MALAYALAM
Caste through the feminist lens
B. R. P. BHASKAR
JATHIYE LINGAVATKARIKKUMBOL: Uma Chakravarthi, Translated by P. S. Manoj Kumar, Mathrubhumi Books, MM Press, Cherooty Road, Kozhikode-673001. Rs.100.
IT WAS a placard with the legend “We don’t want unemployed husbands” held aloft by college students participating in anti-Mandal demonstrations in the national capital, that prompted Uma Chakravarthi, professor of history at a leading Delhi college, to look at caste through a feminist lens. She undertook a rigorous examination of the caste principles which still govern Hindu society, applying insights provided by recent sociological and anthropological studies with a bearing on caste, class and gender. This book is a Malayalam translation of the resulting seminal work.
Chakravarthi traces the evolution of the complex caste system from early Brahminical concepts of patriarchy and points out that denial of knowledge was an important part of the ideology that sustained it. Inequality was another essential characteristic of the system, which granted high status to some and low status to some others. She considers social scientists’ failure to take serious note of Dr. Ambedkar’s analysis of the graded inequality, which is a feature of caste ideology, as a grave failing.
Raising the question why women accepted the system which subjugated them, she argues that the servitude gave them certain physical and symbolic gains which they could retain only by falling in line. She sees in India’s past a feminist stream going back to the time when women secured from the Buddha the right to join the order. The book is a valuable contribution to understanding of the contradictions in Indian society.
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