Abstract:
This paper attempts an analytical study of Urmila Pawar’s selected short stories from her anthology of short stories Motherwit (2013), with a dalit feminist approach. The core constituency of dalit feminism is intersectionality that has been undertaken for proper analysis of dalit women’s exploitation, discrimination and suppression well portrayed in the stories. Dalit women are an intersectional category, affected by caste and gender simultaneously. An intersectional perspective challenges the homogeneity of these categories and tries to justify the living experience of dalit women as ‘difference’ that leads to the construction of selfhood, a solid identity of ‘dalit woman’ with an emerging voice of protest.
Key Words: Dalit, feminism, intersectionality, patriarchy, gender, caste, class
Introduction:
Dalit feminism emerges as a separate approach from mainstream Indian feminism and Dalit politics in order to justify the gender issues of dalit women, the sole constituent of dalit feminism. Indeed woman is not a unified construct; rather it is an exclusive one depending upon conditions as well as circumstances. The mainstream Indian feminists considered the category of woman as homogeneous with a belief that all women irrespective of class, caste, religion etc., have same issues of injustice in their lives. Hence dalit women’s issues are overlooked in a way. On the contrary, dalit women don’t even have the scope to establish their selfhood in dalit politics and the reason behind is patriarchy among dalits. There is a need to introspect the issues of dalit women in order to justify their position; and for this pursuit Dalit feminists have emphasized on formulating a theory of its own that may be able to provide proper justice to all dalit women who are considered as ‘dalit of the dalits’ in a caste stratified Indian society. The sole concept of dalit feminism is ‘intersectionality’ which had its origin in the west and it was introduced by legal theorist Kimberle Crenshaw with a view to develop a single framework for analyzing power that confines and connects gender, class and race oriented subordination. According to Crenshaw, intersectionality rejects the single axis framework often embraced by both anti-racist and feminist scholars, instead analyzing the various ways in which gender and race interact to shape the multiple dimensions of Black women’s experience. (Crenshaw, p.1244) Intersectionality studies the intersections between forms or systems of oppression, domination or discrimination unlike identity politics that fails to address the internal heterogeneity of both ‘women’ and ‘blacks’. Gopal Guru argues that dalit women need to justify the case for talking differently on the basis of external factors (non-dalit forces homogenizing the issue of Dalit women) and internal factors (the patriarchal domination within the dalits) (p.2548-50). This phenomenon of ‘talking differently’ by dalit women helps in foregrounding the identity of dalit women as ‘difference’. The concept of difference in Dalit feminism contributes in identifying dual patriarchies in a casteist society: brahmanical and dalit patriarchies that have proved the fact that Indian women’s oppression is multi-dimensional. Renowned feminist historian Uma Chakravarti defines brahmanical patriarchy as:
A set of rules and institutions in which caste and gender are linked, each shaping the other and where women are crucial in maintaining the boundaries between castes. Patriarchal codes in this structure ensure that the caste system can be reproduced without violating the hierarchal order of closed endogamous circles, each distinct from and higher and lower than others. Further, brahmanical codes for women are differ according to the status of the caste group in the hierarchy of castes with the most stringent control over sexuality reserved as a privilege for the highest castes. Finally, it incorporates both an ideology of chaste wives and pativrata women who are valorized, and a structure of rules and institutions by which caste hierarchy and gender inequality are maintained through both the production of consent and the application of coercion. (Gendering Caste, p.34)
It has been an enabling feature for dalit feminist politics to interpret patriarchy in the form of brahmanical patriarchy for it is inclusive of different classifications of oppressive characteristics that affect different groups of women.
Dalit feminists have adopted this concept of intersectionality for the pursuit of addressing the issues of dalit women in a different way by keeping the subjects and their experiences at the centre of overlapping margins of gender, caste and class with an approach to expose the intra-group differences within the broad categories such as ‘woman’ and ‘dalit’. Indeed intersectionality is an appropriate tool to investigate the lives of dalit women as ‘difference’ unlike the privileged upper-caste women. In our research article, we have chosen five short stories from Urmila Pawar’s remarkable anthology of short stories entitled Motherwit.
Besides being a prominent dalit feminist activist, Urmila Pawar is a prolific Marathi writer in the field of dalit women’s literature. She was born in the dalit community of Mahars, in Konkan, Maharashtra in the year 1945 and her autobiography Aaydan (2008), called The Weave of My Life: A Dalit Woman’s Memoir, beautifully delineates experiences of a dalit woman’s life in a caste stratified Indian society where a dalit woman struggles against discrimination, domination and exploitation. She is a dalit feminist historian who along with Meenakshi Moon documented the participation of dalit women in the Ambedkarite movement in We also Made History. Besides she also well establishes her position as an acclaimed short story writer by contributing a remarkable collection of short stories Motherwit (2013) into the field of dalit women’s writings. All the stories in Motherwit represent dalit women as the central characters and Pawar locates all of them at the complex intersection between and among gender, class, caste, rural/urban, public/private division. The title ‘Motherwit’ is a very rich metaphor that points to women’s/mothers’ knowledge but also local experiential knowledge that are often discarded and destroyed by powerful forces of domination. (Motherwit, p. xiii)
Dalit woman and Intersectionality:
Whereas ‘dalit woman’ is the one and only constituent of dalit feminism, in the same way ‘intersectionality’ is the sole methodology of dalit feminism to interpret dalit women’s multiple marginalities by juxtaposing apparently mutually exclusive frameworks. Dalit feminist Sharmila Rege conceptualized ‘a dalit feminist standpoint’ in her article ‘Dalit Women Talk Differently’ in which she describes dalit standpoint as a position where
The subject of its knowledge is embodied and visible (i.e., the thougt begins from the lives of dalit women and these lives are present and visible in the results of the thought)… it places emphasis on individual experiences withinsocially constructed groups and focuses on the hierarchal, multiple, changing structural power relations of caste, class, ethnicity, which construct such groups. It is obvious that the subject / agent of dalit women;s stabdpoint is multiple, heterogeneous – such a recognition underlines the fact that the subject of dalit feminist liberatory knowledge must also be the subject of every other liberatory project and this requires a sharp focus on the processes by which gender, race, class, caste, sexuality – all construct each other. Thus we agree that the dalit feminist standpoint itself is open to liberatory interrogations and revisions. (p.45)
Rege’s conceptualization of dalit feminist standpoint highlights dalit women’s marginality as a politically achieved position in which dalit women’s experiences of simultaneity being oppressed by structures of caste and gender becomes the starting point for achieving point for achieving an intersectional standpoint. (Pan, p. 39) In her research project Anindita Pan argues for theorizing Dalit feminism by developing a new framework called ‘intersectional standpoint’ to interpret the experiences as well as representation of dalit women, simultaneously affected by caste and gender. (Mapping Dalit Feminism, p.15) For her an intersectional standpoint interprets the ways in which different forms of discrimination combine and overlap that challenges the apparent homogeneity of the categories ‘woman’ and ‘dalit’ as seen by mainstream Indian feminism and dalit politics. Dalit women always remain unrepresented by both women as well as dalit men and it points to the difference between women and dait women and latter with dalit men. An intersectional perspective has been undertaken to analyze the selected stories of Urmila Pawar.
Urmila Pawar delineates the character of Nalini in her short story The Odd One in order to reveal the intersection of caste and gender simultaneously. Nalini is a well-educated and employed dalit woman who lives in Mumbai with her family in a chawl. She hated the living conditions and the ignorant people in the chawl, and so she applied for housing. Interestingly she got the response much earlier than expected and her colleagues in the office could not accept it easily. Rather they started to ridicule her openly saying that dalits are always papered by the government by assigning quotas in promotion, housings etc. everywhere.
“Isn’t that the truth? Everywhere these people have assigned quotas. Just be grateful there aren’t any reserved spaces for them in buses and railway trains” (The Odd One, p. 57)
Nalini has to endure all these humiliation at her workplace just because of her caste identity; in spite of her keen desire to scream out loud at her colleagues she remained silent knowing that no one would listen to her. Her seriousness and dedication to her work was never appreciated by her co-workers, but they made fun of her by considering her as the odd one. Again, this same Nalini had to face troubles in domestic sphere where her in-laws did not support her working outside home. Having reached home, she had to satisfy her mother-in-law by completing all the domestic responsibilities of the house and her baby. Otherwise she was always verbally abused by her typical mother-in-law who instigated her son to go against his wife. Indeed Nalini is caught at the intersections of caste and gender in both public and private domain. In the public sphere which is at her workplace she experiences discrimination by her upper-caste co-workers, while at the same time in her private sphere she was experiencing dominance of internal patriarchy within her own home.
In another story Justice, Urmila Pawar represents the character of Paru Bapu Surve, a beautiful young widow who lives with her parent-in-laws and works hard in raising banana trees in a field as a means of their livelihood. She used to walk four miles into the town to sell bananas in the market. This Paru became pregnant and her pregnancy issue became an opportunity for all the village people to blame her as a characterless woman. It is apparent that Paru’s character was suspected to be loose without much thought and it is easily assumed that her being a dalit woman and her belonging to a lower class fuels in experiencing dominance as well as exploitation in a brahmanical patriarchal society. Actually Paru was raped when one day she was walking alone to the market and she could not even identify the rapist because she was attacked from behind and lost consciousness. Through representing Paru’s rape case, Urmila Pawar actually tries to reveal the easy availability of dalit women’s sexuality in public domain, unlike upper caste women. A dalit woman’s experience of life is different and Paru’s character proves it.
Again, Pawar introduces us to a character named ‘Indira’ in her another story Armour. Gaurya’s mother Indira used to sell mangoes in the market and he actually did not like her mother doing that kind of work when he came to realize how his mother had to confront her customers’ bargaining. Gaurya found out double entendre in the ways the customers ask for mangoes from his mother.
Mami, where are your mangoes from? Choli mangoes, yes? Yes, yes…. Choli mangoes. Let me try with my own hands, yes, yes…. (Armour, p. 85)
Gaurya did not like the vulgarity hidden in these words of his mother’s customers and it is clear in the story that most of the customers intentionally speak these kinds of words to abuse them verbally with vulgarity in the public. Indira’s experience of being abused in public represents all those women who are dalits belonging to lower class and it is quite normal in a brahmanical patriarchal social set up. She experienced exploitation in the intersection of caste, class and gender.
Woman as Caste is a remarkable story by Urmila Pawar through which she makes an effort to compare woman to caste because of the inherent similarities. Like caste, the category of woman is also a heterogeneous with all the domination, discrimination and exploitation. In the story the central character is Tarabai Sonavne who was deserted by her husband for she was without any children even after five years of their marriage. Her husband Prabhakar got married for the second time without informing Tara about it and when she opposed her husband for doing such injustice to her, every one of her family tried to console her saying that she should accept it easily. She was verbally as well as physically abused for she objected to Peabhakar’s behavior towards her. Tara denied to accept it and did not let Prabhakar and his second wife live in her house to which one of her uncle responded:
Aga, how can you say this. After all you are a baaichi jaat, a woman by caste. How will you live alone? (Woman as Caste, p.99)
In our society women are always considered weak and dependent on men as if they won’t be able to live alone; and most often men use to take opportunity of this belief that results in more dominance on women by men. Throughout the story Pawar attempts to focus on the aspect of bigamy in a patriarchal society and the way it affects the lives of women. Like Tara many other women such as Tara’s mother, Dhrupada, Sajani, Mai etc. experienced the pain of being a first or second wives. Bigamy is now illegal and in a way it is injustice to all women who are having this kind of issues. In the story it is apparent that aged males got married much younger girls of their daughters’ age and the men in our society consider it as a way to empower their masculinity. But its consequences are suffered by women who have to sacrifice as well as adjust with their rivals gifted by their husbands. Indeed Tarabai and Mai in the story represent all those women who are victims of bigamy experiencing their lives in the intersection of gender and sexuality.
In her story Mother, Urmila Pawar introduces us to a widowed mother who used to live with her four children in a town and she used to earn money by selling her own handmade baskets and shifting fans. Veena Deo in her Introduction to Motherwit writes that the basic outline of this story Pawar records in her autobiography as being her mother’s own experience. (p. xxvi) Her husband was a school teacher and he somehow managed to buy a small plot of land in town thinking that their children would be able to have proper education in town, but after his early demise his family from village planned a conspiracy to seize that plot of land from her so that the homestead can be sold for a profit. Every time they came to meet her, they forced her to leave that place and to stay in village. Once her brother-in-law Tataya visited her with a man whom he introduced to be a very wise who could let her know about the quality of that land in town. In order to prove that the plot of land has some evil spirits he even goes to the extent of poisoning his nephew Krishna in secrecy. It is quite apparent that Tataya by every means tried to seize the land. In the story, the mother experiences exploitation at the intersections of gender, class and locality in an intra-caste patriarchal set up. Just because she is without her husband, her right to her husband’s property is planned to be seized by his family ignoring her decisions in her life.
Indeed dalit women have their unique experience of being different from the privileged upper caste women and its justified analysis rests in an intersectional approach of dalit feminist politics.
Dalit Women and Voice of Protest:
The characters delineated by Urmila Pawar in all her selected stories are not victims, but they are survivors who raised their voices of protest against all kinds of injustice experienced by them. One can notice how Tarabai and her step-mother Mai opposed the tradition of bigamy. Mai, being an uneducated, could not do justice to her own life; but she did not want Tara to accept the same injustice and encouraged her to take actions against her husband. Mai told her:
Tara, you are educated. You are a working woman and you are empowered enough to take your husband to court.. (Women as Caste, p107)
Finally Tarabai succeeded to collect evidence against Prabhakar with the help of her step-mother Mai. Mai somehow managed to give Tara the marriage certificate of Prabhakar’s second marriage as an evidence for attaining justice in her favour.
We have come across the character of Paru Bapu Surve in Justice in which she was accused of committing immoral activities in the village. She was widow and became pregnant without anyone’s knowledge regarding the to-be-born baby’s father. No one in the village thought for once to give justice to this widowed lady. It was only out of fear when Paru’s brother Nagya who had some big mobster in Worli demanded that his sister should get justice or else he would show everyone what he was made of. Paru was present in the village meeting arranged for her sake and in the meeting she had to answer publicly each and every detail of her rape incident with firm voice keeping aside her shame.
No educated woman would have said all this calmly and clearly as well as Paru did giving her testimony that evening. People were shocked listening to her story. No one knew what to say. (Justice, p.37)
When in the meeting she was suggested by the village elders to remove such an illegitimate child, Paru asked everyone with her neck straightened:
Why not? I am a woman wants to be a mother, I have feelings too. It doesn’t matter who the child is, but I am the baby’s mother. And I too need support in my old age. I am a widow. Whose support can I depend on for the rest of my life? Is anyone here going to support me? (Justice, p.38)
Indeed Paru was poor and uneducated, but she had the voice of protest against injustice and that is how she had offered the village people her own justice.
In The Odd One, the bold step of Nalini to live in housing colony alone with her baby instead of in the chawl with her parent-in-laws who used to harass her mentally and verbally with their patriarchal dominance. Surely, this decision of Nalini proves her voice of protest against injustice. Again, Pawar in her Armour, shows how Indira responds to her customers’ verbal abuses keeping in view her own self-respect. As we know when the customers came to buy mangoes from Indira, the words they used are of ambiguous meanings. Indira’s attitude to her customers was normal until unless her customers indicate any kind of vulgarity in it. Once she was misbehaved by two drunken customers to whom she spoke up firmly without getting angry or upset:
Yes, yes. These are mangoes from a choli, but your mother’s choli. If you are so interested in checking them out, go and find your mother’s choli. Go. (Armour, p.85)
These words spoken by Indira surprised her son Gaurya because he could realize that words have a way of changing their meanings. Gaurya felt a kind of respect for his mother, unlike his school teacher who had made a scene at school about the hidden vulgarity in these words. Now Gaurya began to see his mother “not as a slippery, sloppy, cooked greens, but one who had a hard core inside her like the seed inside the mango- hard, strong, and solid like a shell in his mind that shell grew bigger and bigger like the big sky that hugged Sita’s field to its side.” (Armour, p.86)
The widowed mother in the story Mother is an uneducated as well as poor; but she could realize the importance of education for which she was determined to educate her children in town and she worked very hard to fulfill her resolution. She experienced injustice in the hands of her in-laws family but she resisted against the injustice with firmness. Out of anger she started wailing and speaking in a voice of protest:
My Dear husband…my master…my love….You left your children behind and you are gone. You told me not to trust your brother, Tatya. You were right, my raja. He poisoned your son at night, raja. He made him unconscious. All the crows have gathered like birds of prey, arey. They are waiting to sell your land. Now what should I do….Oh God! (Mother, p.10)
These words of her hit her brother-in-law Tatya’s core motive directly and he was shocked. Without waiting for a minute he slipped out of the house defeated without any word.
Thus, all women characters in select stories are proven to be very much rebellious who fight to survive amidst all kinds of discrimination, domination and exploitation.
Conclusion:
Urmila Pawar is an excellent short story writer and in her Motherwit she fabricates the characters as well as storylines keeping in view each and every detail of a dalit women’s variety of experiences in their day to day life. The dominance, exploitation and discrimination experienced by them are different from the experiences of upper caste women and hence the ultimate need to raise voices of protest against these injustices arises. It is the intersectional approach through which the dalit women community got a way to express their experiences as ‘difference’ and to construct their selfhood/identity that leads to their emancipation in the society.
References:
- Arya, Sunaina and Rathore, Akash Singh (ed.). Dalit Feminist Theory: A Reader. New York: Routeledge, 2010.
- Chakravarti, Uma. Gendering Caste: Through a Feminist Lens. Calcutta: Stree, 2003.
- Crenshaw, Kimberle. ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Colour’ Stanford Law Review 43.6 (1991): 1241-99.
- Guru, Gopal. Dalit Women Talk Differently, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 30 No. 41/42, October 14-21, 1995, pp. 2548-50.
- Pan, Anindita. Mapping Dalit Feminism: Towards an Intersectional Standpoint. New Delhi: Sage Stree, 2021.
- Pawar, Urmila. Motherwit. Trans. Veena Deo. New Delhi: Zubaan. 2013.
- Rege, Sharmila.’Dalit Women Talk Differently: A Critique of Difference and Towards a Dalit Feminist Standpoint Position’, EPW 33, 44 (31 Oct.- 6 Nov.) 1998 : 39-46.