[Reader-list] second posting: caste and gender in the urban space

[jenny chithra]

dear friends,

First of all, we want to apologize for being a week late with our second
posting.



In the coming two months (May, June) we will be going to Keralam for our
field work.

There we will interview all the important people involved in the case that
we are studying as part of the Sarai project. In fact, we have already got
in touch with some of the people involved and have got some positive
responses from them. We are now looking forward to our field trip, when we
will be able to listen to and record varied people's responses, reactions
and experiences in dealing with this culturally loaded incident.



In preparation for our field trip, we spend the past month trying to read up
on the most important issues that frame our study, such as the various
debates on gender, caste, left politics, the urban space and culture in
Keralam. We now have a clearer idea about the directions that we would want
to explore in our field work. In this posting we want to share some of this
with you.



In our reading of contemporary magazines and studies, we see that there is a
strong and emergent discourse on caste and gender in Keralam. The gender
discourse owes itself to the women's movements and we feel that it has
gained much more acceptance than the caste discourse. (It would be
interesting to think why this is so) However, with the revival of Dalit
politics in the 90s, there is a vigorous discourse on caste slowly building
up. We see most contemporary magazines, (which had once reveled in literary
material along side international and Kerala politics) dedicating at least
one story to the question of caste. Chithra Lekha herself was interviewed by
Geeta, a well known feminist scholar, in *Maadhyamam *a  highly respected
mainstream magazine in February 2006).  In the course of our field work, we
plan to visit the *Maadhyamam* archives and follow up the responses to this
interview.



We also noticed that the caste and gender question are being taken up mainly
by dedicated Dalit and feminist scholars. The mainstream intellectual
discourse continues to ignore these issues in most of their analysis. More
over, we also see that there is a sustained way in which mainstream voices
are attacking the rise of these voices.

More importantly, both in Dalit and women's politics, women from subordinate
communities, like Chithra Lekha herself, bearing the mark of community and
gender, are seldom studied and addressed.



We are at present trying to put together an extended bibliography on all
these issues, which includes articles from mainstream magazines like
"Mathrbhumi", "Maadhyamam", and also articles published in international
journals, along with important books. In our field work, following leads
from some scholars, we are also planning to look for rare books and archival
material on land reforms, the left movement and caste consciousness and
lower-caste gender reforms in North Malabar which is our area of study.



We would like to make special mention of one important issue that keeps
coming up in any debate or discussion on Keralam. This is the notion of
Keralam and its culture as always/already progressive in comparison to other
states of India. Such a notion is often used both to undercut and initiate
most discussions on caste, gender and the urban space in Keralam. **

Some hold that Keralam is highly urban and progressive and therefore caste
and gender oppression is either being fabricated, misinterpreted or just the
perversion of a few misguided people. In contrast to this, Dalit and
feminist scholars pitch their argument against the so called progressiveness
of Keralam, trying to point to the ways in which Keralam has always
overlooked or ignored the important issues of caste and gender.

.

Actually Chithra Lekha's case lends very easily to this kind of a frame of
analysis.

Most people responsible for victimizing Chithra Lekha are official members
of a trade union affiliated to the Marxist party and they deny any kind of
caste/gender angle to the whole debate. For instance, in the interview that
Chithra Lekha gave to a mainstream magazine (mentioned above), she speaks
out against the untouchability practiced against Dalit families. For this
she points to the way in which the four Dalit families in her locality are
not allowed to drink water from the common well. However, autorickshaw
drivers of the area belonging to the Marxist party, denies this. They claim
that it is only because the water is polluted that water was refused. We
find it interesting that even the perpetuators of caste/gender crime in
Keralam have to assert the non-existence of caste and thereby their own
progressiveness (Chithra Lekha, Interview, Geeta, "Maadhyamam", February
2006). We would be looking closely at such postures in the course of our
field work, trying to probe into the ways in which they frame the structures
of caste and gender in the contemporary urban spaces of Keralam.



Another important point is that we realized that most caste and gender
debates are caught up in having to justify themselves against the edifice of
progressive Keralam. So often the new and innovative forms through which
caste and gender operates in the urban space of Keralam is not studied.
Thinking alongside and beyond the contemporary debates on caste/gender, we
would like to approach the people we are talking to, (especially
intellectuals and organizations that have stood in support of Chithra Lekha)
towards generating some answers to the new shapes and forms that caste and
gender has taken in progressive urban spaces of Keralam. Here the role of
the marxist party, as we already mentioned in our proposal, would be
specially studied.

During our field work, we would also like to find more material from Keralam
itself towards inquiring into the historical roots of such contemporary
phenomenon.



We will write you again, next month, with our observations and experiences
in Keralam.

Carmel Christy
Jenny Rowena

-- 
(All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave)
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