Resisting Injustice: Seeking New Ways to Speak!

Abstract

Resisting Injustice: Seeking New Ways to Speak! Aruna Gnanadason Dalit* women in India speak… they break centuries‐old “silences” that have been imposed on them by caste and patriarchy. They express themselves through asking new questions with political astuteness, through insightful analyses of the role caste plays in Indian society, and through new ways of defining poverty and economic injustice through a Dalit lens. They give voice to their struggles through protest marches and peaceful resistance. They also speak through art and music, through dances to the beat of the parai*, through verse, and through the retelling of ancient stories of their mothers and fathers and a courageous reconstruction of history. Dalit women have broken the silence, and they have the determination to tear through the shrouds of silence that have for too long covered up their broken bodies, shadowed their spirits, and scarred their souls. The Dalit woman is the doubly or even thrice oppressed in Indian society. She has been called “the dust of the dust”. Dalit women are ground to dust by the weight of systems legalized in British colonial times and by an oppressive patriarchal and caste hierarchy in India—a religiously sanctioned indigenous system that has considered Dalits as the “outcastes” in Indian society. Even as I write this paper, yet another incident of a brutal rape and murder of a Dalit woman is reported. A group of gangsters evidently from the family of the headman (and of an upper‐caste group) gang rape a Dalit woman (who is not named!) and tear her body to pieces and burn her in Malpara Village in Agra. Agra is the city where the Taj Mahal stands. This marble architectural wonder aptly called “a poem of love” was built in 1631 by the Mughal King Shah Jahan in memory of his beloved Mumtaz Mahal. And somewhere nearby an unnamed Dalit woman is raped, dismembered, and burnt! While the report does not tell us why this fate for her—as in other cases, one can only conjecture that she must have broken some upper‐caste law; polluted the supposedly common well by drawing water from it; or perhaps having the gumption to cross the landlord's house, thus breaking the “apartheid‐like” laws that govern the movement of Dalits; or it could have been a way to teach a lesson to her people for having the courage to speak up; it could also be because she dared to fall in love with a man of an upper caste; or simply because the group of upper‐caste men wanted to show their power and have some fun! As in such cases, the village headman and others tried to prevent the woman's husband from approaching the police and burned her mutilated body—so that all evidence is erased. The police promise action, some arrests are made… but we know that the culprits will soon be out. Those with privilege escape punishment once too often, especially when a woman is the victim. We read report after report of the rape and abuse of Dalit women and girls in the hands of landlords, managers, and masters in places they work as domestic workers. Just any man or woman in authority over Dalits of an upper‐caste group is able to hold Dalits at ransom; with threats of violence and other forms of pressure. Privilege, power, and wealth largely remain ensconced in the hands of a minority in India. Reclaiming history has become a strong political tool in the hands of Dalits in India—hence, a Dalit History month was effectively used by Dalits to voice their protest, to say their story and demand that they be heard. As Dalit poet Challapalli Swaroopa Rani writes: The day I was born I bore the imprint of an unchaste woman thrown into the drainage of traditions and dustbin of customs. I became the forbidden one. I am the one carrying the onus of age‐old rejections generations of humiliations as my legacy… In which canto of your country's famed history will you write it down, my story? Therefore, a Dalit History Month (April 2015) which declares in its announcement: Dalit History Month is a...