is true that I am not old enough. But they have disgraced me. Even if I go back, this disgrace will not leave me. Even if I should be married and bear children to another man, it won’t change. I will stay with this man’ ‘Don’t you want your parents?’ they asked. At that time, I said ‘I don’t want my parents. These people are my parents. My husband is everything to me.’ They asked me to give this in writing. The SI himself asked ‘Do you know what caste they are?’ I said ‘I know. I know they are SC. I knew when I was in love too.’ Then he said, ‘You know they are SC. If you have a child later, will you give your child in marriage to such a family?’ I said ‘I will give my child in marriage to an SC person only. I don’t look at differences like that, even if you scratch an SC person you will find the same red blood, even for a high caste person you will find the same red blood,’ like this, I told the SI. Then my father brought some people he knew. They took me to a separate room and said ‘You don’t need that boy. He is SC. It will become a problem later.’

My father-in-law had seven wives. So, they were worried at home. I told them, ‘That man might be like that. My husband is not.’ They said, ‘Let that boy go. We will marry you to someone else right away’. I said ‘I didn’t do this out of a desire to marry. I have been disgraced, I cannot continue to live on that street. That is why we married at this age’

We gave this in writing and came away and finished a registered marriage also.

We had to come back and live on that same street. We lived in another area for a while. It was an unknown place and it was scary at night. Both of us were very young. So we came back to the same area.
…

In the next part, Priya* talks about her married life, ponders the pros and cons of marrying for love vs. marrying for caste and shares her son’s blossoming love story.

*Name changed on request

Segmented Schooling: Inequalities in Primary Education

A paper[pdf file] by Sonalde Desai, Cecily Darden Adams & Amaresh Dubey

India Human Development Survey, Working Paper No. 6, 2008.

The results reported in this paper are based primarily on India Human Development Survey, 2005. This survey was jointly organized by researchers at University of Maryland and the National Council of Applied Economic Research…Part of the sample represents a resurvey of households initially surveyed by NCAER in 1993-94.

…

Indian society has long been stratified along the axes of caste, ethnicity and religion. A large number of studies report inequalities in various outcomes along the caste, ethnicity and religion. Not surprisingly, this inequality is reflected in educational attainment too. However, the precise mechanisms through which inequality in educational attainments manifests itself remains open to debate with a variety of hypotheses being advanced such as poverty, child labor, lack of access to schools, teacher discrimination and lack of parental interest in education.

Unfortunately, there is little empirical research examining these hypotheses. Nor are the processes through which social disadvantages manifest themselves, clearly articulated. This paper utilizes a newly collected nationally representative survey data from over 41,550 households to examine social inequality in children’s educational outcomes. The focus is on 8 to11 year old children’s reading and mathematical skills.

…

While a variety of affirmative action programs are in place to bridge educational, occupational and income disparities between the dalits (Scheduled Caste), adivasis (Scheduled Tribe) and general populations, substantial educational disparities persist. Table 1, based on our past research (Desai and Kulkarni, forthcoming), shows that the dalits and adivasis as well as Muslims tend to lag behind Hindus and other religious groups. We have also found that a great deal of this inequality emerges in primary school with children from the marginalized groups dropping out before completing primary school. In fact, if these children manage to complete primary school, their likelihood of completing middle school is much closer to that of the other groups (Desai and Kulkarni, forthcoming). This suggests that primary school is an important site for the creation of educational inequality.

…

Tables 5 and 6 show the basic distribution of these skills for urban and rural children and children of various social groups separately. Not surprisingly, reading and mathematical skills are higher for urban than for rural children. Social group differences are also clearly evident in these descriptive statistics. Even among children at the same grade level, children from upper castes and religious groups like Christian, Sikh and Jains do far better in their educational attainment than the four other groups, OBC or the middle castes, dalits, adivasis and Muslims.

…

Females have lower reading levels than males – a finding that contrasts with most of the U.S. literature where girls have slightly higher reading scores than boys. The impact of social stratification on reading level is very large for this model. Other backward castes are about half as likely to attain any given reading level as upper castes, dalits are slightly more than one-third as likely (0.36 times as likely) and adivasis are only .32 times as likely.

Model 2 controls for current enrollment and completed education. As can be expected, the differences between different social groups diminish suggesting that at least some of the achievement differences are mediated through school enrollment and grade promotion between various groups. But surprisingly, this dampens inter-group differences at only a modest level. Muslims are 0.39 times as likely as upper caste Hindus to attain a given reading level in Model 1; after controlling for current enrollment and grade completed Muslim children are only about 0.47 times as likely to attain a reading level as upper caste Hindu children.

Models 3 and 4 add two basic socio-economic factors, urban residence and household economic status measured by the household ownership of consumer durables and housing assets. These two factors, particularly the household assests variable, dampen the relationship between social group and reading achievement substantially. But even so, dalits are only about 0.58 times as likely to achieve a given reading level as upper caste Hindus. Similar differences persist for other social groups.

The two variables controlling for adult education in Model 5 further reduce this relationship, although surprisingly this reduction is not very large. The number of years of completed education for the most educated adult in the household, and a dummy variable for literate adult in the household shows that higher level of household education helps diminish the negative impact of caste, ethnicity and religion on children’s reading achievements. However, even after all these controls are added, other backward caste children are 0.87 times as likely as upper caste children to attain higher reading scores and comparable proportions for dalits, adivasi and Muslims are 0.63, 0.79 and 0.64, respectively. It is important to note that even with these controls the negative effect of caste, ethnicity and religion persists.

We note that many of the variables that are included in our final model, Model 5, are themselves affected by caste, ethnicity and religion. Educational attainment in parental generation is also a function of social stratification. Additionally, the same school factors that result lower skill attainment for children may also affect their progression from one grade to another. So controlling for these factors, underestimates the impact of caste, ethnicity and religion on children’s skill attainment. But even so, substantial differences between children from different social backgrounds are obvious in the result we present.

…

This suggests that the differences in educational attainment between people of different social strata are not simply due to difference in enrollment rates nor are they solely due to parental lack of education and resources. Even when children from disadvantaged groups attend school, they fail to learn as much as their peers. Qualitative research and anecdotal evidence provides a variety of explanations for these findings. Teachers typically come from higher castes and have very low expectations for children from marginalized groups. They are also more predisposed to seeing the behavior of these children as being problematic than that of higher caste children. In our survey, we also asked children if the teacher treats them nicely. We found that children were extremely reluctant to say that the teacher did not treat them nicely but even so, while 76 percent of the upper caste children responded that their teacher treated them nicely, only 66 percent of the dalit and 65 percent of the Muslim children felt that way.

***

Read the full paper[pdf file] here.

In the Name of Globalisation: Meritocracy, Productivity and the Hidden Language of Caste

Excerpts from a paper[pdf file] by Surinder S. Jodhka & Katherine S. Newman

From the Working Paper Series, Volume III, Number 03, 2009

Indian Institute of Dalit Studies, New Delhi

…

This Working Paper “In the Name of Globalization: Meritocracy, Productivity and Hidden Language of Caste” draws on interview data to analyse the attitudes of 25 employers/hiring managers in India’s organized private sector towards the caste and community attributes of their potential employees. It focuses on the role ascriptive qualities play in employer perception of job candidates, arguing that they persist despite a formal adherence to the importance of merit.

…

Caste plays an important role in organizing the rural labor force. As Mr. Vincor explained, even the unions are structured by caste:

Nearly 450 workers [in the first plant] belong to the local dominant caste of Jats and another 250 to 300 come from another dominant caste of Ahirs. Around 100 to 150 would be from different backward castes. Our workers are also organized on caste lines. Trade Union elections are mostly on caste lines….

Jat group is arrogant. It does not listen to any one. Ahirs are tamed. Brahmans are more learned and they speak well, and SCs are not vocal.

These are not neutral observations. The social organization of caste provides a platform for collective grievances, and the firm has been on the receiving end of labor actions that can be more easily organized, given the caste lines in the workforces. “At times they are very aggressive,” Vincor complained. “We have seen a lot of bad phase, strikes and lock outs.”

…

India Motors relies on hiring practices that promote a mix of castes rather than permitting the dominance of a single group. And they avoid those groups that management regards as oppositional in character, likely to refuse management dictates and threaten labor actions instead.

…

Such a preferential policy often exists side by side with a bright line that excludes those who do not fit these stereotypical expectations. For Fitness Health, this clearly includes Dalits, who need not apply. “Among SCs,” the manager explains, “there is a lack of technical skills. And their attitude is unmatchable for the company.” Is this an unfair, an example of bigotry? No, she insists, We have no prejudices about SCs and Muslims. This is a mind set issue.

…

In the Name of Globalisation
The language of meritocracy has spread around the globe along with the competitive capitalism that gave birth to it. Largely gone is the notion that patrimonial ties, reciprocal obligations, and birthright should guarantee access to critical resources like jobs. Those ascriptive characteristics continue to matter – now dressed up as “family background” rather than caste – hardly causes the managers we interviewed to skip a beat. They are convinced that modernism is the future of their firms and the future of the country. It calls for the adoption of labor market practices that the advanced capitalist world embraces and a blind eye to the uneven playing field that produces merit in the first place.

What are the consequences of this cultural shift, of the spread of a common language that resonates with moral precepts of fairness, level playing fields? Can one argue against meritocracy in the modern world? Two responses come to mind. First, as we have suggested in this paper, the belief in merit is only sometimes accompanied by a truly “caste blind” orientation. Instead, we see the commitment to merit voiced alongside convictions that merit is distributed by caste or region and, hence, the qualities of individuals fade from view, replaced by stereotypes that – at best—will make it harder for a highly qualified low caste job applicant to gain recognition for his/her skills and accomplishments. At worst, they will be excluded simply by virtue of birthright. Under these circumstances, one must take the profession of deep belief in meritocracy with a heavy grain of salt. Anti-discrimination law is required to insist on the actual implementation of caste-blind policies of meritocratic hiring and, we submit, to question common and accepted practices of assessing

*All company names have been changed and identifying details modified slightly to protect the privacy of the firm and that of our interview subjects.

Read the full paper here[pdf file].

Caste, King and Dharma: from Varendra to Bangladesh

by Sergio Targa

First published on the Parittran blog, January 31, 2011

…

Historically caste as we know it today developed from the beginning of the Christian era. It received a major thrust from the Gupta period and got established by the 13th century. Far from being a religious sort of structure, caste was a political one: it was the way a kingdom was built and functioned. The caste system was basically the power structure of the early medieval Indian state. The following discussion will hopefully bear out this point.

Gopal paid his debt to his forefathers in heaven by begetting the illustrious Dharmapala, who, conversant with the precepts of the sastras, by restraining those who swerved from the right course, made the castes conform to their proper tenets.

These verses (slokas) are found in a Sanskrit copper plate (tamroshason) of Debpal, the third king of the famous Bengal Dynasty, reigning approximately between 810 and 849 AD. The name of the plate is The Mungir Copper Plate of Devapala. The verses are extremely important for our discourse. The kings of the Pal dynasty were fervent Buddhist; Debpal was certainly so. Thus how is it possible that a Buddhist king was praised for having enforced the discipline and the regulations of the caste system? If the caste system is a Hindu invention and institution how and why is it found as a major achievement among the deeds of a Buddhist king? My understanding is that caste was not a religious tenet but a political one. Debpal being a king used the caste system as a political device, no matter his personal religious affiliation. My idea is that the caste system was the framework and structure of the early medieval north eastern Indian state. That is, caste was the way the medieval state organised and structured itself.

How was it possible?

From the Monushonghita we come to know that:

“The king has been created (to be) the protector of the castes (varna) and orders, who, all according to their rank, discharge their several duties.”
(George Bühler, translator. (Sacred Books of the East, Volume 25), Chapter 7,35).

From this expression we understand that the main purpose of a king is that of enforcing the caste system. He has been created to that scope and purpose.

“Through fear of him all created beings, both the immovable and the movable, allow themselves to be enjoyed and swerve not from their duties.” (Chapter 7,15).

A king defends and enforces the caste system because of the exclusive use he has of military strength. It is because of danda (i.e. rod of punishment) that no one is allowed to swerve from his/her caste.

“If the king did not, without tiring, inflict punishment on those worthy to be punished, the stronger would roast the weaker, like fish on a spit; The crow would eat the sacrificial cake and the dog would lick the sacrificial viands, and ownership would not remain with any one, the lower ones would (usurp the place of) the higher ones.” (Chapter 7,20-21).

The previous idea finds his better explanation in these two verses: if the king doesn’t use force, then the stronger will get over the weaker. So far nothing remarkable, but the following verse shows what the previous one meant: stronger means lower caste and weaker means higher caste. Without force (i.e. danda) the system will collapse. Specifically, the collapse of the system is remarkable in that right, power and ownership become impossible. In other words, the state as such becomes impossible. This situation is called in Sanskrit either arajokota or matsianiaia. We’ll see these expressions later.

I would like now to draw the reader’s attention to one particular and all important point: ownership and right. Why is it that without castes or with the tumbling of castes ownership and right is not possible? The fact is that castes define and predetermine a very fixed hierarchical series of adhikaras. Let’s see them:

a) Sudra: the servants. According to dharmasastras, had the least entitlement as far as adhikaras were concerned. They had mastery over their body, in the best of cases. Service to the three higher castes was their true and only right. A sudra could not be the master or owner of anything: whatever he has belonged to the higher caste he served. He was completely excluded from the knowledge of the Vedas.
b) Vaisya: the commoners, the ordinary people. They had right over their own household and on movable wealth in general. Agriculture, animal husbandry and commerce were their rights. They had a certain access to the Vedas.
c) Ksatriya: the warriors and rulers. They were lords of the people and of the land. They were proficient in the use of weapons. Their mastery was exercised on land of which they could be real owners.
d) Brahmana: the religious specialists. Being the knower of the Vedas they were entitled to the whole cosmos. In particular they were the masters of sacrifices, the actions which indeed sustained the whole universe.

To be kept in mind is that a higher caste included in its adhikaras (i.e. rights) the adhikaras of all the caste beneath his, so that a Vaisya had among its adhikaras the adhikaras of a Sudra as well; a Ksatriya had those of a Vaisya and a Sudra and so on. The caste system in practice preordained who could do what. And if we think about it, we’ll see that a state is exactly a system were a power order is enforced and respected. Particularly, a state is a power structure by means of which personal rights of property are enforced and protected.

But if we said that the king through the use of danda maintains the order of society, why is there the need of a caste system? We certainly remember that state power relies on two basic components: coercion and consensus. The stronger the consensus the lesser the use of coercion to maintain the status quo. Now, if we think that the Pal dynasty ruled in Bengal and Bihar for more than 400 years it is virtually impossible even to think that such a long rule was established on the continued use of force. The caste system which came to assume strong religious connotations worked exactly and was necessary exactly to create that consensus we were talking about above. People, generally speaking were they themselves convinced of caste belonging (through religious sanction) and thus less inclined to rebel. In case of rebellion the king could use violence to put things right. It must be borne in mind, however, that when in dharmasastras or other texts right and wrong are discussed about, they actually mean dharmic and odharmic, that is, according or disaccording to varnasramadharma (i.e. the law of caste and stages of life).

To further stress the point being made here, let us now see what arajakota and matsianiaia mean. In the Ramacarita of Sandiakaranandi (The Ramacarita was written during the reign of king Madanapala, 1144-1162. It deals with a rebellion at the time of king Mohipal II. Mohipal II ruled likely for a few years from 1068 AD. It was during his reign that the Kaivartas headed by Bhima rebelled and killing Mohipal II established their own kingdom in Varendra) it is said that:

“Varendri stood miserable because the visayas (i.e. districts) and villages fell in confusion regarding their ownership” (Ramacarita 1,48B).

This is what arajakata means: either a situation of kinglessness or a situation where an unlawful king reigns. In both situations there is confusion about the laws of property, because protection and enforcement of dharma (i.e. varnasramadharma) fails. In the same Ramacarita it is said that:

“Ramapala, never feeling too exultant and offering adequate protection, repelled the revolution against dharma, and holding up the rod of punishment he went round the earth and put the world on the path trodden by the righteous” (Ramacarita 1.24B).

The Kaivarta’s rebellion is here interpreted as a revolution against dharma. Why? Because the Kaivarta, a sudra caste, killed the lawful king Mohipal II. And this was certainly against dharma. When Rampal recovers Varendra this means that he recovers dharma. It is than with the rod of punishment (i.e. dondo) that he put things right (i.e. according to dharma).
In the Khalimpur Copperplate of Dharmapala (802 AD circa) it is said that

“The glorious Gopal was made to take the hands of Fortune by the people to put an end to the practice of fishes” (Indian Epigraphy IV, p. 251, verse 4).

We must remember that Sasanka died in circa 620 AD and Harsha Vardhana in circa 647 AD. After these two kings, particularly the latter, the situation in Bengal remained fluid without any king strong enough to unify and pacify it. This situation continued until circa 750 AD when Gopal the first king of the Pal dynasty was ‘elected’ king. Here it is interesting to notice that matsianiaia is a situation in which a big fish eats a small one. The event recorded in the copperplate far from revealing a sort of democratic practice, simply refers to Gopal as the king who enforced varnasramadharma. To prove this interpretation we could see Kamadakiya’s Nitisara, a manual of politics not early than the 8th century AD. In section II verse 40, it is said that matsianiaia is the breakdown of varnasramadharma.

To sum up our discussion we may quote another passage from puranic literature. The following is taken from the Brihaddharma Purana, a work from Bengal variously dated to the 10th century or later:

“In the absence of danda, men would turn haughty and kill animals, men and sacrificial preys; the crows would eat puradasa and the dogs the objects of sacrifice. No ownership of anything would be possible, nor would be there any gradation of high and low. The four varnas would totter before the oppression of the haughty. It is by danda, as such, that all are sustained and those who are pursuing dharma are protected. For fear of danda again, men become law-abiding and desist from evil deeds”.

Absence of danda either means the absence of a king or the presence of an unworthy one. Then it is stated that without a king not only there is a sort of collapse in the law and order situation, but a collapse in the cosmos as well. To be noticed is that the impossibility of ownership is mentioned right besides the confusion between high and low and the tottering of the four varnas. In fact the destruction of the laws of property is the destruction of the four varnas. This is again orajokotha and matsianiaia.

To conclude: in early medieval north eastern India, the caste system articulated the then state, in as much as it articulated the laws of property. The king was absolutely necessary for the system to work, being himself entitled to use dondo and thus enforce caste configuration. Without king there could not possibly be castes. In other words we may say that caste was born to be functional to the distribution and exercise of power.

Now we have no longer a king but we do have power. Is it possible to think that even today caste and what has remained of it remains functional to the distribution and exercise of power? I personally believe that even in modern Bangladesh caste and casteism are the foundation of the distribution and exercise of power both at the micro and macro levels. Today we may give caste the name of patronage: another name for the feudal structure the caste system was born to sustain and foster. Even in today’s Bangladesh’s society hierarchy and patronage are the real axis of the power structure. Privileges are apportioned according to social status creating linkages of personal loyalties between individuals and communities alike. The resilience of the system has created that strange and hybrid political configuration, which is in-between the modern nation state which Bangladesh wishes to be and the feudal social system casteism continually recreates. In the end, Bangladesh might once again be defined as a congery of warring principalities where this time the rulers are not the kings or ksatriyas of old but the new captains of the people this time blessed by formal electoral processes. We might not be longer able to identify in today’s society the four castes of dharmasastric memory, but I wonder whether in Indian history we have ever been able to do so.

But caste has now a stronger cultural connotation as well. Caste and the hierarchical principle it embodies are part and parcel of Bangladeshi culture and custom. The social discrimination we see at work between poor and rich, women and men, low ranking people and high ranking ones is the same we see at work in the private and familial spheres of life. Bangladeshi culture is imbued with hierarchy no matter how highly we speak of democracy and equality. The latter values are pretty much foreigner to this land and antithetic to hierarchy, the super value of the Indian sub-continent’s cultural milieu. What to do then? Things being so, a political transformation is, though desirable, not enough to ensure a definite departure of caste and casteism. What is really necessary is a cultural revolution. In as long as the hegemonic culture is one of patronage and hierarchy, there is no real possibility of change. In this context, whatever political revolution or transformation would merely reproduce the ancient regime. It is only when a new culture will gain a space in Bangladeshi society that a political transformation for the good will come about. Cultural transformations require long spans of time but can be planned and implemented. A counter culture, the like of which Gramsci speaks about in his Prison’s Notebooks, must start at grass roots level through programmes of formal and informal education. People must be made aware of their own dignity and power. They must be alerted to the fact that their consent is important and should not be given to anybody without thinking and understanding. People should be taught that socio-economic and political structures are man made and as such can be changed etc. But what is more people should learn to resist the arrogance of local influential men, the ksatriyas of today, who for personal interest and social prestige do not hesitate to maintain the poor poor, the weak weak, the oppressed oppressed, the untouchables utouchables.

Read the full article here. The author is a Xaverian missionary. Parittran, the organisation on whose website this article was published, was created among the Dalits of Bangladesh with support from these missionaries. The Xaverians are recognized for taking up the cause of the Rishi, a Dalit caste. Read another of Sergio Targa’s articles on the changes among the Rishi here.

A Dalit view on climate change

Article dated 17.12.2009 from the International Dalit Solidarity Network website

Three Dalit women from Andhra Pradesh took part in a protest outside the conference area of the UN climate talks by ceremonially burning their conference badges. They felt that their voices had not been heard in the COP15 process.

When Narsamma Masanagari, Manjula Tammali and Sammamma Begari travelled from India to Copenhagen to take part in the UN conference on climate change, they wanted answers to some pressing questions.

“We came to find out if there is a real struggle against climate change, if the conference would include small and marginalised people like us, or if it is only for the rich?” Narsamma Masanagari from the village of Pastapur in Andhra Pradesh told this website during her stay in Copenhagen.

On the morning of 16 December, the three women presented their own answers to these questions outside the Bella Center where the COP15 talks are being held. Ceremonially burning their accreditation badges, a group of Indian activists protested against the lack of community participation in the climate talks.

“Climate communities must have a place in such a forum. It is important to bring in the voices of the small and the excluded. If you really want to understand climate change, then come and talk to people like us,” said Narsamma, who has felt the impact of changing weather patterns on her own farming community.

As Dalits, the three women already know a lot about being excluded. Nevertheless, by organising themselves and many other women in their communities, they have managed to gain respect and, to some extent, break out from a cycle of oppression and discrimination. They feel that they are owed the same level of respect by world leaders.

***

Read this article on the ISDN website here. There is also an interview with the women…

“Climate change does make it more difficult. If there is drought or unseasonal rainfall, the first thing that suffers is crop cultivation. If there are no crops, it is difficult for us,” says Sammamma Begari, a Dalit woman from the village of Bidakanne.

Speaking through an interpreter in her own language, Telugu, she found time, in the middle of a busy day of demonstrations and meetings, to talk to this website at the alternative Climate Forum for NGOs in central Copenhagen.

The consequences of climate change affect small farmers more than big ones, the women contend. They also claim that the farming methods they use are more sustainable than the industrial methods applied by big farmers.

“Upper caste farmers use machines to plough their land, heightening the climate crisis with fertilizer and other things. Our impact on the climate is much smaller. Larger farmers grow money, we grow food,” says Narsamma Managari, another activist.

Protest at COP15

On 16 December, they women took part in a protest outside the COP15 conference centre. They believe that the poor and the excluded have had too little say in the talks. There are similarities between this exclusion and the type of discrimination they suffer as Dalits in India.

The degree of discrimination varies. In Narsamma Managaris home village of Pastapur, she has managed to gain the respect of the community. In other, more remote, villages, such as Edulapalli, where the third woman, Manjula Tammali, lives, things are different.

“In my village, we are not allowed entry into temples. In tea shops there is a system of separate glasses for Dalits, and we are not allowed to enter houses of upper caste people. Dalits are also left with specific occupations, such as digging graves for everyone in the village. It makes me angry, but it has helped to be part of this organisation,” she says.

Manjula is referring to the Deccan Development Society (DDS), a grassroots organisation working with women’s groups in about 75 villages in Medak District. All in all, about 5,000 women, most of them Dalits, are involved in DDS programmes. Manjula, Narsamma and Sammamma work with the DDS Community Media Trust and have brought digital video cameras to Copenhagen to document the COP15 event.

Grassroots work has enabled the women to take charge of their own lives and be less entrenched in centuries-old patterns of caste prejudice. In a number of communities, Dalit women are regarded with respect by their fellow villagers.

“We have shown that we are organised and have taken control of our own agriculture. We have no obligations towards bigger farmers. And through lots of activities, we have demonstrated the leadership skills of Dalit women. Dalits have become village council members and taken leadership of villages. If there is a conflict that needs to be resolved, our women are on the panel,” Narsamma Masanagari points out.

The women have fought hard for their rights, and their struggle has gone through different phases. They had to combat discrimination based on caste as well as gender. Now their different struggles have merged into what they call ‘food sovereignty activism’. In her lifetime, Narsamma Masanagari has seen a lot of changes.

“When I was a child, my mother was a bonded labourer for an upper caste household. I used to stand watch over the landlord’s fields. We have grown a lot since then.”

***

Read the interview on the ISDN site here.

Durga Sob: Nepal’s trailblazing Dalit feminist

This interview-report first appeared in the New Internationalist, May 2010, Issue 432. You can find it online here [pdf file].

Durga Sob was just 10 when she realized she was from the Dalit, or ‘untouchable’, class of Nepal: ‘I drank from a water pot that other people used, and by sharing this water, I’d made it ‘unclean’. I was screamed at and chased away. I told my mother and she said: “God made us Dalit, that’s just the way it is.” It was then I knew the pain of being a Dalit, and had to do something to change things.’ The injustices experienced during her childhood in the remote village of Silgadi in western Nepal inspired Durga to found the Feminist Dalit Organization (FEDO) to fight against caste and gender discrimination.

“I felt it was no good if I were the only one who was educated; I had to educate others”

Nepal is one of the poorest countries in Asia and Dalits represent around 20 per cent of the population. The term ‘Dalit’, chosen by the community itself, means ‘broken people’, and although caste discrimination was outlawed in 1963, its practice remains widespread. Dalits are considered polluting and suffer an apartheid of segregation: ‘[We] are often denied proper housing, access to healthcare and other public services, like use of water taps and temples,’ says Durga. ‘Dalit women suffer a triple oppression, and are at the bottom of the pile. As women they’re second-class citizens anyway, but as Dalits they’re subjected to social exclusion, and as the poorest group in Nepal, they experience chronic poverty.’ Indeed, more than 90 per cent of Dalit women live below the poverty line and life expectancy is just 51 years, as opposed to a national average of 59. Education is also denied to many Dalits. Around 80 per cent of Dalit women are illiterate and the first milestone Durga achieved was being admitted to school: ‘My mother, a wonderful woman, encouraged me, despite everyone saying she was wasting her money.’ Dalit girls traditionally work at home and are married young. Despite continual discrimination and bullying, Durga completed school by the age of 16. Realizing that she was equal to her classmates, and again breaking Dalit rank, she started teaching English to other Dalits: ‘I felt it was no good if I were the only one who was educated; I had to educate others. I would bring all the girls to my home and teach them. After this, many went to school and completed their education.’

Moving to Kathmandu when she was 19 years old, Durga started working for ActionAid and it was here that she met the US feminist Robin Morgan and told her about the situation for Dalit women. Although there were many projects which were working to empower Nepali women, none had been initiated to address Dalit women’s specific issues. Morgan encouraged Durga to form FEDO in 1994. The early days were difficult: ‘We needed seven Dalit women on the board before we could register FEDO and it was hard to find educated and committed Dalit women, they were so oppressed.’ Moreover, women in urban areas did not wish to expose themselves as Dalit. Durga also experienced prejudice from other women activists: ‘High caste women would not accept us and I was routinely excluded.’

Durga was, however, used to chronic discrimination and continued to strive for inclusion: ‘Initially, FEDO was small and focused on informal education and income-generation programmes. We began our work in the Lalitput district and held literacy classes for 50 elderly women. These were successful, so later we focused on formal education, health, sanitation, advocacy and awareness.’  FEDO now works in 45 districts in Nepal and has 40,000 members. Some 3,000 Dalit children were sent to school after FEDO’s school enrolment campaign. In addition, 50 Dalit health workers have been trained, 5,000 women have benefited from microfinance programmes, and 2,000 Dalit women’s groups have been established. Nepal is, however, a country in recovery after 10 years of a civil war which ended in 2007, and because of their perceived association with the Maoist guerrillas, the Dalit community bore the brunt of the violence. Dalit women are particularly vulnerable to all forms of gender violence, including domestic abuse, trafficking for prostitution and rape as a weapon of war. In response to this, FEDO began working in partnership with the British-based organization Womankind to establish healing and support units for Dalit women survivors of violence. There are now four centres and almost 1,800 women have benefited: ‘The healing centres have seen an overwhelming response and for the first time, Dalit women have been able to break the taboo of talking about the violence they’ve experienced. Many now understand that violence doesn’t have to be a part of their everyday lives.’

Also crucial to empowerment is education around rights, and FEDO makes use of CEDAW, the international bill of rights for women, as legislative support: ‘We provide training for women about how to file cases to police to ensure that they have equal access to justice,’ explains Durga. ‘Women often immediately practise what they have learnt and CEDAW is seen as a basis on which to fight back against oppression. This is a vast shift in perception for Dalit women.’

The current post-war situation in Nepal, as well as being a time of challenge, also represents an opportunity for the community. Following the 2006 Peace Agreement, political parties are currently formulating a new constitution for the country: ‘Up until now, in terms of participation and representation, there have been no Dalit women in positions of power. However, this is changing: 25 Dalit women have been elected as members of the Constituent Assembly and this is one my happiest achievements. The constitution-making process is a unique opportunity to ensure that the constitution will guarantee equality and, for the first time in Nepali history, Dalit women are represented in political processes.’ Durga’s pride is palpable: ‘It’s taken 15 years, and it’s still early days, but FEDO has created an environment where Dalit women have started to see themselves as respectable citizens.’

***
Durga Sob spoke with Claire Colley for the New Internationalist (NI). According to the description here [pdf file], the NI workers’ co-operative exists to report on issues of world poverty and inequality; to focus attention on the unjust relationship between the powerful and the powerless worldwide; to debate and campaign for the radical changes necessary to meet the basic needs of all; and to bring to life the people, the ideas and the action in the fight for global justice.

Buffalo, Our Ancestor

MC Raj has written about how he became an author in two parts – part one and two. Here he writes about the significance of the buffalo in Dalit culture and about the work of REDS in preventing rituals that sanctify free caste labour.

Actually I did not mean to write another blogpost. However, it is difficult not to write now as there are a few things that are welling up in me. The name that you have chosen for your site [the blogger's name in Tamil] is ‘Buffalo’. This is a fascinating aspect for me. Let me explain.

When we started discussing seriously and researched into the history and culture of Dalits, we discovered, in our Movement, the close affinity we have with buffalo. I started writing and speaking about it. When REDS organized a national conference on globalization in Tumkur, I presented a paper in which I spoke at length about the significance of buffalo in Dalit culture. Within a few months, there was a book from Kancha Ilaiah. The title of the book was Buffalo Nationalism.

Much later, when we met Kancha, he presented the book to us and wrote with his hand that he drew inspiration from us for writing this book. We are happy that our thoughts worked like a spark to bring out a book. We were sad that I had to give up the idea of writing a book on buffalo’s significance in Dalit culture.

However, we continued the discussions with our people in our Movement. Every year, in Karnataka, Dalit people celebrate the festival of Maramma. In Tamilnadu, Maariamma is termed as a Dalit goddess, as I hear from friends. But in Karnataka, we have a different myth. Maramma is a Brahmin girl who fell in love with Kadaraiah, a young and robust Dalit boy. Both loved each other immensely. Maramma only looked at his body and its beauty with strong muscles. She was blindly in love with him. She also took it for granted that such a handsome young man could only be a Brahmin. Kadaraiah hid his ‘Madhiga’ identity for fear of losing his ladylove.  They married and lived happily. One day the mother of Kadaraiah went to see both son and daughter-in-law. Maramma was very happy and prepared good food for her mother-in-law, as she wanted to get into her good books. But it was all vegetarian food, grass-eating was the habit. They had a mouthful of all the preparations of Maramma. It was time for dessert. She had prepared ‘Kadubu’, a delicacy in Karnataka. In Tamil it is called ‘Kolakatte’.

She asked mother and son to have a taste of Kadubu and went to fetch water. Kadaraiah was full of fascination for his young love. At the end of the recitation of his love, he asked his mother about the taste of the food that Maramma prepared. He very casually asked her about how she liked the Kadubu that his wife had prepared. Kadaraiah’s mother was still having it in her mouth. She opened her mouth and said that it was very tasty and added: ‘However, Kadariah, it is nothing when we compare it with the taste of the bone that we bite during our meal’. The Kadubu in her mouth was laughing loud as it saw Maramma standing at the door before mother could close her mouth. Now Maramma knew that her husband was a beef-eating Madhiga Dalit. She opened her mouth wide and began to curse Kadaraiah for having married a Brahmin girl. She killed him and sent his ‘atma’ (soul) into a buffalo.

Today every year the village caste lord dedicates a buffalo to Maramma and gives it to the Dalits to rear it during the year. He becomes a sort of god for having gifted the buffalo to Dalits free. In return, he and other caste fellows extract free caste labour from all Dalits throughout the year. On the festival night, the buffalo is sacrificed and its head kept at the entrance to the village (now at the temple entrance) to remind all Dalits that they should never dare to even think of marrying a Brahmin girl or any other caste girls. More than the myth, it is the perpetuation of free caste labour that is unconstitutional.

Even as I am writing this, in Tharur, there are 8 policemen to prevent this festival tonight. This year, it has been a revolution in Tumkur District. Village after village, we have stopped this sacrifice of buffalo. No ordinary effort can achieve this. But we are very proud that we have stopped it even in big villages where ministers and MLA have supported the celebration and have hated us for stopping the festival. But this is being stopped all over the District. We have a big Movement, I told you.

In my latest novel Yoikana that has been published in the US, I have started it with Reindeer, which the Indigenous Saami people consider as their ancestor. I have brought buffalo and reindeer together as ancestors of two ancient peoples, the Saami and the Dalit. I was under the impression that this pride behind buffalo had not caught up in Tamilnadu. For the first time, I came across this in your website and it excites me immensely. Shiva’s wife Adishakthi incarnates as Chamundeshwari (We call her Chee Munde Eeshwari) to kill Mahishasura, who is Mahesh, the buffalo. This myth forms the background for the celebration of Dusserah.  I recollect that Dr. Badal Sen Gupta often used to narrate to me very proudly about the novel Mahesh that he relished reading. It is also about a buffalo written in Bengali language. He was not a Dalit. But he knew that I am and was happy to narrate it to me again and again.

I am sure one day when some others write Dalit history they will definitely refer to the way we have stopped this festival in our District in such large way. Am I so happy to send this blogpost to you! Our struggle is completely blended with the pride and dignity that this has brought in the lives of our people.

- MC Raj, Tumkur

Manickam Casimir Raj was born in Tuticorin and lives in Karnataka. He has a B.Ph. (Philosophy), B .D. (Theology), M.A Sociology. He has studied Tamil, English, Kannada, Malayalam, Latin, Greek and French. He has extensive work, travel, study, research, writing and consulting experience.  He works with the Rural Education for Development Society.