Dalit Women: Honour and Patriarchy in South India [1 ed.] 9781138095571

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
2. Contextualising Dalit ‘Shame’
3. Dalit Women and the Politics of Culture
4. Dalit Women’s Everyday Life, Work, Kinship and Shame
5. Honour and Shame in the Madiga palli: Leela’s Elopement, Possession and Marriage
6. Women’s Education, Marriage, Honour and the New Dalit Housewife
7. Alcohol, Violence and Women’s ‘Suffering’: ‘Adulterer, tramp or thief, a husband is a husband’
8. Kalyani: ‘Development’, ‘Civilisation’ and ‘Women’s Empowerment’
9. ‘Culture’, ‘Civilisation’ and Citizenship
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Dalit Women Honour and Patriarchy in South India

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Dalit Women Honour and Patriarchy in South India

Clarinda Still

ROUTLEDGE

Routledge

Taylor & Francis Group

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Clarinda Still and Social Science Press The right of Clarinda Still to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Bhutan). British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-09557-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-10113-2 (ebk) Typeset in Plantin 10/12 by Eleven Arts, Delhi 110 035

SOCIAL SCIENCE PRESS

Contents

Acknowledgements

vii

1. 2. 3. 4.

1 27 65 91

5. 6. 7.

8. 9.

Introduction Contextualising Dalit ‘Shame’ Dalit Women and the Politics of Culture Dalit Women’s Everyday Life, Work, Kinship and Shame Honour and Shame in the Madiga palli: Leela’s Elopement, Possession and Marriage Women’s Education, Marriage, Honour and the New Dalit Housewife Alcohol, Violence and Women’s ‘Suffering’: ‘Adulterer, tramp or thief, a husband is a husband’ Kalyani: ‘Development’, ‘Civilisation’ and ‘Women’s Empowerment’ ‘Culture’, ‘Civilisation’ and Citizenship

Biblography Index

118 146 162

184 206 225 253

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Acknowledgements

I

n the course of writing and researching this book, I have accumulated a burden of unreciprocated gifts from a collection of people. My biggest debt of gratitude is to the Madigas and Malas of Nampalli, especially the Madiga women, without whose support and friendship I would not have been able to carry out fieldwork. Although to preserve their anonymity, I cannot name them personally, I want to thank my host family who welcomed me into their home with huge generosity and acceptance. Thank you also to my friend and research assistant who I have anonymised in the text as ‘Joji’ and to G.S. who introduced me to Hyderabad, advised me during fieldwork and taught me how different the world can look from a Dalit point of view. In Hyderabad Central University, Shamla Medhar, Gunti Venkata Madhuri and Varulakshmi instantly welcomed me into their friendship group, introduced me to their families and taught me much about Telugu life. Mandira Kalra Kalaan and family looked after me in Delhi, helped me navigate bureaucracy and provided much-needed breaks from village life. Professor Ramanarasimham taught me Telugu and offered me warm hospitality at his home and I benefitted from conversations with Dr Siva Prasad, Dr Sasheej Hegde and Professor Bhatt in the Sociology Department. I am grateful to the Economic and Social

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Acknowledgements

Research Council (ESRC) (Award Number 030-2002-00711) for funding my PhD research, the LSE for the Malinowski Memorial Fund Award, subsequently to St Antony’s College and Wolfson College, Oxford, for two consecutive Junior Research Fellowships and finally, to the ESRC and ERC for a postdoctoral position on the ‘Poverty and Inequality’ research programme at the LSE. I also wish to thank the British Library and Keats Community Library where much of this book was written, and Modern Asian Studies for permission to reprint parts of my article, ‘Spoiled Brides and the Fear of Education’, in Chapter Six. The thesis on which this book is partly based could not have completed without the invaluable guidance of Chris Fuller and Veronique Bénéï, who were the most supportive and inspiring PhD supervisors I could have asked for. I owe particular thanks to Chris Fuller whom I have continuously called upon for advice and direction long since the submission of my PhD. Parts of the book were modified in response to comments received in the Contemporary South Asia seminar and the Wolfson College Work-in-Progress seminar (both in the University of Oxford), the Edinburgh University South Asia seminar, the LSE South Asia seminar and the LSE Anthropology Research seminar. Thank you to my anthropologist friends Amit Desai, Michelle Obeid, Carrie Heitmeyer, Girish Daswani, Casey High, Giovanni Bochi, Fraser McNeill, Nate Roberts, Haripriya Narasimhan, Alpa Shah and Peggy Froerer, all of whom helped me develop some of the ideas in this book. Ramesh Pennam and Haripriya Narasimhan generously assisted with Telugu translations. Earlier drafts of the book were reviewed by Amit Desai, Karin Kapadia, Judith Heyer, Gopal Guru, Jonathan Parry and Stuart Corbridge. Their detailed and perceptive critical commentaries improved the text inordinately and I am very grateful to all of them for taking the time to read it. I have benefitted hugely from the intellectual environment created by my colleagues Barbara Harriss-White, Matthew McCartney, Kate Sullivan, Nandini Gooptu, David Gellner and Craig Jeffrey in the Contemporary South Asian Studies Programme at the University of Oxford. This book has been particularly influenced by Judith Heyer and Barbara Harriss-White, both of whom have convinced me of the importance of combining

Acknowledgements

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anthropology and economics in the study of Dalits, even if I have not successfully managed to do this yet. Esha Béteille and her team at Social Science Press have given judicious advice on the text at various stages and have patiently borne delays during my maternity leave. Many thanks indeed. All my family have been supportive but I owe my mother, Hazel Still, special thanks for coming out to India when I became ill during fieldwork and for always being at the end of a phone whenever things went wrong in the village. I want to thank my two children, Saul and Xanthe, for sharing their mum with this book in the first few years of their lives and I must thank my mother again, my mother-in-law, Gaby Jacoby-Owen, Patric Choffrut, my sisters-in-law, Michelle and Nina; and our nannies, Elena and Francesca, for looking after the little ones during this time. Lastly, I want to thank my very dear husband, David Owen, who whilst constantly haranguing me to get on with ‘The Book’, has always gone out of his way to free up time for me to write. This book is dedicated in equal measure to my mum and Dave because without their support, help and encouragement, I never would have got through fieldwork and writing-up, and I certainly never would have completed the book.

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1 Introduction

S

tanding in the centre of Nampalli, outside the school with its statue of Gandhi in the courtyard, one can hear the pupils reciting letters of the alphabet and the teacher’s shrill reprimands over the general classroom hubbub. Opposite the school, there are two grocery stores and a public phone kiosk, overlooked by a tall concrete water tower. The shops are filled with sacks of flour and rice, biscuits and cigarettes, jars of fluorescent sweets and strings of betel nut sachets, which fall like curtains over the front of the shop. Men in white dhotis collect outside the shops to chat and read newspapers. Passing the tea stall, one might notice a small communist monument bearing a red hammer and sickle next to a large neem tree, whose trunk is wrapped in turmeric-stained threads, the shade of which provides upper-caste men with a cool meeting place. Not far from the barber’s shop stands a small shrine to the goddess Gangamma and the temples of Siva and Visnu set in their own grounds surrounded by a high compound wall.1 The temple is located in what used to be Nampalli’s Brahmin neighbourhood and every morning the low-pitched chant of 1

Gangamma is the village goddess. Siva and Visnu are two of the great gods of the Hindu pantheon, worshipped across India. The presence of temples to these deities follows a typical pattern in South Indian villages. See Fuller (2004: 128–154).

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Dalit Women

the Brahmin priest’s prayers can be heard echoing out from the temple chamber. The Siva temple faces onto the heart of the upper-caste (Kamma) neighbourhood, where some of the largest houses in the village can be found.With its three stories, air-conditioning, marble floors, mirrored exterior glass and ornate gates, the village president’s (sarpanch) house is the most opulent of these. Here, the streets are wide, clean and shaded by coconut trees. All the houses are concrete darbars, and some have their own courtyards enclosed by an outer wall and gate. In the early mornings and at dusk, the streets hum with life as children weave in and out of the houses and plump women gather outside their houses in between chores. In the centre of the Kamma area there is a newly-constructed Rama temple and a small post office. At the eastern limits, a cremation ground and a pond look out onto flat tracts of farmland stretching out into the shimmering distance. Turning south one passes the Panchayati Office, a new church in the Other Backward Classes (OBC) community and a rice mill. Here, the roads begin to narrow and deteriorate until one reaches the Madiga colony in the southeast corner of the village that was my home during the sixteen months of fieldwork on which this book is based. To reach the Madiga colony one must step over the road which divides the Nampalli’s Dalit castes from the rest of the village. At this point, one leaves the uru (the main village) and enters the palli (the Dalit colony). The palli is again divided in two, the Madiga palli in the southeast and the Mala palli in the southwest. The roads are narrow and the houses are a mixture of small cement darbars and thatched huts with electricity cables hanging precariously above them. Buffaloes are tethered to the houses and dung pats dry on the sides of walls in the hot afternoons. In the daytime all the labourers are at work and the palli is empty except for old people, the odd truant child, housewives and new mothers. But in the evenings the palli heaves with life, thick with the aromas of jasmine, coconut oil, chilli and tamarind, the acrid smell of kerosene, tobacco smoke and the stench of the blocked drains. Sounds of Telugu hit film songs and television soap operas fill the air. Groups of labourers sometimes huddle under the streetlights to calculate their wages, children run from house to house and old women pick stones out of trays of rice. Men lie on cots massaging their aching joints as their wives stoke fires to boil rice and heat water for baths.

Introduction

3

This sketch is intended to give an impression of the social geography of ‘Nampalli’ and to create a general sense of the village in which I conducted fieldwork. But written from the standpoint of a western observer and in anthropology’s infamous ‘ethnographic present’, the description may convey a sense of traditional village India, unchanging and timeless. This is not my intention. For this book is centrally concerned with processes of social change and people’s own attempts to grasp and direct it. In this book, I am not concerned with all villagers, but rather with just one section of them: Dalits (formerly known as ‘Untouchables’), and especially Dalit women. The book centres around the stories of three Dalit women in particular: Leela, my fictive ‘younger sister’ in the household in which I lived; Vani, a mother of two and grandmother of four who was my neighbour during fieldwork; and Kalyani, the indomitable leader of the village’s women-only micro-credit savings groups. I have chosen to focus on these women because in various ways their life stories illustrate better than anything else the social processes which are transforming Dalits’ lives in this area. During my fieldwork in 2004–5, it was obvious that Dalit men and women were directing the course of social change by turning their attention to gender relations in their own community. Their efforts to improve their standing as former ‘Untouchables’ were focussed on improving the reputation of women. The argument in this book, then, is that in Nampalli, one of the principal ways that Dalits are attempting to raise their social status is through the pursuit of ‘paruvu-pratishta-gowravam’ (prestige-honour-respect) and the a tangible effect of this on the women of the community. Paruvu-pratishta-gowravam is a constellation of embodied, appropriated values, which shape actions and aspirations in everyday life. Much of this book will be taken up with the meaning of this notion and the way in which it manifests itself in the everyday lives of Dalits in Nampalli. Although, as we shall see, paruvu-pratishtagowravam is comprised of various components and is gained and lost in a variety of different ways, one of its most important constituents is the control of female sexuality. To my informants the question itself, ‘what is prestige?’ would be taken as an invitation to talk about ‘good’ or ‘bad’ women, either to defend women in their own family or to expose women outside it. Indeed, anthropologists of the paradigmatic ‘honour and shame’ region, the Mediterranean, convince us that wherever it is found, honour is always closely linked

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Dalit Women

to sex and gender (Delaney 1987, Gilmore 1987, Peristiany 1965, Pitt-Rivers 1965). My informants’ concern with paruvu-pratishta-gowravam has not come out of the blue. Not only has it historical antecedents, it is also intricately bound up with the current socio-economic and political trends occurring in coastal Andhra Pradesh and rural South India generally. Whilst in relative terms, Dalits in this part of India remain at the lowest level of the social hierarchy, they have nonetheless experienced major educational, economic and political changes over the last three generations. These changes have altered the self-image and aspirations of Dalits, even if they have not drastically altered their position in relation to the dominant castes. Claims to a status which fits this new self-image have resulted in cleavages within the Dalit community itself and competition between families. One of the ways Dalits lay claim to superiority (over each other and over members of the upper castes) is by recourse to the ‘respectability’ of their women. Why it is that women have become such a key feature of the Dalit pursuit for respect and dignity? My proposition is that for Dalit men especially, to control women is to achieve ‘civilisation’ and acquire ‘culture’. Since Dalits have been seen for generations as uncivilised people, lacking in ‘culture’ and ignorant of the proper way of doing things, this is seen as an important step towards recognition and acceptance in society at large. We can only begin to appreciate the Dalit desire for what they call civilisation when we understand a little of what it is to be seen as outside of civilisation and ‘culture-less’; in other words, by attempting to get to grips with what it means to have suffered the exclusion of Untouchability. Some scholars argue that it is impossible for nonDalits to comprehend the experience of Untouchability and have instead advocated a phenomenological approach (Guru 2002, 2009; Sarukkai 2007). I am sympathetic to this viewpoint and I accept that this kind of book could not possibly convey what it is actually like to be Dalit. I do think, however, there are some salient features of Untouchability (discussed in the following chapter) which may help us grasp the depth of Dalits’ desire for recognition and the means by which Dalits are attempting to fulfil their aspirations. The theorisation of humiliation by Gopal Guru (2009), for instance, helps us see that it is entirely logical that those who have suffered some of the most extreme forms of subordination should be the most eager

Introduction

5

to acquire dignity and a sense of belonging when conditions begin to allow it. It may seem surprising that ideas of prestige, honour and respect occupy centre stage in a book about South Indian Dalits. Honour (and more sensationally, honour killing) is normally associated with the affluent upper castes in North India, not the poor lower castes of the South. Dalits, those at the bottom of the caste system, are generally thought to be the least burdened by honour-related obligations. This is still the case to a certain extent; a cursory look at this community would suggest that life is so work-oriented that there is little time for the cultivation of honour. But as Dalit families are becoming slightly more economically secure and much more politically confident, they are concerned to improve their social standing. This means that paruvu-pratishta-gowravam is playing an ever more important role in shaping the direction of social change. In certain respects the phenomenon described here follows a familiar pattern of gendered upward mobility in South Asia (Berreman 1993, Den Uyl 1995: 195–218, Deshpande 2002, Kapadia 1995, Liddle and Joshi 1986: 57–69, Mukhopadhyay and Seymour 1994: 6, Srinivas 1962: 46–48) which in turn is linked to much older debates about gender inequality in relation to the wider economy (Boserup 1970, Goody 1976, Engels 1972 [1884], Rosaldo 1974). According to the South Asian model, there is generally greater inequality among higher status groups in India and less inequality among lower status groups (in which women work). The further one moves up the social scale, the less likely women are to work, the more likely they are to be restricted and the more patriarchal gender relations become (Berreman 1993, Drèze and Sen 1995: 178, Jeffery 2000). In other words, at the higher end of the social scale, gender relations are unequal whilst at the bottom, gender relations are relatively egalitarian, with Dalit and tribal gender relations being the most egalitarian of all (Berreman 1993, Deliège 1997, SearleChatterjee 1981, Gough 1993: 173).2 As social status improves, ‘sanskritic’ values are adopted and gender equality among the low castes and Dalits diminishes (Deshpande 2002, Pillai-Vetschera 1999: 232). Those groups attempting to move up in status become especially patriarchal: ‘constraints on women are an essential part 2 As Berreman (1993) and Srinivas (1962) point out, this does not apply to the cosmopolitan, global elites in India among whom gender relations are more egalitarian.

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of a rise in caste hierarchy’ (Liddle and Joshi 1986: 59) so that ‘the most severe gender inequalities of all are found among the poor, low-caste groups which are striving for upward mobility’ (Berreman 1993: 370). What’s notable is that among certain sections of the population, liberalisation and advanced capitalism in India today may in fact be exacerbating this patriarchal trend rather than ameliorating it. In their analysis of this trend, Harriss-White and Nillesen (2004: 329) argue that accumulation strategies to keep wealth and property within the family result in an emphasis on dowry and a preoccupation with ensuring the correct paternity of the child for inheritance purposes (the ‘wealth effect’).3 In landless poor families who derive their income from labour, labouring women are more valued (the ‘wage effect’) (ibid.).4 Harriss-White and Nillesen (2004) predict that as poor families emulate rich families, the wealth effect will outweigh than the wage effect. This leads them to conclude that economic development will be accompanied by an increasing bias against females. A consequence of economic reforms, then, will be greater, not lesser, female disadvantage (Harriss-White and Nillesen 2004: 330). Harriss-White and Nillesen’s (2004) work shows that rather than being seen as an anachronistic remnant of a moribund ‘traditional India’, the patriarchal nature of upward mobility is persisting and growing with contemporary changes. Indeed, other scholars have shown that it is in precisely those areas where capitalist development has had most impact that women’s traditional rights and status have been most weakened (Banerjee 2002, Kannabiran and Kannabiran 2002: 2, Kapadia 2002). Karin Kapadia’s work (1995, 2002) shows this decisively. She argues that despite positive trends for women in terms of literacy and employment, capitalist modernity has destroyed gender parity and has resulted in ‘a strengthening of male-biased (patriarchal) norms and values across all castes and classes’ in recent 3 See also Boserup (1970), Jack Goody (1976) for a discussion of this on a global scale and Patricia Jeffery (2000) in reference to India. 4 This is reminiscent of Engels’ (1884) argument that in capitalist societies gender relations are more hierarchical among the bourgeoisie and more egalitarian among the proletariat. Bourgeois wives’ economic inactivity and their role in ensuring the legitimate heir to property renders them dependent on their husbands, a situation which Engels believed would be remedied by involving women in public industry and abolishing private property under the system of socialism.

Introduction

7

decades (2002: 4). In Tamil Nadu, Kapadia links the traditionally high status of non-Brahmin women with the fact that women shared agricultural work with men. Now, ‘city sophistication’ demands that families seek a ‘prestige’ marriage with a non-kin outsider and that women withdraw from work (Kapadia 1995: 253). Women’s withdrawal from work leads to a weakening of their position within the household, the loss of equal status and preference for males: ‘the status of women falls when that of the husband rises’ (ibid.: 251). India’s ‘excess female mortality’ is probably the starkest indication that this is exactly what is happening. As the imbalanced sex ratio in the 2011 census indicates, there are signs that sex selective abortion is becoming more widespread with the increasing availability of (illegal) ultra-sound tests.5 Building on the work of Jha et al. (2006) and Sen (1992), Bhalotra and Cochrane’s (2010) recent study estimates that nearly half a million girls are aborted each year, a practice most prevalent among affluent and educated Hindu families.6 Although studies show that male preference is strongest in north India among the more prosperous and propertied social groups (Agnihotri 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, Bhalotra and Cochrane 2010, Dyson and Moore 1983), the deepening demographic imbalance seems to be spreading to sections of the population who previously showed little preference for sons, groups such as South Indian Dalits (Agnihotri 2000, 2001, 2003, Banerjee 2002, Miller 1982, 1997: 203). All of this work suggests that upward mobility makes low-caste and Dalit women worse off than they were before. But the situation is more complex than this. Other literature argues that development and upward mobility is good for women in lower-income households, showing the gendered benefits of education, increased household incomes, improvements in female healthcare, better housing and sanitation, employment opportunities, and women-centred government programmes such family planning and micro-credit schemes. A good example of this is the work of the economist, Judith Heyer. Using longitudinal data, collected from micro-level studies in rural Tamil Nadu in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, Heyer (2014), points to a similar trajectory of Dalit 5 Madeleine Bunting, ‘India’s Missing Women’ Friday 22 July 2011, guardian. co.uk; Ramdeep Ramesh ‘India to increase penalties for aborting girls’ Thursday 24 April 2008, guardian.co.uk 6 Their work builds on earlier work by Sen (1992) and Jha et al. (2006).

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upward mobility as the one described by Kapadia (1995, 2002). She describes how Dalit women married to men employed in the new industrial economy have given up agricultural wage labour to become housewives. But Heyer argues that compared to the arduous conditions they suffered as agricultural labourers, Dalit women are healthier and more assertive once they escape wage labour. For Heyer, it is the quality and quantity of work which affect levels of autonomy: when work is menial, exploitative and poorly remunerated, it can be disempowering overall. On the whole, far from women’s status falling, Heyer’s research suggests that these women are in fact better off. The same social, economic and political processes that Kapadia and Heyer describe are clearly evident in Nampalli: some Dalit men have found employment outside the village and have thereby escaped patron-client dependency and agricultural labour. Levels of education for both sexes are dramatically increasing in each generation; child labour is disappearing, the housing and physical conditions of the palli are improving. A few Dalit women are for the first time able to become housewives, an occupation that both men and women view as infinitely more desirable than agricultural labour. The fact that Kapadia’s, Heyer’s and my own findings are similar is not surprising given that the local changes we describe are part of broader common trends. However, although empirically we are describing more-or-less the same processes, our interpretations differ. Clearly, what is meant by the terms ‘better’ or ‘worse’ off is determined by our own values and views as researchers. Although this book is inevitably shaped just as much by my own values, I have come to see these terms as ultimately unhelpful in understanding the transformation of gender-related values among Dalits. When Dalit women become housewives they are better off in some senses and worse off in others. They must make various ‘trade-offs’ between ‘material well-being’ and ‘autonomy and mobility’ (Deshpande 2011: 108).7 Therefore, it is not that they have not moved obviously ‘up’ or ‘down’ but rather their situation has changed: they face new constraints at the point that they are freed of others. 7 In other words, poor Dalit women are relatively autonomous but stuck in poverty while wealthy high-caste women are materially more comfortable but stuck in patriarchy (Deshpande 2011: 108). Deshpande herself argues that this trade-off has now vanished in contemporary India, a point that I discuss in the conclusion.

Introduction

9

Although studies have attempted to objectively measure women’s autonomy,8 judgements about autonomy, choice and agency are in large part subjective. Whilst future consequences of current choices cannot always be predicted by people themselves, Dalits women’s own evaluation of the changes occurring must be taken seriously.This means trying to understand the reasons for their use of ostensibly patriarchal values such as paruvu-pratishta-gowravam. It is all too easy to dismiss Dalit women’s preferences as a blind embrace of values that degrade them. It could be that in fact poor Dalit women are making a logical assessment of the limited alternatives available to them. For a Dalit woman, life as a housewife is more favourable to the physical strain and exploitation associated with agricultural wage labour. In other words, they may be as much conscious, active agents when appear to adopt ‘patriarchal’ values as when they resist them (cf. Jeffrey 2000). In this sense, this ethnography might be read alongside studies from other parts of the world that critique the assumption that when women act in line with patriarchal forces they are unconsciously colluding in their own subordination (Abu-Lughod 1986, 1993; Mahmood 2004). One might see the increasing salience of honour as women mystified into their own subservience to the men of their community. But as far as Dalits are concerned, it is important to understand what makes these sets of values meaningful and appealing in the first place and to acknowledge not only points of difference and antagonism between men and women but points of unification and ‘same-ness’ (Mayblin 2010). This need not mean that we abandon the concept of patriarchy altogether but merely that we relate it faithfully to women and men’s local perceptions in their total social and economic context (ibid.). The models of upward mobility that we have (sanskritisation, Westernisation, Kshatriya-isation and so on) do not really take this into account. They may posit a theory of value underpinning gendered upward mobility but they do not explain why these particular structures of aspiration are meaningful for people like Dalits. They tend to take the motivations for upward mobility for granted, and in this sense they close down avenues of investigation before they have been properly explored. Models of upward mobility tend to see change from above rather than below: as the lower-status groups aping higher-status groups in one way or another. When 8

See Deshpande (2011: 136–139) for a summary of NSS and NFHS data.

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emulation by lower-status groups (such as Dalits) is observed it tends to be seen as devaluation of the original ‘culture’ in favour of an imitation of their superiors. It rests on the assumption that Dalits themselves see the ‘culture’ of the dominant as naturally superior to their own so that when they are able, they abandon their own practices and adopt those of the higher rank. For reasons I explain more fully in the concluding chapter, I think this is a mistake. This may not be simply a matter of misinterpretation. It is also because models of gendered upward mobility are becoming out of date (unsurprising, given the current pace of change). These models are predicated on a social structure that has all but broken down in contemporary India.9 As the hierarchical caste system diminishes and caste continues to ‘ethnicise’, these structural models of upward mobility no longer really fit the contemporary situation. Dalits are now proudly asserting their own jati identities and are constructing and celebrating aspects of a distinctive ‘Dalit culture’. They are defining themselves in opposition to ‘caste Hindus’ and celebrating former symbols of stigma as proud markers of identity (beef eating, leather work, drumming etc). This is what I call a ‘politics of culture’ in Chapter Three. When a rigid hierarchy breaks down, mobility clearly becomes a much more complex matter. It follows that the ethnicisation of caste brings with it a number of different ways to claim social dominance, a democratisation of value. This makes it even more problematic to assume that the same observed behaviour has the same meaning for different groups of people. In this scenario, there can be no mechanical adoption of values according to one or other stable model. What I describe here, then, is not a case of Dalits simply imitating the dominant castes to become like them. Dalits do not just copy forms of behaviour and adopt them wholesale, especially when the dominant are castes against whom they harbour a great deal of animosity and those whom politicised Dalits most ferociously denounce. Rather, forms of behaviour which look the same and are 9 Instead of a vertically arranged caste hierarchy, it is now largely accepted that there are now a set of competing class- and caste-shaped interest groups, each with their own ‘identity’ claiming superiority over one another and jostling for dominance (Fuller 1996, Gupta 2000). This does not mean that society has become any more equal or that caste has become any less important (indeed there is evidence to suggest that the reverse is true). But it does mean that the system of ritual purity and pollution described by Dumont is slipping into social history (Fuller 2011).

Introduction

11

called by the same name (paruvu-pratishta-gowravam) for example, are actively re-shaped by Dalit men and women, and in the process acquire new and different meanings. The argument here is that paruvu-pratishta-gowravam is a kind of cultural lexicon (a set of symbols and signs) that has been heavily associated with the upper castes but one which Dalits are using, incorporating and hence transforming. To be seen as more ‘civilised’ people, Dalits must act in a way that is recognisable to others; they must trade in the common currency. This means that Dalits use the same tools and symbols as other people but in using them to their own ends and giving them their own meaning, they change those tools as they use them. In particular, they bring to bear on these values an anger about their historical humiliation. This results in them projecting their own quite separate desires and understandings onto paruvu-pratishta-gowravam. In other words, Dalit men and women ‘Dalit-ise’ patriarchy. In Chapter Four, I describe the ways in which Dalit women are quite different from their higher-caste counterparts. In poorer families, women undertake strenuous agricultural and domestic labour. They are relied upon to order, sustain and provide for the household. For all its hardship, Dalit life affords women autonomy and allows for a distinctive Dalit female subjectivity. In the less deprived families, social mobility has resulted in the subjection of daughters to the requirements of middle-class morality. In such families the increased emphasis on women as ‘status producers’ is manifested by a greater investment in girls’ education on the one hand but a heightened surveillance of female sexuality on the other. When socio-economic circumstances allow it, Dalits begin to repudiate egalitarian norms; they attempt to consign them to the past by labelling them ‘backward’. Instead, they appropriate a gender ideology similar to that of the locally dominant castes and adapt it to fit a politicised construction of Dalit identity (outlined in Chapter Three). When they withdraw from work, women escape the drudgery, degradation and hardship of labour. But when they become housewives, not only do they lose some of the freedoms they once took for granted, they now see these old ‘freedoms’ as markers of backwardness. This means that although, as Heyer says, upward mobility brings more a ‘comfortable’ life and enables women to avoid the various forms of exploitation associated with wage labour, at the same time, as Kapadia says, it erodes Dalit egalitarianism within the family and community.

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This process is driven by values and beliefs enabled by new socioeconomic and political circumstances. Therefore, while the principal site of my inquiry is the complex sphere of social and cultural life, I also discuss the major political and economic changes that are shaping village life. The imperatives of honour may be hegemonic but competing sets of values simultaneously undermine paruvupratishta-gowravam. Drawing on these, some women and men resist its compulsions. Nevertheless, I suggest that paruvu-pratishtagowravam is one of the most powerful organising principles among Dalits, one which requires some elucidation in order to understand social change.

*** To answer why Dalit women are the focus of attention requires an understanding of women’s role in the production and loss of group status, outlined in a wealth of feminist writing on caste and nation. At a most basic level, it is women’s capacity to produce legitimate children within family and caste boundaries that enables group identity and integrity in the first place. Women’s crucial role in this regard helps to explain rules of caste endogamy; the extreme sanctions against those who transgress and the deep anxieties about miscegeny in South Asia. As Uma Chakravarty’s (1993) work on ‘Brahminical patriarchy’ has shown, caste itself is premised on the management of female sexuality through arranged, endogamous marriage. In this sense, the purity (and honour) of the family, caste, community and nation can only be achieved through the control of female sexuality (Bénéï 2008; Das 1995; Gupta 2002, Mandelbaum 1988: 18–19; Mani 1998; Menon and Bhasin 1998, Nongbri 1993: 178–81; O’Hanlon 1991; Sangari 2002; Sangari and Vaid 1989; Sarkar and Butalia 1995; Yalman 1963). But women’s role as symbols of group identity is not simply as producers of legitimate children and heirs. Especially in times of upheaval and change, it is women who must bear the responsibility for carrying ‘culture’ too. In the decades preceding Independence, for example, Chatterjee (1993) argues that it was only through a construction of women as the guardians of ‘spiritual Indian culture’ located in the private sphere of the home that Indian men could Westernise, modernise and adapt to changes in the public sphere at the time. These dichotomies of world/home; masculine/

Introduction

13

feminine; material/ spiritual lay at the centre of the nationalist project, he says. Mothers became constituted as ‘the custodians of the authentic, pure, and uncolonized community’ (Ramaswamy 1998: 99). This led to a reinscription of patriarchal norms within a new nationalist frame and resulted in ‘respectability’ playing a defining role in the construction of the modern female nationalist subject. For nationalists at the time, this was reflected in an intense concern that women’s education, reform and modernisation should enable respectable domesticity within marriage and the appropriate mothering of Independent India’s new citizens (Liddle and Joshi 1986). As historically forged carriers of group identity, we know that women’s role in representing and producing the nation has been of signal importance in India (Bénéï 2008, Mani 1998; Menon and Bhasin 1998, Sangari and Vaid 1989, Sarkar and Butalia 1995), especially in periods of conflict when women’s bodies inevitably become metaphorical ‘battlegrounds’ (Daniel 1996; Das 1990, 1995; Gorringe 2006, Kannabiran 2002: 8). The most obvious example is the Hindu nationalist deployment of the chaste Hindu mother, a symbol repeatedly used to arouse aggressive patriotic sentiment. But women’s role in safeguarding culture also comes under scrutiny in periods of rapid change. In reference to the liberalisation of the economy and globalisation, for instance, scholars have shown how alongside the entry of large numbers of educated middle-class women into employment in the last two decades, the preservation of Indian ‘culture’ still falls more heavily on women than on men (Donner 2006, Fernandes 2006, Gilbertson 2011, Sunder Rajan 1993). Dalit women present something of a problem for respectable Indian womanhood. They are usually the counterpoint against which the respectable, middle-class, upper-caste female nationalist subject is defined. Not only does this suggest ways in which Indian female respectability is class and caste inflected, it also shows how Dalit femininity is in many ways profoundly anti-national, alien, ‘backward’ and in need of reform and civilisation. As Dalits become more influential in the public sphere, it remains to be seen whether this alternative Dalit femininity will be valorised and incorporated or whether Dalit women’s ‘difference’ will be obliterated and/or subsumed. This idea of women as signifiers of group identity (be it nation, community or caste) is especially pertinent in the case of Dalits.

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Historically, one of the ways in which upper-caste domination has been expressed, maintained and perpetuated is through the sexual exploitation of Dalit women. Of all the forms of caste power, this is perhaps its ultimate expression. Entrenched practices of abuse, harassment and rape have represented a routine reaffirmation of upper-caste supremacy (Baghel 2009: 216–7, Béteille 1992, Fuller 2011, Rao 2003: 14, Rege 2003: 105). In Andhra Pradesh, there is some evidence to suggest that sexual service formed an integral part of bonded labour and servitude. One of the most extreme manifestations of this was a practice known as adi bapa in Telangana, where a landlord had the right to take the virginity of his servant’s bride on the wedding night (Kannabiran and Lalitha 1990: 182). This practice may now have died out but the idea that landlords have the right to the bodies of their workers still persists. Often seen as natural and inevitable, sexual abuse is often overlooked, ignored and tolerated. Although mostly forced by circumstance into the public domain, working-class female labourers are assumed to be already sullied, not worthy of respect and potentially violable. The view from the palli is of course very different. From a Dalit perspective, the sexual exploitation of Dalit women is perhaps the single most humiliating feature of their caste position. Part of the shame of poverty for Dalit men is the inability to protect their women and keep them inside the house. As Omvedt remarks, ‘the inability of the low castes to repress their women was their shame’ (2000: 189). Dalits’ material poverty and political disempowerment mean that until now women have had to work and Dalits have been unable to take action against those who insult them. If Dalit women symbolise Dalit identity, rape ensured that this identity was one characterised by shame. As Dalits begin to escape economic dependency and gain greater political influence, Dalit men have become increasingly less tolerant of this kind of mistreatment. We are now seeing Dalit politicians using the language of honour to mobilise supporters,10 a rhetoric that is both a reflection of the concerns of ordinary Dalits at the local level and a mechanism for entrenching honour further. 10 Nicholas Jaoul quotes a speech from a Dalit Panther leader who ‘urged the Dalits to take out weapons whenever the honour of the sisters and mothers of the community was threatened’ (2007: 188). Hugo Gorringe (2006) has also drawn attention to the political rhetoric of honour, pride and shame, which incites Dalits to violence in the name of protecting women.

Introduction

15

As well as defending ‘their own’ women, there are indications that compromising upper-caste women’s honour is becoming a new form of Dalit assertion. In Tamil Nadu, Rogers (2008) argues that disenfranchised, frustrated Dalit college students are attempting to compensate for structural disempowerment through the ‘sexual conquest’ and ‘eve-teasing’ of upper-caste girls. Prem Chowdhry’s (1998, 2009) work on inter-caste marriage shows that far from seeing inter-caste relationships as instances of romantic love, upper-caste families believe them to be deliberate forms of Dalit attack (2009: 438). In light of the historical exploitation of Dalit women, it is likely that there is an element of retribution here: a desire for Dalit boys to ‘get their own back’ by ‘threatening the manhood of their oppressors’ (Kannabiran 2002: 260).11 Dalit men’s perceived and real advances towards upper-caste girls have evoked violent responses from upper-caste communities who seek to put Dalits ‘in their place’ for this serious transgression. Even when interactions are quite innocent, it is common for dominant-caste communities to make allegations, which are then used as a pretext for extreme violence. Occasionally this has included retributional public rapes and mass murder as in the case of the Chundur massacre in Andhra Pradesh (Kannabiran and Kannabiran 2003) and the two cases of rape and murder of Tamil Dalit women documented by Gabriele Dietrich (2003). Honour-oriented sexual politics seems to be a crucial part of the gruesome and growing phenomenon of caste conflict and atrocity in contemporary India (Nirula 1999, Rao 2009, Teltumbde 2008). But what bearing does this have on the intra-caste relationship between Dalit men and women and how might this help explain Dalits’ appropriation of paruvu-pratishta-gowravam in Nampalli? There are signs indications that conflict between the castes is resulting in gender conflict within the caste. Anandhi, Jeyaranjan and Krishnan (2002) suggest that both upper-caste men and Dalit men are responding to inter-caste conflict and competition by turning inwards and asserting greater control over their female kin. They argue that young Dalit men in rural Tamil Nadu display a form of 11

But as Kannabiran points out, ‘the reversal of the power structure merely replicates the earlier pattern and is restricted to an exchange in caste status without a radical redefinition of status power and hierarchy that challenges the basis of caste or patriarchal structures’ (2003: 260).

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‘hyper masculinity’, observed in styles of consumption, bodybuilding and grooming. The Dalit young men they studied show disdain for agricultural work but unable to find other employment, they are forced to rely on their sisters’ and mothers’ wages. And yet although they depend on their female kin, they also aggressively control them in the name of ‘protecting’ them from other men. Compensating for past abuse, Dalit men appear to be tightening control over Dalit women through an aggressive enforcement of ‘respectable’ behaviour. Anandhi et al. (2002) demonstrate how class and caste conflict is linked to Dalit ideas of masculinity and honour and how Dalit men’s response to these shifting circumstances is a gendered response with significant ramifications for women. Importantly, it shows how male dominance can become more pronounced when Dalits’ political, social and economic position strengthens.12 The above mentioned article is important because it brings empirical evidence to bear on a subject that several other scholars had identified but had not discussed in reference to everyday life: namely, Dalit patriarchy (Baghel 2009, Dietrich 2003, Gorringe 2005, Guru 1995, Kumar 2003, Malik 1999, Rege 2003, Subramaniam 2006).13 Although male dominance clearly exists at the household level as Rege’s (2006) collection of autobiographies illustrates, Dalit patriarchy and honour have been largely avoided in academic discussion of Dalits (Kapadia 2007).14 The literature on Dalit women focuses on Brahminical patriarchy but says little about the less visible (and more controversial) forms of domination exercised by Dalit men. This is not helped by the dominant narrative of Dalit 12

This article caused controversy on its publication. Dalits objected to their representation as perpetrators of violence against the upper castes (rather than their victims) and as the oppressors of their own women. Such a representation potentially undermines any political project which takes the oppression of Dalits as its starting point and as such is highly sensitive. 13 Baghel notes that domestic violence may be motivated by ‘placing a premium on notions of women’s “honour”, “purity” and “obedience”’ (2009: 234). Jogdand mentions domestic violence against Dalit women (1995: xiii) and in passing Bandhu speaks about, ‘the male superiority ideology’ (2003: 111). Vasanth and Kalpana Kannabiran acknowledge the internal differences within the Dalits when they say, ‘Caste in itself is not egalitarian but practices discrimination of age and sex is valid [sic] in all castes today including Dalits’. These general statements alert us to the issue although they do not elaborate much further. 14 Although the analysis is limited (in my view) by its use of the sanskritisation model, Pillai-Vetschera’s (1999) chapter is an exception.

Introduction

17

women’s victimhood in the sociological literature, which tends to give a flattened account of Dalit women’s agency.15 Whilst it is irrefutable that Dalit women are ‘weighed down by the oppressive hierarchies of caste, class and gender’ (Shah, Mander, Thorat, Deshpande, Baviskar 2006: 117), there is a tendency to represent Dalit women as heroic sufferers or passive victims (see also Paik 2009, Shirman 2004 on this point). In either romanticising or pitying Dalit women, the complexities of both Dalit women’s own subjectivities and the internal gender dynamics of the community are neglected. Consequently, we are left with a relatively one-dimensional view of Dalit women and little idea of what ‘Dalit patriarchy’ is and how it is operating at this historical juncture. The main reason for these shortcomings is that there are simply very few empirically based studies of Dalit women. Other anthropologists have considered gender in more detail but only as a single part of an overall study (see, for example, Ciotti 2010, Hardtmann 2009).16 This book attempts to respond to this gap and the vexed issue of Dalit patriarchy by exploring the lives of Dalit women in Nampalli in the context of broader socio-economic and political change in the Dalit community, the village and the area. The Dalit women described in these pages are neither victims nor heroines; like most ordinary people, they are complex, flawed and contradictory. Their stories address issues also found in recently (and not-so recently) published life histories and autobiographies of other Dalit men and women, most notably the extraordinary narrative of Viramma, the elderly Dalit agricultural labourer, singer and story-teller, recorded by Josiane and Jean-Luc Racine (1995).17 Although some parts of my informants’ stories do not fit into a neat analysis, I have decided to leave the women to speak for themselves to a certain extent, even if some of what they are telling us may seem extraneous to my argument. This may result in a more fragmented text but my intention is at least to give a sense of who these women are and how they perceive the world around them. In doing so, I 15 See for example, Baghel 2009, Shah, Mander, Thorat, Deshpande, Baviskar 2006, Prabhavati 1995, Punalekar 1995, Jogdand 1995, Rege 1995. 16 While there is a dearth of ethnographic studies, Dalit women’s literature is rich and informative (see, for example, Bama 2012, Moon 2001, Rege 2006, and the anthologies compiled by Satyanarayana and Tharu 2011, 2013). 17 All the names of people, villages and small towns have been changed to protect anonymity.

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hope to show that parvuvu-pratishta-gowravam is the theme of this book simply because it is one of the things that is most meaningful to my informants themselves. The book is laid out as follows: the following chapter describes and contextualises the situation of Dalits in Nampalli, highlighting the force of Untouchable shame and Dalits’ determination to reverse it. Chapter Three shows how Dalits’ improved socio-economic circumstances have given way to a ‘politics of culture’, a politics which has serious implications for gender relations. Chapter Four discusses the lives of Dalit women and shows how a relatively egalitarian set of gendered relationships is now becoming more honour-oriented (a process embraced and resisted by both men and women). Chapters Five, Six, Seven, and Eight illustrate this through the life stories of the three protagonists. Chapters Five and Six (about Leela) show the ways in which one particularly high-status Dalit family gained, lost and regained paruvu-pratishta-gowravam and uses this case to illustrate trends in marriage, education and upward mobility. Chapter Seven (about Vani) discusses the ways in which men bring shame too (through alcoholism, adultery, violence or other moral mistakes) but shows that even when shame is caused by men, women are often considered culpable. Chapter Eight (about Kalyani) discusses the conflicting imperatives of paruvu-pratishta-gowravam on the one hand and women’s empowerment through state-led development programmes on the other. It shows how jobs which require women to move freely and act independently necessarily result in them ‘going beyond their limits’ and compromising their reputation. Throughout these four chapters we see how women are active agents in both driving the imperatives of honour forward as well as resisting, restraining and re-shaping them. In the concluding chapter I return to the themes raised in this introduction: honour, gendered upward mobility and the ‘Dalitisation’ of patriarchy.

ENTRY, METHODOLOGY AND ETHICS Although I knew coastal Andhra Pradesh and Guntur district from previous voluntary work with an NGO (1999–2000) in the area, I settled on Nampalli more by accident than design. When I was based in the University of Hyderabad learning Telugu and looking for a fieldwork site, a Dalit post-graduate student offered to take me to the village of his relatives, Nampalli, to attend the Madiga

Introduction

19

annual festival. It happened to be in the same district in which I had previously worked but I was new to this particular area. My friend’s aunt and uncle, Mariamma and Rayappa, lived in a fourroomed concrete house in the Madiga palli with Rayappa’s mother, Nagamma, and their four teenage children.18 The festival (which I would attend again the following year) was a fascinating event, the village seemed safe and resources not too scarce. I liked the family and since they did not seem too offended by me, I asked about the possibility of undertaking fieldwork there. After discussions, the family agreed to have me, the rent was settled and although I did not have a room of my own, I had some shelf space and a cot set aside. As sleeping arrangements varied according to the season, I often shared a cot with Leela, the teenage daughter, or Nagamma, the grandmother, or on a mat on the floor in whichever part of the house the other women were sleeping. I lived in this household for the two research periods on which this book is based: fifteen months in 2004–5 and six weeks in March-April 2009. My research was coloured by this initial decision. For a start, my material is biased towards Madigas since these were the people with whom I had the closest relationship. But also the fact that I was associated with this particular family, and with this particular community, meant that to a certain extent I was forced to share the loyalties and enemies of my hosts. This opened doors to some information and firmly closed others. In my naivety, I asked permission of the Dalit leaders to stay in the palli but I did not ask the permission of the sarpanch of the village until sometime later. By this time it was too late and the sarpanch was distinctly hostile. I should have known that the territory of the village, including the Dalit colonies is under the jurisdiction of the village leaders and in failing to present myself on arrival I had effectively bypassed their authority. The fact that I had taken Dalit authority as sufficient pleased the Dalits but did nothing but reinforce the on-going tensions between the Dalits and the upper castes. That said, had I sought permission from the sarpanch, I cannot imagine he would have recommended that I stay in the Dalit colony. Upper-caste hostility was not the only difficulty. As with most anthropologists, villagers were suspicious of me at first, assuming I was from a Christian organisation or a Non-Governmental 18

All personal and place names are pseudonyms.

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Organisation (NGO) and that I was there to give financial or other assistance. The worst aspect of this was that people suffering destitution or illness sought me out to ask for help. My inability to do much to help them was one of the most difficult aspects of fieldwork. Adjusting to a labouring community in which life is lived at fever pitch, where one witnesses quarrels, violence and alcoholism on an almost daily basis, and which suffers the strains of poverty and overcrowding was not at first easy. My encounter was not dissimilar from Michael Moffatt’s (1979) or Cecelia Busby’s (2000) candidly told experiences. At the start, people would crowd round and look at me, fingering my clothes and hair and asking me questions about my air fare, my salary, and the crops grown in England. At the start, I could barely understand what people were saying and I began to suspect that they were laughing at me. Babies were frightened of me and the children would point and call me ‘telammayi’, ‘white girl’. I appeared comical to adults too; I did not know how to eat properly, how to sit, how to speak, I did not know how to wash my own clothes and I was inept at household tasks. I was taller, larger and clumsier than everyone around me. But like a child, I was utterly incapable. No one understood why I was there and the more bewildered they seemed at my presence, the more I began to question my purpose there, too. As someone who had imagined herself a relatively competent individual, this experience was disabling: an erosion of one’s sense of self. To them, at this stage, I was an incomprehensible oddity, albeit a fascinating one from the mythologically modern West. There was little respite from all the attention. Although the house had a latrine and a small washroom, the family generally preferred to wash and excrete outside. The women assumed I would too and they took me with them to the fields, instructing me all the while. This embarrassing hospitality continued at home as the family insisted on doing everything for me, even fetching and carrying water for my bucket bath. One evening I lost my temper with children who I caught peeking through the door as I washed. In this defeated state of mind, the heat was intolerable. In May, temperatures hover around 47 degrees Celsius and in the afternoons the whole palli silently throbs with heat. Unlike in the uru, there are no shady trees in the palli so one is forced inside the concrete houses, which become like ovens in the summer. Incapacitated by heat stroke twice, I was stunned by Dalits’ ability to work in the fields in such temperatures.

Introduction

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As the hot season passed and my Telugu improved, I started to adjust to life in the palli. The novelty of my presence wore off, the initial suspicion subsided and I began to form friendships. Bit by bit, I was left to do things on my own and I was accepted as a strange but innocuous temporary member of the community. I was not considered completely useless, however. That a supposedly rich foreigner had chosen to live with Madigas in preference to everyone else was interpreted as proof of their improved status. The eventual openness, generosity, affection and warmth with which I was treated in the palli stood in stark contrast to the coolness with which I was received in the uru. This hostility was not because I was seen as ‘Untouchable’ myself or tainted by my hosts; it was more to do with the fact that the upper castes assumed that my sympathies lay with those whom they regard antagonistically. There were some notable exceptions, namely my own host family’s employers and patrons, one particularly progressive Kamma family, the ex-village president and the Brahmin doctor. These people were especially helpful and without them my knowledge of the uru would have remained very limited. My methods included a household survey of the Mala and Madiga palli from which I was able to gather information about the marriage practices, educational levels, occupation, migration, land ownership and tenancy, religion and incomes of almost every member of each family in both Dalit colonies. I also collected genealogies of all the families in the Madiga palli, cross-checked and extended with their relatives outside the village in the local area. Through these I collected detailed information about kinship, marriage, education, employment and residential patterns over three generations. In the latter half of fieldwork, Joji, a Madiga history graduate who had grown up in the area came to assist me with research. Towards the end of fieldwork, based on a detailed map of the village I had drawn, I collected comparable basic data in the uru among a representative sample of each caste group and conducted fifty-two semi-structured interviews among all the caste groups in the village, sometimes with Joji but often without, because for some interviewees his caste identity proved an issue. These interviews included attitudinal questions about caste relations, which I only addressed to those I felt would be comfortable answering. Even so, mapping the sensitivity of the issue was illuminating in its own right.

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Research in the Mala and Madiga palli was more enjoyable. I recorded individual and group interviews on specific issues among people who mostly liked to talk about their experiences and who often wanted me to tape our conversations. In moments of doubt during writing up, I found it extremely useful to refer back to people’s recorded words, transcribed and translated verbatim. However, by far the most useful ‘method’ was learning to live in a Dalit community and observing day-to-day life as it occurred around me. It was only through participant observation that I understood how to evaluate, interpret and understand what people were saying to me and could tell when they were joking, exaggerating, underplaying an issue or leaving silences. As an outsider, it is only really possible to get a sense of how paruvu-pratishta-gowravam works if one lives alongside people to record the ‘off-stage’ goings-on of daily life: conversations at night, gossip, arguments, banal banter, these were far more informative than anything garnered by formal methods. Crucially participant observation allows one to weigh up people’s actual practices against their claims in conversation. Although I draw on interviews here, without one’s own house, it is remarkably difficult to conduct an individual interview for any sustained length of time in the palli. There is virtually no private area in which to hold a discussion and women especially have little free time. Even if I managed to arrange a time, curious passers-by would notice the tape recorder and immediately join in. At this point private discussions would come to a halt; the interviewee would remember her mounting chores and disappear. The request for privacy also provokes consternation (‘Why should she have such special interest in this person? What secrets is she telling her?’). Much of what I was taught by my female informants comes not from formal interviews then but from conversations that took place whilst at work in the fields or on lunch breaks, whilst collecting grass for buffaloes in the early evenings, walking back home from work, in the kitchen, and during trips to visit family, the church or market. There is another problem with interviews. For a one-to-one interview to take place, the woman must want to talk about her experiences and must be able to express herself without embarrassment. These women are to some extent self-selecting; they are often the same women who are most interested to befriend and teach the outsider anthropologist and who do not care too much about ‘siggu’ (modesty, shame, shyness). Hence it is little surprise

Introduction

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that the women featured here are my closest friends in the palli and women whom for one reason or another do not conform to emergent standards of conservatism. In focussing on these women it may be suggested that they are unrepresentative of Dalit women as a whole. After all, their actions set them apart in some way from others. My intention, however, is not to represent all women (as if that were possible) but rather to look at how and in what way these women are seen to transgress. It is in identifying the sensibilities they offend that we may explore some of the normative structures that undergird Dalit concerns in everyday life. Doing fieldwork entails a leap of faith into the hands of complete strangers. Indeed, if upper-caste stereotypes of Dalits are anything to go by, the Dalit colony is a place of danger, dirt, disease and disorder. Had I been advised by non-Dalit villagers or urbanites, I may well have heeded their warnings and stayed away. As it was, my hosts were extraordinarily accepting: they welcomed me in not just as a tenant but as part of the family, fed me along with everyone in the house, looked after me and helped me with day to-day things, taught me about their culture and tolerated my foreign peculiarities not for a few weeks but for a year and a half. The more I think about it, the more humbled I am by their generosity. The fact that I was able to walk into the village, stay with a family there, enter their houses, chat on their doorsteps, observe public life, gather information and later produce a representation of their life without censure is not only because the people there were generous; as anthropologists now rightly recognise, our presence in places like Nampalli is enabled by global class-based structural inequalities, which always render the poor more accessible than the rich. If one compares the experience of doing ethnographic fieldwork in, say, a global investment bank in Mumbai with research among illiterate Dalits in the countryside, it is clear that questions of access and representation are inevitably also questions of power. This means the researcher has a responsibility towards his/her informants who are vulnerable in this encounter. Without compromising one’s commitment to empiricism (describing, interpreting and analysing what one perceives as social reality as faithfully as possible), the anthropologist must also judge what will and will not hurt her informant-friends. In the case of this book, these two mandates have been difficult to reconcile because my concern is with some of the most intimate

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aspects of Dalit life which some believe compromise honour simply in their presence on a page. A substantial part of this book is dedicated to a description and analysis of the elopement and subsequent marriage of the daughter of my host family, Leela. The decision to write about this entailed various ethical dilemmas, one of which was raised by my younger ‘brother’, Satish, in the field. One afternoon, Satish found my tape recorder and listened to the tape that I had left in it. It was an interview with his grandmother in which I had asked the meaning of prestige (paruvu). By this time I knew that prestige was centrally related to female sexuality and had not been surprised when she brought up the elopement. Tape recorder in hand, Satish angrily confronted me about it and fiercely abused his grandmother. She was characteristically indifferent, unceremoniously insulted him back and wandered off. When his mother came to see what the commotion was, Satish told her and he interrogated me about my intentions. I tried to explain that prestige is understood differently in my country, and this is why I wanted to find out about it. After discussion and deliberation, they agreed that I could write about it on the condition that none of the family members would be detrimentally affected by it. Consequently, I have been especially careful to preserve anonymity. I have decided not to include any photos of the village or its residents for this reason. All personal names and local place names have been changed. Even in casual conversations with friends who know the area, and with colleagues who have asked me in which village I did my fieldwork I have used the pseudonym, Nampalli, which has sometimes resulted in an uncomfortable but necessary dishonesty. In the introduction of Charred Lullabies, Valentine Daniel (1996) writes, ‘Accounts of violence ... are vulnerable to taking on a prurient form. How does an anthropologist write an ethnography... of violence without it becoming a pornography of violence?’ He goes on to comment that ‘flattening down’ an account of violence can also represent as much of a betrayal as ‘fattening up’ violence. The violence in Sri Lanka in the 1980s is incomparable to an individual woman’s experience here, but nevertheless, the same ethical dilemma arises. On the one hand, it was because the events affronted the family’s core values that they offered a privileged insight into some of the things that were most important to them. On the other hand, I could be justifiably criticised for using one family’s misfortune

Introduction

25

to garner anthropological knowledge. Apart from the discomfort of treating friends as ‘informants’, there is a broader consideration of whether anthropology represents a betrayal in which one uses personal relationships to get to grips with the inner workings of a culture. Susan Wadley (1994) explores this in the preface of her book. She describes how in the American Anthropological Association Newsletter, her host’s grandson, a college teacher in Connecticut, accused her of destroying his family honour by writing about them. As she says, such objections force us to consider, ‘whether it is possible to do truly ethical research or do our friendships mask our exploitation and betrayal of our friends?’ (1994: xxxvii). She accepts that writing about power relationships in an attempt to present ‘subaltern and female’ voices will not please everyone (ibid.). I know that my informants would not want the ‘shameful’ aspects of their stories read by outsiders; it is not the way they would want their community represented. What they would perhaps not realise is that the concept of paruvu-pratishta-gowravam will have little relevance among the readership and that the readers of this book would therefore not judge them to be ‘shameful’ people. However, I am aware also of this representation of Dalits falling into the wrong hands and potentially reinforcing derogatory stereotypes of Dalits. This is something that I obviously strongly wish to avoid but it can surely only occur in the most distorted and inaccurate of misreadings. Ethically speaking, there is perhaps no definitive answer to these dilemmas. But I should perhaps point out the spirit in which this book was written. That is, with an admiration for the Dalit community in which I lived for a year and a half and with great affection for all the members of my host family with whom I shared many personally difficult as well as joyful moments during fieldwork. My aim is not cause shame but rather to try to comprehend some of the values and ideas that inform life in the palli and especially changing patterns of gender relations. It is also worth saying that I believe it is of acute importance to analyse those social trends that potentially disfavour Dalit women and this book represents my contribution to that aim. In the book, I suggest that there has been a shift in gender relations over time. Without longitudinal data, however, it is of course very difficult to establish this conclusively. I have tried to make up for this deficit in four ways. Firstly, I use similar studies from comparable field sites in other parts of India in earlier periods. Secondly, I rely on the life histories and oral testimonies of three generations of Dalits in

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Nampalli and compare their accounts of education, marriage, labour, reproduction and conditions of life in general. Third, I use detailed genealogies to triangulate this information and fourth, I look at Dalit women in households of slightly differing class positions in Nampalli today in order to infer broad trajectories of upward mobility. Of course, people may choose different paths but even so, patterns can be discerned. My initial task is to locate these women’s stories in the wider context in order to understand the onus for women to keep ‘within their limits’.

2 Contextualising Dalit ‘Shame’

T

his chapter offers some historical, political and economic background to contextualise the situation of Dalits in Nampalli today. Here, I examine some of the elements that constitute Untouchable ‘shame’ as it has existed up until now and Dalits’ determination to improve in the future. This chapter paves the way for the following two chapters, both of which show how Dalits’ improved socio-economic circumstances have given way to a ‘politics of culture’ (Chapter Three), which in turn has important implications for gender relations (Chapter Four). To understand the desire for honour, we need to know something of the relationship between shame, poverty and Untouchability. This chapter looks more closely at the flip side of paruvu-pratishtagowravam, showing how Dalits have been excluded from this and other economies of moral value. Through a combination of disadvantages, Dalits have been constituted through idioms of subordination (Mosse 1996). But today as their position improves, Dalits in Nampalli and elsewhere are beginning to alter this. Since my primary concern is with the contemporary meanings that Dalits attribute to paruvu-pratishta-gowravam, I am wary

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of drawing too direct a link with its historical antecedents. However, reference to the genealogy of these terms may help to contextualise their usage in Nampalli. Although derived from the Sanskrit word, gaurav (honour, glory or majesty), the Telugu word gowravam translates most accurately as ‘respect’ in everyday language. The Sankrit-derived term pratishta literally means ‘standing’; it refers to someone established, someone with a good reputation. But both reputation and respectworthiness are judged on the basis of one’s accumulated honour and prestige (paruvu). Honour and shame refers to a value system especially central in Hocartian analyses of caste, which takes the king rather than the Brahmin as central. In these analyses, the caste system itself is a system of honours (Appadurai 1977, 1981; Dirks 1987, Quigley 1993, Raheja 1988a, 1988b).1 In the monarchical cultures of precolonial India, for instance, Dirks argues ‘the prevalent ideology had not to do, at least primarily, with purity and pollution, but rather with royal authority and honour, and associated notions of power, dominance, and order’ (Dirks 1987: 7). In these courtly societies, sovereignty was established through gifts, patronage, rights to land, titles and honours (ibid.). Through land, property and wealth, the king would display his ability to provide for his dependents thus establishing his ritual and practical legitimacy as ruler among his subjects. In return, they would perform various duties and services, and give political and military support. Aspects of honour-related customs and values are found in the present day insofar as, ‘kingship provides a model for others to emulate by replicating the king’s rituals on a lesser scale’ (Quigley 2005: 126). This means that even where kingship no longer exists, it has been replaced by the ritual centrality of the dominant landholding castes who despite the nominal superiority of the Brahmin, stand at the centre of ritual organisation, gift-giving, patronage and the conferral of honours in village life (Raheja 1988: 516). The distribution of honour reflects and maintains the class structure to the extent that it is tied to wealth, land and power. It is these that enable a man to acquire dependents and display largesse (Wadley 1994: 97–99). In 1 In Weberian sociology, honour and status are closely linked. The existence of the ‘status group’ hinges on the recognition, distribution and withdrawal of the intangible goods of honour, esteem and prestige.

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the local politics of Andhra Pradesh, ideas of honour appear to be especially pronounced among the politically dominant castes, the Kammas and Reddys (Price 1996, 2006). 2 In Andhra, the most important way in which honour is both recognised and conferred is through the practise of mariyada.3 And it is through mariyada that these idioms of dominance are most easily observed in everyday life. While there is no exact translation of the term mariyada it might be understood broadly as ‘giving respect’, ‘giving importance to’, ‘marking appropriate distinction’, deference or simply politeness. Speaking of the Tamil equivalent (mariyatai), Diane Mines explains, Mariyatai means ‘distinction’. It is the most prevalent idiom of rank and social differentiation in Tamilnadu ... To give mariyatai (mariyatai kotu) is to enunciate and create social distinctions among interacting and transacting persons. Mariyatai is a relational product, something people produce when they give and receive. Since people give and receive everything from food to ash and words to gestures, mariyatai 2

In Andhra Pradesh, ‘respect’ has overtly political connotations, associated as it is with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) founded by the film-star politician, N.T. Rama Rao. It was on basis of ‘Telugu Jati Atma Gowravam’ (‘Self Respect of the Telugu People’) that the TDP gained popularity and advanced the political interests of the non-Brahmin castes (particularly the Kammas) from the 1980’s onwards. Influenced by Periyar’s Self-Respect Movement in Tamil Nadu, non-Brahminism was conceived of in radical opposition to notions of honour, emphasising instead the egalitarian principles of the ‘original’ non-Brahmin peasant castes as a challenge to Brahminical dominance. However, I hesitate to link Dalits’ use of gowravam too closely with Periyar’s non-Brahmin notion of ‘Self Respect’. Firstly, the TDP’s notion of Self-Respect is nowhere near as radical as Periyar’s; its political outlook is far closer to the DMK. Secondly, Dalits use of the word gowravam is almost certainly different from Telugu Atma-Gowravam. This is largely because the TDP is seen to be a ‘Kamma’ party which represents the interests of those with whom Dalits are in direct conflict. Therefore, I would argue that gowravam has resonance among Dalits in spite of its connection with Telugu Self-Respect rather than because of it. If anything, Dalits have re-fashioned gowravam away from the TDP’s notion of Atma-Gowravam and have imbued it with their own significance. The TDP’s campaign manipulated values that were already culturally embedded just as Dalits are drawing on them today to quite different ends. Gowravam is a social principle that is flexible enough to accommodate the desires and aspirations of very different class- and caste-interest groups at different points in time, be it Dalits in the first decades of this century or non-Brahmins in the later decades of the last. 3 Mariyada is the Telugu equivalent to mariyatai in Tamil and operates in an identical manner (see Mines 2005).

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As Mines says, in contemporary South India, mariyada is most obvious and formalised during life cycle ceremonies and temple worship. In the temple, lines of worshippers form to receive ritual items (ash, vermillion, the camphor flame). These lines reflect social precedence; the most important people stand in closest proximity to the temple’s inner chamber and receive ritual items first. But this principal of distinction is also observable in all aspects of everyday life. At wedding feasts the most important people are served first and positioned in the best seats. At work, a labourer may show his landlord mariyada by addressing him as lord or sir. In the household, a woman will serve the senior men first, giving them the best parts of the curry. A host shows mariyada by greeting a guest properly, offering him a seat and a glass of water. Forms of mariyada create and mark inferiority and superiority: it is visible in the interaction between women and men, Dalits and the dominant castes, men and gods. Just as a man may prostrate himself on the ground before a god, so a woman might touch the feet of her husband, so a Dalit may lower his lungi and hang his head before his employer. All of these displays of mariyada single out and distinguish the recipient, and position the giver and receiver in relation to each other (Mines 2005: 83). For this reason, scholars of South Asia have considered these lines of mariyada a privileged site to observe the expression and production of social rank and its contestation (Appadurai 1981, Appadurai and Breckenridge 1976, Dirks 1987, Fuller 1984: 44–7). What is the basis of honour? According to Wadley (1994: 36–67), ‘understanding’ is at its root. She argues that the superiority of men over women; high castes over low castes; adults over children is founded on folk ideas of innate and acquired knowledge and understanding. To her informants in the north Indian village of Karimpur, ‘understanding’ and wisdom legitimates the power of superiors. In an ideal system, the rightful power of wise superiors is believed to maintain the social and moral order (dharma). Dalits are seen as equivalent to women in their lack of understanding, knowledge and self-control. Like women, they are thought of as closer to nature and wilderness: powerful but dangerous. Like women, they are absorbers of polluted substances, and as dependents they

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are the recipients of food, clothing and gifts (and also beatings and abuse). As such, they are seen as in need of protection, guidance and leadership. This formulation helpfully allows us to understand the homologous relationship of gender and caste ranking (men are to women what high castes are to the low castes). The important point for us here is that in all these calculations of caste honour and respect, Dalits come out at the very bottom. Traditionally, in all the lines of mariyada, if Dalits figure at all it is right at the end, as the lowest of the low. As Mines says, the flow of mariyada tends upwards to superiors (to gods, goddesses, kings, landlords, masters, employers, men, husbands, political leaders), while subordination flows downwards in exchange (ibid.: 94). Dalits give mariyada and they receive chinnatanam, ‘smallness’ or subordination. Dalits stand furthest from the deity during temple worship; they stand outside the temple grounds and they receive the ritual blessings and blessed food (prasadam) last, after everyone else, en masse, without distinction. At the wedding feasts of their highercaste patrons, Dalits are served indiscriminately and last of all, after everyone else, given the tail end of the meal or leftovers. While the most distinguished guests might be served on plates of gold, silver or brass, Dalits bring their own plates (or are given disposable ones) so as not to pollute their hosts’ vessels. Both mariyada (for the uruvallu) and chinnatanam (for the Dalits) are produced when Dalits are prevented from riding bicycles, wearing shoes or new clothes through the uru or when Dalits go to the houses of the uruvallu to deferentially ask their landlords for curries, buttermilk and pickle or when men wear loincloths or women wear threadbare saris without a blouse. In Nampalli and villages across India, Dalits’ past is characterised by reliance on the upper castes: for work, credit, food, protection and literacy. Upper-caste protection and provision was critical to their survival. This, Dalits say, was the time of ‘bhayam bhakti’, ‘feardevotion’, when they were to their masters as humans are to the gods: dependent, fearful, devoted (cf. Price 2006: 305). For those Dalits who accept high-caste superiority (generally today only elderly Dalit women), this relationship may be characterised by affection and pride (abimanan) like the bond between a parent and child. However, for those Dalits in pursuit of autonomy, patron-dependency today represents a shameful enslavement from which they try to withdraw whenever they can. Most Dalits perceive dependency to be the most

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important contributor to the shamefulness of Untouchable identity, an identity which today they are determined to consign to the past. Dalits’ traditional status as a subordinate people unworthy of respect comes mainly from their position as clients, servants and labourers. But it also comes from their lack of education, their poverty, their powerlessness, their perceived lack of ‘culture’ and self-control, their symbolic position in between animals and humans as well as their ritual role as the polluted absorbers of impurity. Dalit subordination should be understood, then, as a matrix of interlocking disadvantages: symbolic, political, educational, ritual, social and material (Mosse 1996, 1999).This system of ‘cumulative deprivation’ (Oommen 1990: 255) powerfully renders Dalits the lowest of the low. Dalits may not accept the low status accorded to them but to be part of society at all, they have no choice but to accept at least some of these principles of value. In Nampalli, I suggest that it is on the basis of one particular set of principles (paruvu-pratishta-gowravam) that Dalits are today seeking to change the terms of their existence in the village. Having broadly outlined some of the elements of Dalit shame (or ‘small-ness’), in the remainder of the chapter, I discuss the ways in which this mesh of subordination is now weakening. Below, I outline Dalits’ political and economic position in the state, district and village in recent historical perspective. I describe the influence of Dalit politics, education, affirmative action, alternative employment and state welfare programmes to argue that as conditions improve, Dalits in Nampalli (like their counterparts elsewhere in India) are able to eschew aspects of Untouchable shame. As they escape the structural position of dependents and labourers and become educated and politically conscious, they not only defy their divinely-assigned lowliness, they also begin to be able to claim respect and honour in the same way as others around them. Subordinate groups are using the principles of rank to both appropriate and subvert the hierarchies that degraded them in the first place (Wadley 1994). They are using the tools of their degradation to elevate themselves. This is changing the very meaning of what it is to be Dalit. If subordination is constitutive of Dalit identity then Dalits may escape being Dalit if they can adopt the attributes and behaviours of those who have honour. Although they must act in a way which is recognisable, it is important to remember that Dalits are not simply becoming more like the upper castes. They are simultaneously

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asserting a distinct Dalit identity. This leads me to suggest that a Dalit ‘politics of culture’ exists hand in hand with paruvu-pratishtagowravam. Key to both, as it happens, is the respectability of women.

DALITS IN COASTAL ANDHRA AND GUNTUR DISTRICT Dalit subordination should be located within a wider historical milieu. This is particularly important, as the situation of Dalits in Nampalli cannot be said to represent Dalits everywhere in Andhra Pradesh. The three parts of this state (Rayalseema, coastal Andhra (formerly the Madras Presidency) and Telangana (formerly under the Nizam of Hyderabad)) were unified in 1956 and remain distinct in character. As this book goes to press, Telangana is about to become a separate state. Dalits in Telangana in particular are more impoverished and oppressed than their counterparts here (see Picherit 2009, Omvedt 1994, Robinson 1988). Nampalli, in contrast, is located in one of the most prosperous areas of Andhra Pradesh in Guntur district in the fertile plains of the Krishna delta. The farmland in this area is intensively farmed, irrigated by the Prakasam barrage and a network of canals running from the River Krishna. The agrarian economy of coastal Andhra began to flourish in the mid-nineteenth century when towns such as Guntur and Vijayawada became important centres of commerce, education and political activity (Omvedt 1994: 114). Coastal Andhra’s recent history is marked by caste conflict (Srinivasulu 2002). One of the most significant developments in twentieth century rural Andhra was the decline of the Brahmins and the rise of a rich agrarian peasant strata represented largely by two castes: the Kammas and the Reddys. This is apparent in patterns of land ownership. During colonial rule, Brahmins’ status as landowners was confirmed by the British who conferred on them proprietary rights through the inam settlement (1859–61) (Frykenburg 1965: 39). Brahmin land was generally leased out to the non-Brahmin castes (Reddys, Kammas, Kapus, Naidus and Telagas), who cultivated it. Frykenburg (1965), in his history of Guntur District from 1788–1848, says powerful Brahmin landlords such as these, [H]eld poor people in an economic thraldom next to slavery. In return for subsistence, seed and implements, the bondsman would give all of his produce to his village lord (or saukar [money lender]). If wise, a village lord not only kept his underlings from starvation but he also saw to their special ceremonial or psychological needs

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Dalit Women (weddings, pujas, &c). But even if a would be farmer escaped the net of the socio-economic system as it was drawn tight by the hands of the village leaders, he found that plots of zamindari land were either inalienable or unsaleable owing to debt, that small separate holdings (seri lands) along the riverbank were too expensive and too scarce, and that inams [tax-free lands gifted by rulers] of various kinds were so tenaciously held and so eagerly sought after that he had next to no chance of getting some land (1965: 6).

The exploitation of the peasantry through bonded labour and the entrenched system of stratification that existed during and beyond colonial rule is by now well known. But land ownership was only one aspect of Brahmin dominance. Brahmins held inherited positions as the village accountants (karanams), while the position of headman was taken either by another Brahmin or a Kamma, Reddy, Kapu or Raju. The headman had at his disposal several Dalit men (vettivallu) who acted as a kind of local police force, collecting debts and taxes, imposing sanctions by force. Frykenburg argues that although the British were nominally in power, it was the Niyogi and Desastha Brahmins who were actually in charge of the villages, carving out, ‘a state within a state’ (1965: 233). Brahmins in South India certainly took advantage of the educational opportunities provided by British rule, (Satyanaryana 2005, Yagati Rao 2003).4 They had a monopoly of higher level public offices in the Madras Presidency and dominated professions such as law, medicine, teaching and banking in cities and towns across Andhra. However, the sustained exodus of Brahmins from the rural areas to the cities meant that in villages such as Nampalli, control of land and local authority passed from Brahmin to nonBrahmin hands. This was not exactly a voluntary transfer. A large section of the lower agrarian strata, mainly from the Kamma and Reddy sudra peasant castes, combined to form the Justice Party and the kisan (farmer) movement which agitated against Brahmin dominance in the state. Under pressure from this group and the increasingly active landless poor, successive post-colonial governments passed rafts of 4 Among the college graduates of Madras University in 1920–21, for example, 64% were Brahmins, despite the fact that they comprised only 3% of the population (Vaikuntham 1982: 167 cited in Satyanarayana 2005: 9).

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land reforms.5 The main beneficiaries of these reforms were the former tenants and cultivators, namely the Kammas and Reddys. In 1956, Selig Harrison wrote, ‘The post war years were a boom for the Kamma farmers who own an estimated 80% of the fertile delta land. High prices for food and cash crops made many an Indian peasant proprietor rich, but for the Kammas presiding over land as fertile as any in India, the boom was especially potent’ (1956: 380). These castes reaped the benefits of the Green Revolution in the 1970s, which contributed to their rise as a rich, ‘caste-shaped’ agrarian class, which came to dominate society and politics in coastal Andhra. This is especially so in Guntur District, one of Andhra’s most productive agricultural areas. Here, Kamma and Reddy landowners enjoyed an affluence which allowed them to educate their children, and to expand into commerce, construction, transport and industry (Upadhya 1988, 1997). Economic power through land ownership went hand in hand with political activity for the Kammas and Reddys in Andhra Pradesh, who respectively make up 5 per cent and 7 per cent of the state’s population. Kammas are predominant in coastal Andhra, while the Reddys are more influential in Telangana and Rayalseema. Andhra politics has been characterised as a struggle between Kammas and Reddys for political supremacy (Suri 2002: 67). Selig Harrison (1960) argues that in response to the Reddy take-over of the Congress Party, the Kammas took over the Communist Party as a strategy to defeat them. While Weiner (1967) and Elliot (1970) argue that the rivalry between the two castes has never been clear cut, these two castes are undeniably the political elite in Andhra Pradesh and have produced some of its most prolific political leaders. In Guntur District, Kammas constitute the political elite of all parties (Venkateshwarlu 1992). But KammaReddy dominance was challenged in 2008 by the inauguration of Tollywood mega-star Chiranjeevi’s (now defunct) Praja Rajam Party, widely perceived to be a ‘Kapu’ party (Gundimeda 2009). It remains to be seen whether other such new parties will attempt to do the same. It was through the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) that the Kammas gained political supremacy.6 Under N. T. Rama Rao (NTR) the party 5 See Suri and Raghavulu (1996), Veeram Reddy (1987), P. R. Reddy (1987) and Herring (1983) for a discussion of land reforms and their implementation in Andhra Pradesh. 6 Congress politicians at the time ridiculed N. T. Ramarao’s election campaign, saying that it represented not Telugu Desam but ‘Kamma desam’ (land of the Kammas) (Srinivasulu 2002: 26).

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dominated state politics until 1989 when it was ousted by Congress. It returned to power under the leadership of NTR’s son-in-law, Chandra Babu Naidu, in 1994. Suri calls this moment, ‘the end of an era of charismatic, populist and autocratic politics and the beginning of a new political phase in Andhra Pradesh characterised by pragmatism and economic reform’ (2002: 37). Naidu was keen to liberalise and modernise Andhra Pradesh’s economy. He encouraged private enterprise and foreign investment, dismantled parts of the public sector and showcased Hyderabad as India’s IT capital. Having secured loans from the World Bank and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), Naidu ‘rationalised’ farming and restructured the state economy according to plans devised by American consultancy firm, McKinsey.7 Pragmatically keeping an eye on votes, he launched an array of welfare programmes including Janmabhoomi in 1997 (for ‘people-centred’ sustainable rural development) (ibid.). But Naidu’s urban bias led to a neglect of the rural farming population, seen especially in the withdrawal of subsidised rice and cheap electricity, increasing problems of indebtedness leading to thousands of farmer suicides in the state. Naidu was defeated in 2004 by the Congress Party led by Y. S. Rajashekar Reddy, who died in a helicopter accident in 2009. Finance Minister, Konijeti Rosaiah took his place until November 2010 when Congress leader, N. Kiran Kumar Reddy, the Chief Minister, at the time of writing was sworn in.8

DALIT PROTEST IN COASTAL ANDHRA The Green Revolution prosperity, the rise of a rich agrarian class represented by the Kammas and Reddys did not just coincide with the political ascendancy of Dalits, it was intimately connected with it. Out of a state population of eighty-four million, Dalits number approximately thirteen million, about 16 per cent of Andhra Pradesh’s total population.9 There are sixty-one Dalit castes in Andhra Pradesh but the majority are Malas and Madigas.10 With a population of over 7 George Monbiot, ‘Angel of Death: Clare Short is backing a plan that will impoverish 20 million people in Andhra Pradesh. Why?’ The Guardian Tuesday 2nd April 2002. See also Pimbert and Wakeford (2002). 8 Nagesh Kumar, S. Nagesh Kumar and W. Chandrakanth. ‘A Popular Backlash’ Frontline 21:11 May 22-June 04 2004. 9 Census of India, 2011. 10 From the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment website, accessed 20.12.2011 (http://socialjustice.nic.in/sclist.php)

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six million, Madigas are the largest Dalit caste, accounting for half of the total number of Scheduled Castes while Malas account for 42 per cent.11 Both of these castes are present across the state although there is a preponderance of Malas in coastal Andhra and Madigas in Telangana. In the 1980s, Guntur and districts like it saw increasing violence against Dalits perpetrated by the upper castes, just as Srinivas had predicted (1966: 93). One of the notable aspects of the ‘Dalit atrocities’ was that most of these attacks took place not in impoverished, feudal backwaters but right in the middle of the state’s most advanced and thriving countryside, and in the heartland of some of Andhra’s most vibrant and radical political movements (see Srinivasulu 2002). It seemed that here affluence, modernisation and democratic politics were exacerbating caste difference rather than weakening it (see also Rao 2009, Teltumbde 2008). It was not caste in itself that was to blame. The conflict has been linked to socio-economic disparities between the land-owning dominant castes and the landless Dalits and Backward Classes (Frankel 1971, Sharma 1973, Srinivasulu 2002). While the rich seemed to be getting richer, the impoverished landless lower castes remained largely unchanged. Labourers’ wages did not increase, tenancy became no more secure, and many found it as difficult as ever to gain access to good quality land and positions of influence in the village.12 Particularly among those Dalits who had secured education and employment through affirmative action policies, there were rumblings of a new consciousness, one markedly less tolerant of continuing exploitation. The post-Emergency period can be characterised by heightened tension between the agricultural labourers and tenants on the one hand and capitalist peasant farmers on the other as the latter became irritated with the advance of the low castes and their displays of non-conformity (Frankel 1971). Land reforms stoked the fires. Herring argues that, ‘Redistributive measures undertaken during the Emergency so incensed village oligarchies, particularly when “untouchable” communities were benefited, that incidents of class/caste repression—murder, rape, burnings, dispossession of land and house sites—frequently followed’ (Herring 1983: 137). He adds, ‘To alienate powerful people and yet 11

From the 2001 Census of India, figures from 2011 unavailable at the time of writing. This is despite the land reforms and the reservations that operate for SCs, STs, BCs and women for positions in the Panchayati Raj bodies at village, mandal and district level. 12

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leave power in their hands is to open the possibility of retaliation and retrogression when reformist regimes fall or the land reform team moves onto the next block; the post Emergency violence against outcaste beneficiaries of redistributive measures in India is one tragic example’ (Herring 1983: 286). The Dalit movement in Andhra Pradesh emerged against this backdrop but was sparked by two brutal massacres, both of which occurred in villages in the vicinity of Nampalli. The first attack was a catalyst for the Dalit protests of the 1980s. It was carried out by Kammas against Madigas in the village of Karamchedu in neighbouring Prakasam District in July 1985. According to the report by the Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee (1985), Madigas in Karamchedu were under exploitative systems of labour and land tenancy. In the 1983 elections, the Kammas were unable to enforce political loyalty and Madigas expressed their discontent by voting for the opposing party, Congress. On 16th July 1985, an argument broke out when a Madiga objected to a Kamma boy washing his buffalo with the Dalits’ drinking water. Later Kammas launched an attack upon the Madiga palli. They chased them from their homes, murdered six Madiga men, raped three Madiga women and injured many more. The second attack, in August 1991, was perpetrated by Reddys against Malas in Chundur, a village not far from Nampalli and into which several Nampalli Dalits have married (and vice versa). Below is a summary of Srinivasulu’s (2002) account, which describes the Reddys’ rising resentment against increasingly independent Malas in Chundur. As in Nampalli, Chundur Dalits were largely literate and politically aware. Most had access to wage labour outside the village, dozens had secured government employment in the railways department (Chundur is on a railway line), and a few had positions in the village administration. An incident between Reddy and Mala youths in a cinema hall was followed by a boycott of the Dalits by the Reddys, who instead employed outside labour to work in their fields. The eventual attack on the Dalits was launched not only by Reddys from Chundur, but also by their kin from other villages, allegedly armed with axes and iron rods. Eight Mala men died, and many others were injured in the conflict. What followed was not a class-based protest, but a social movement based specifically on caste and untouchability (Srinivasulu 2002, Suri 13

See Balagopal (1991) and Srinivasulu (2002) for a detailed discussion of the attack.

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2002).14 In contrast to the earlier campaigns, the Dalit assertion of the 1980s explicitly rejected any notion of Gandhian upliftment and directly confronted caste, Untouchability and the horrific violence associated with it. Responding directly to the outrage provoked by the Karamchedu massacre, in 1985 the Dalit Maha Sabha (DMS) was formed. Drawing on the political theories of Marx, Phule and Ambedkar, charismatic leaders such as Katti Padma Rao and Bojja Tarakam led the movement, declaring the annihilation of caste and demanding land, livelihoods and the removal of Untouchability (Balagopal 2005, Gundimeda 2009, Srinivasulu 2002: 46).15 In the early 1990s, there were signs of discontent from a section of Madigas within the DMS. Madigas disliked the dominance of Malas in the DMS and felt that it was symptomatic of a more deep-rooted problem: the marginalisation of Madigas by Malas in the state as a whole (Gundimeda 2009). Malas were far better represented in the higher echelons of education, politics and employment and their monopolisation of India’s affirmative action policies had allowed them to progress further (ibid.). Madigas were more numerous than Malas but as a more disadvantaged Dalit caste they were under-represented. Led by Krishna Madiga and Dandu Veeraiah Madiga, Madigas formed their own organisation called the Madiga Reservation Porata Samiti (MRPS) (The Madiga Society for the Struggle for Reservations) in 1994, also known as ‘Madiga Dandora’ (Gundimeda 2009). Their central demand (as their name suggests) was the categorisation of the SC reservation quota to ensure each Dalit caste obtained a fair share of state allocations.They campaigned for a four-fold sub-division of the reservations to prevent the better14 Dalit protest is not new in Andhra Pradesh, of course. In the decades preceding Independence, the Adi-Andhra movement represented by two Mala ideologues, Baghyareddy Varma and Arigay Ramaswamy, campaigned against Untouchability (Jangam 2005: 145). Other organisations, inspired by either Gandhi or Ambedkar, such as the Harijan Sevak Sangh, the Justice Party, Christian organisations and caste associations also fought against Untouchability (Omvedt 1994: 172). Dalit literature also emerged in the 1930s and is now proliferating (Satyanarayana 2005: 82–94, Satyanarayana and Tharu 2011). Moreover, the writings of Kabir, Ravidas and others bhakti poet-saints (seventh to the eleventh century) show that that even a thousand years ago, caste and Untouchability were not uncritically accepted (Mendelsohn and Vicziany 1998:22–26; Zelliot 2010) 15 As the movement matured, ideological differences caused the DMS to divide in 1991, with Katti Padma Rao leading one faction and Bojja Tarakam the other. Katti Padma Rao’s DMS joined with Kanchi Ram’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and suffered an almost fatal blow in their electoral defeat in 1994 (Srinivasulu 2002: 48).

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off Dalits from monopolising the government provisions laid out in the constitution (Balagopal 2000). The MRPS divided the Dalit movement and Bojja Tarakam’s Mala Mahanadu re-organised itself to directly counter the Madiga demand for categorisation (Balagopal 2000: 1078). The MRPS’s arguments clearly struck a chord with many Madigas and their simple, logical demand drew quick and extensive support. The Madiga campaign was also fortuitously timed. The TDP saw an opportunity in the growing divide between the Malas and Madigas and Chandra Babu Naidu’s government ordered the Raju Commission to investigate (Akhileshwari 1997). After receiving its report, the TDP government sanctioned the categorisation of the reservation quota (ibid.). This was a cause for celebration among the Madigas but it infuriated the Malas as well as various sections of the administration that argued that it was unconstitutional and set a dangerous precedent for India. Indeed, the Supreme Court has declared that state governments do not have the right to divide the reservation quotas since the Constitution states that SCs and STs are an indivisible group (Balagopal 2005). Although Madigas’ disadvantage is undoubted, in the long-term, the campaign has consolidated Malas and Madigas as separate political entities with divergent and competing interests.This growing chasm continues to stifle a united Dalit politics in the state and raises important questions about the political representation of different Dalit castes in general.

DALIT POLITICS AT VILLAGE LEVEL Dalit politics at the national level have their parallels in the village. The formalised political conflict between the Malas and Madigas at state level is in part a product of the Dalits’ pre-existing separation in their respective village pallis across Andhra Pradesh. But it has also invested the division with new political weight. In Nampalli, for example, Malas and Madigas are both Christian but they attend separate churches (Malas are Lutheran and Madigas are Roman Catholic, although in practice most are now Pentecostal). In general the two castes do not eat together, work in the same teams or inter-marry. Politically, both castes support (and are supported by) their own separate Dalit organisations and there are local representatives of the MRPS and DMS within both pallis.

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School, which otherwise might provide an environment for inter-caste socialising, instead reinforces their separation: Mala and Madiga children attend separate schools in the village and have little occasion to mix with each other. In fact, Malas and Madigas do not often enter the other’s residential area. Madiga children often followed me around but children as young as three had already learned the territories on which they should not set foot. As soon as I crossed over the road into the Mala palli, Madiga children stopped at the dividing road and waved goodbye. The conflict between Malas and Madigas in politics serves to cement the naturalised division learnt as children. Attitudes towards the term ‘Dalit’ are themselves a good illustration of the relationship between the two castes. While Malas and Madigas in Nampalli know this term, hardly any use it. Dalits in Nampalli refer to themselves using their caste names (Mala or Madiga) or the apparently more neutral term ‘SC’. Few use the word ‘Dalit’ largely because the political, religious, social and spatial divisions between Malas and Madigas are deep enough to render the unifying term ‘Dalit’ meaningless to them. However, as each caste turns inwards and competes against the other, Madigas seem to be veering away from the term ‘Dalit’ and Malas towards it. In 2009, my Madiga informants told me that they associated the word ‘Dalit’ with Malas. In fact, even Ambedkar (as a Mahar) is seen as a ‘Mala’ figure due to the perceived equivalence of Mahars and Malas as dominant Dalit castes (something that Ambedkar himself would have abhorred, of course). Madigas still admire and support Ambedkar but as a political figurehead he has become more closely associated with Malas. So for instance, while Mala communities seek to erect statues of Ambedkar, Madigas discuss the collection of funds for statues of their own idol, the Chamar freedom fighter and Dalit leader, Babu Jagjivan Ram.16 Similarly, having spoken out against the sub-classification of reservations, Madigas tend to see Mayawati as a Mala sympathiser. In response, Madigas support Meira Kumar, favoured not only as the daughter of Babu Jagjivan Ram but as an opposer of Mayawati, 16 Jagjivan Ram, a member of the National Assembly, allied himself with Gandhi in the Congress Party in the decades preceding Independence. He galvanised Dalits and formed the Depressed Classes League in 1937. As leather workers, Madigas identify with Jagjivan Ram because, they say, he is from an equivalent caste of leather workers, the Chamars. Having said that, this occupational commonality has not redeemed Mayawati to the Madigas despite her also being Chamar.

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I was told by Madiga informants in 2009. It seems that the Malas (as the dominant Dalit caste in Andhra) are becoming associated with other dominant Dalit castes in other parts of India. Concomitantly, Malas are linked with most of the dominant symbols of Dalit identity, including the name ‘Dalit’ itself. This clearly poses a problem for my use of the word ‘Dalit’ in this book. I have chosen to use the term Dalit as a necessary shorthand but in recognition of the problematic nature of the term, where possible I prefer to employ the specific caste names as my informants do. This is not to say that the relationship between Madigas and Malas is purely antagonistic. Both castes have a great deal in common: they clearly recognise a collective history of anturanitanam (Untouchability), and like Dalits across India they express anger about their historical humiliation as Untouchables. In Nampalli, Mala and Madiga men socialise with each other at night in drinking hut and in the public areas of both pallis. They join locally celebrated Dalit events such as Ambedkar’s birthday and (despite being nominally Christian) a few men from both castes have joined an Ayappaswamy cult led by a devotee in the Mala palli. Dalits’ strategies for respectability are also similar, although even Madigas concede that Malas are on the whole socio-economically more advanced than Madigas. Dalit women particularly show signs of inter-caste mobilisation in certain circumstances (as Chapter Eight illustrates). Women of both castes work together in the fields (although not in the same teams). Women workers have gone on strike together, and women occasionally attend Christian events outside the village (although they attend their own separate churches within the village). Notably, in 2008, a number of Mala and Madiga women from Nampalli travelled to Hyderabad to support the prolific Dalit leader, Katti Padma Rao,17 who had promised Dalit women supporters half an acre of land in return for their membership. Unsurprisingly, nothing came of this but it shows that when problems specific to Dalit women are addressed, they are prepared to unite across the Mala-Madiga divide, something also illustrated by the AntiArrack movement led by Dalit women in the early 1990s (Reddy and Patnaik 1993, Rahman 2003). The potential for inter-caste 17 For a summary of the political biography of Katti Padma Rao, see Gundimeda (2009).

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female mobilisation is something recognised at a broader level by the Dalit feminist organisations that were launched in the 1990s (Baghel 2009, Gorringe 2005, Guru 1995, Rao 2003, Rege 2003, Subramaniam 2006). Although the impact of these groups has yet to reach Nampalli, it is likely that they will attempt to build on the forms of Dalit women’s cross-caste organisation that already exist.

NAMPALLI: CASTE AND CASTE RELATIONS In this section, I sketch out caste relations in Nampalli in relation to the state-level caste conflict that I have just described. Nampalli is comprised of twelve different castes, listed according to their size in the table below. These castes no longer carry out their traditional caste occupation (kula vruthi) or live according to the rules of a ritually-organised caste system. However, caste (kulam), as a form of identification invigorated by caste-based politics and state policy, is the most common way in which people relate and refer to each other.

CASTES IN NAMPALLI (2004)) Caste 1 Kamma (Sudra) 2 Mala (Dalit) 3 Madiga (Dalit)

Traditional Occupation

Principal Occupation

—

338

Hindu, Christian Christian

44

198

Christian

SC

Agricultural 21 labourers Priests, Accountants Owner10 (karanam) cultivator, 6 Chakali Washermen Washermen, 9 (Sudra) Tradesmen, Agricultural labourers 7 Komati Merchants, Traders, Traders, Money 5 (Vaishya) Money lenders, lenders, Shop keepers

84

OBC

35

Christian, Hindu Hindu

—

36

Hindu

OBC

17

Hindu

—

4 Goud (Sudra) 5 Brahmin

Cultivators Village servants, Funeral attendants Leather workers, Shoemakers, Drummers Toddy Tappers

Ownercultivators Agricultural labourers Agricultural labourers

House- Approx Religion State holds Population Category 118

520

75

SC

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Caste

Traditional Occupation

8 Muslims — 9 Mangali Barbers (Sudra) 10 Kummara Potters (Sudra)

11 Naidu (Sudra) 12 Lambadi (Tribe)

Cultivators Itinerant traders

Principal Occupation

House- Approx Religion State holds Population Category

Tailors Barbers

5 2

19 9

Muslim Hindu

OBC OBC

Salesmen, cook, Agricultural labourers Ownercultivators Agricultural labourers

2

7

Christian

OBC

1

4

Hindu

—

1

9

Hindu

ST

The social organisation of Nampalli is fairly typical of the region. Kammas are the ‘dominant caste’ in the village. True to Srinivas’ (1955) typology, they are the most numerous single caste in the village (constituting a third of the village population); they own almost all of the village land, they dominate structures of local governance and a few families have profited immensely from coastal Andhra’s Green Revolution. Kammas have the highest levels of education and almost all Kamma children attend private schools outside the village. Like dominant castes elsewhere in India, Kamma farmers are now substantially investing in education to secure their sons’ futures.18 This is not to say all are well off. A minority of Kammas are landless, relatively poor and engaged in wage labour like the Dalits. Even the majority of owner-cultivators in Nampalli own very small landholdings (on average, three to five acres); they generally work on their land themselves and combine farming with other incomegenerating activities such as tailoring or small jobs in town. But the wealthiest Kamma families (those with ten or more acres of irrigated land) employ the village Dalits as labourers or lease their land to tenants, employing managers or family members to supervise the labour. Many of the wealthy landowning families have diversified into the agri-businesses of the area (storage facilities, processing units for crops, agricultural machinery, the sale and distribution of fertiliser and pesticide, investments in poultry farms and dairy facilities). The 18 See Jeffrey and Lerche (2001), Jeffrey (2005, 2008a, 2010) for a comparison with Jats in Uttar Pradesh.

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most successful of these farmers have formed an elite who monopolise village politics and dominate local structures of governance. At the opposite end of the social spectrum, Malas and Madigas together comprise a third of the village population. As I illustrated in the opening paragraphs. The Dalit colonies are distinguishable from the rest of the village by their poverty. They have fewest facilities, the smallest roads and the most ramshackle houses. Most of the Dalits work as agricultural labourers on Kamma land. Today there are only ten Brahmin households, divided into two subsections: the Niyogis, the village accountants (karanam) and the Vaidikis, traditionally priests. Hereditary occupations have been abandoned and now the two Vaidiki families today contain two doctors, a kindergarten teacher, a government health worker and a sales manager for an ice cream company. The largest Brahmin family holds over ten acres of land and lives comfortably in an old teak house, while the poorest households contain elderly couples on meagre state pensions, supported by city-dwelling children. Although the Vaidiki priest of the Siva temple is the ritually ‘purest’ of the village residents he is among the least affluent, and unlike most of the Kamma children, the priest’s daughters study in the village primary school alongside the Madiga children. Komatis live in the centre of the village and through their small businesses and shops they are relatively affluent. The Gouds, Mangalis, Chakalis and Kummaras constitute the so-called Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in Nampalli. These castes live between the Kammas in the north and the Dalit colonies in the south. The Gouds largely work as labourers and tenant farmers although some still do ‘toddy tapping’ to supplement their income. Even though they are economically on a par with their Madiga and Mala neighbours (in fact some of their housing is poorer), Gouds (and the other OBCs) consider themselves (and are seen as) superior. The Goud Christians, for example, worship alongside Kamma converts in a newly-constructed church or in the house of the Kamma female pastor in the uru, not with the Dalits in their churches. Two of the Chakali families continue their caste occupation of washing clothes, as does the Mangali barber, although these castes work in exchange for money, not as an obligatory service. Two Chakili families make a living selling milk to a company in Vijayawada whilst other Chakilis are labourers.The two Kummara families (traditionally potters) work

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as vegetable vendors and a school cook. Muslims live in the south of the village, just over the palli-uru divide. Most of the Muslims are tailors and are of a similar socio-economic status as the other OBC castes. They are distinctive in terms of language, (they speak Deccani Urdu as well as Telugu), diet, and religious practice but they are still regarded as a caste (kulam). There is no uncontested hierarchy of castes in Nampalli but economic power and political authority clearly run along caste lines. Previously, each caste had leaders, known as peddalu, who resolved disputes, imposed sanctions and took decisions on behalf of the community. The caste peddalu still exist and they play an important ritual role in marriages, funerals and festivals. But in general, no one pays much attention to them anymore. The real authority in the village is held by the representatives of the political parties (generally the wealthy Kamma landowners) and the governance of the village operates through the Panchayati Raj system. Within the Panchayat committee, the job of secretary and president (sarpanch) are the most important. As a lower-level functionary of the state, the sarpanch has access to state resources for development projects, some of which are very lucrative. This means that the job of sarpanch is a coveted position and once backed by their respective political parties (either Congress or the TDP, at the time of writing) contenders invest substantial personal funds in village election campaigns. The position of sarpanch is subject to reservations on a rotating basis. In Nampalli there has been one woman and three Scheduled Caste village presidents. Two of the latter are described as ‘puppet’ sarpanchs who, according to my Dalit friends simply acted as proxies for their patrons and apparently were not even allowed to sit in the Panchayat office. But the most recent Dalit sarpanch, the (now deceased) brother of my Madiga host (discussed in Chapter Five), made some substantial changes in the village and by all accounts was an influential man. The situation in Nampalli follows a more general pattern: while the caste divisions between the upper castes diminish, the separation between Dalits and non-Dalits sharpens as the upper-castes sense their dominance increasingly encroached upon (Barnett 1977: 403, Bayly 1999: 323, 312; Parry 1999). The demarcation of space along caste lines means that barriers between these groups are naturally perpetuated. In Nampalli, one’s neighbours tend also to be one’s kin and caste fellows. These geographically-separated caste communities are not homogenous but they are remarkably similar in

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terms of income and educational levels, religious practices, customs, dietary habits, dress, language, patterns of socialisation and political interests. It is not just that an upper-caste person would have little occasion to befriend a Dalit, he would also have little in common with him and may well think of himself as part of the class of people that employ Dalits as labourers. Dalits are not fastidiously avoided in public but people tend to keep to their own areas and socialising is loosely segregated.19 The palli-uru divide reproduces and perpetuates this separation of castes and reflects their disparity. Dalits rarely enter inside high-caste homes and when they do, they go no further than the courtyard or veranda. It would still be unthinkable for most Dalits to sit on a cot or a chair alongside their landlords. However boisterous they are in their own neighbourhood, subordination is ingrained. I observed politically-assertive Dalit young men physically transform in front of their landlords: standing with arms folded meekly and head bowed, talking shyly when spoken to. Although often referred to in the literature as the ‘pollution line’, the division is less one of ritual pollution and more of social, economic and political difference (Deliège 2010). This is not to say ritual pollution (antu, maila) is irrelevant.20 In South Indian villages like Nampalli, there is an unmistakeable sense in which Dalits are seen as ‘contaminating’, although it is often unclear whether it is physical hygiene or ritual impurity at issue (Still 2013, 2014). If a Dalit asks for water, an upper-caste person would no longer pour water into their cupped hands but they may give them a glass which they would not use themselves and which they expect them to wash afterwards. Dalit labourers enter the courtyards of Kamma homes but they tend to call out from the road when they approach. If they do enter they express appropriate mariyada (politeness/respect) by speaking deferentially and avoiding physical contact. Men of different castes mix with each other in the drinking hut and in the Congress and TDP political meetings usually held on the roofs or courtyards of the village ‘big men’. During these mixed caste gatherings, there are no overt prohibitions on sharing food or drink. 19 The exception here is the drinking hut located near the road where the Mala palli meets the uru. Here men of different castes meet at night to drink together. 20 In the past, any contact with Dalits was considered polluting and would warrant ritual cleansing. Dalit informants told me that the upper castes used to burn some human hair in the spot where a Dalit had stood to erase pollution.

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Dalit Women

Even so, residential segregation along class and caste lines means that in practice inter-dining is not the norm, particularly not for upper-caste women. Dalits are invited to upper-caste weddings and feasts but knowing they will probably be served last and separately, they are keen to avoid the possibility of public humiliation so tend not to go. Dalits say that if the feast is hygienically served and lavish enough then upper-caste guests (often political allies) will attend. But in practice, if a Dalit host did invite any upper-caste male friends, they either politely declined or simply never showed up. As anthropologists consistently find, it is marriage practices that are most resistant to change. In Nampalli as elsewhere, inter-caste marriage between Dalits and non-Dalits is widely condemned; cases of it are rare and families go to great lengths to prevent it. In one of the rare cases I knew of a Dalit boy marrying a Kamma girl (his classmate) the Dalit boy in question came from outside the village, he was a journalist for a local newspaper, he was well educated and his family were relatively affluent. An inter-caste marriage between a Kamma girl and Dalit labourer from the same village is still almost unthinkable. Although there is no obvious evidence that Untouchability is still practiced in Nampalli, subtle distinctions between the ‘clean’ and the ‘unclean’ are made on a daily basis. The open wells in the village are no longer in use, each cluster of houses has a tap and the richer houses have their own. On the way to and from the fields, Dalit labourers fill their bottles and drink from the communal taps in the upper-caste areas and no one seems to raise any objection. But while the Dalits cannot be officially banned from any public area of the village and there is no overt discrimination such as the two-tumbler system, there are certain places where Dalits would be made to feel uncomfortable and where they know their presence would be taken as a challenge. One such place is the Siva temple. When asked why they avoid the temple, most Dalits say that as Christians they have no reason to go there. But they also know that they are unwelcome in that area. During the Vinayaka festival in August 2004, a few Dalit boys deliberately positioned themselves near the temple entrance and sat on its outer steps. This was taken as an act of provocation, which finally prompted a scuffle between the Dalit boys and a few incensed Kamma men. Similarly, my highly-educated urban Madiga friend who introduced me to the village made a point of taking me to the

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49

Brahmin priest’s house to ask him to open the temple. Significantly, my Dalit friend was of a higher class status than the Brahmin priest and a Christian. Both of us stood inside the temple while the priest stood in the chamber next to the Siva lingam and conducted a prayer. I paid a few rupees into the tray and the priest marked vermilion on my forehead. As a Christian Ambedkarite, my friend did not take part in the rituals or give money. The atmosphere was awkward. As a self-proclaimed enemy of Hinduism, I suspected that his presence in the temple was motivated less by a desire to show me the village customs than to test his right to enter the temple. Generally Dalits never enter the Hindu temples or the uppercaste churches in the uru or even visit the upper-caste teashops. Dalits walk through the Kamma and Brahmin streets on their way to work in the fields, to the Post Office or to their patrons’ houses. But unless it is for a particular reason, they avoid the area. Dalit men drink tea, smoke cigarettes and eat snacks in the centre of the village on the outer edges of the colony where the bus stops, but they rarely loiter further north. Madigas especially have a sense of ownership over the village school and its grounds because most of them went to school there. Together with Mala boys, they sometimes play cricket in the school playground but the upper-caste boys do not join them. Malas, Madigas and the ‘non-Dalit’ castes live relatively separately, and social life, marriages, funerals, feasts and festivals are conducted with neighbours and caste fellows. Notable in this regard is the fact that Dalits do not take part in the village Hindu festivals. Dalits celebrate Christmas, Easter, Palm Sunday the ‘January festival’ and the New Year on the 1st of January rather than the Telugu New Year, Ugadi, in April. The few Dalit Hindu families mark the Hindu festivals in their own separate celebration.21 On the whole, the upper-caste Hindu and Christian festivals are celebrated separately from the Dalits’. Whether this is because Dalits are actively excluded or because they choose not to participate is a carefully maintained ambiguity. The politicisation of caste and Dalit ‘caste pride’ is evident in the religious arena and Dalit communities assert their status in the village through their own respective churches. Not only do Malas 21 For example, during Sankranti in January, Dalit women draw chalk patterns (moogu) outside their doors, just as non-Dalits do in the uru, albeit in much less elaborate fashion.

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and Madigas build (or seek to build) their own churches as emblems of their own communities, the churches also use their public address systems to proclaim their presence in sound. Loudspeakers are wired up to the church so that the sermons, Bible readings, prayers and Christian songs are broadcast across the two pallis and most of the village as well. During the Sunday services, members of the congregation sing songs and read Bible extracts into the microphone. At Christmas time and the nine days before the January festival, popular Telugu Christian devotional songs are sounded out night and day. In response to this, the newly constructed Rama temple in the centre of the uru purchased a public address system of their own, even louder than the tinny speakers in the pallis. In the days leading up to the Vinayaka Chaturthi, Hindu religious songs and the puja twice a day were audible in the palli. Sometimes, the loudspeakers broadcast music and sermons simultaneously resulting in a cacophony of noise, as each religious group battle to dominate the village soundscape. Christians loudly declare their faith, imposing the sounds of worship on the rest of the village whom they know have no taste for Christian songs or prayer. In this sense, the sound represents Dalit assertion and a form of competition between the Dalit churches and the Hindu temples.22 It is not only the airwaves which are marked by Dalit Christianity. The January festival in honour of the guardian saint St. Anthony is a village-wide declaration of Madigas’ social presence. The statues of Mary and Jesus are taken from the Roman Catholic church in the Madiga colony of the adjoining village of New Nampalli and installed on trailers, led by hired tractors.The trailers are elaborately decorated with flowers, coloured paper and lights. Children dressed in new clothes sit on the trailers and tractors. Madiga drummers lead the procession, vigorously playing the Madiga dappu drum. Men steeped in alcohol form a circle near the drummers and dance frenetically amongst their clapping and whooping compatriots, throwing firecrackers and coloured dye. In contrast, a solemn congregation of veiled Madiga women follow behind, dressed in new saris, holding rosary beads, quietly singing Christian songs. The procession goes from New Nampalli, around the outer road of Nampalli and enters the main road of village. It goes up one of the central roads in the 22 See also Fuller (2001: 1609), Mosse (2007), Roberts (1990) for other instances of conflict over religious noise.

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uru and down another, coming out at the village’s northern entrance, near the Siva temple. It then re-joins the main village road near the school from where it enters the Madiga palli. It halts here for a while and then is finally led back to the church in the adjoining village. This route has some significance. While the Hindu processions are never brought into the palli, the Christian icons are paraded round every part of the uru, even though very few of the uruvallu are Christian and none of them belong to the Dalit churches. While many of the uruvallu dislike the presence of drunken Dalit men in their streets, a large number of uru wives, especially the Christians, come out from their houses to contribute money and offerings to Mary. The name of the donor and the amount given is recorded in a book by a Madiga man who stands apart from the raucous men at the front. Those who donate money receive prasadam from the Virgin Mary.23 The Christian festival is supported by some who hope to please Mother Mary (and perhaps also placate the Dalits). But though tolerated, it is unpopular. Madiga Christianity dominates the social space of the village in the festival as Madigas vividly and loudly assert their presence. Christianity has allowed Dalits to extract themselves from temple’s ritual hierarchy, to contest subordination and access an alternative source of dignity, spiritual power and status. Tension between Kammas and Dalits is palpable: Dalits are intolerant of chinnatanam (subordination) while Kammas feel their supremacy is threatened by ‘insubordinate’ Dalits mollycoddled by the state (Still 2010, 2014). It is not just in religious life that Dalits are asserting their presence;, in education and employment Dalits are also seeking to better themselves . These are enabling Dalits to demand respectful treatment (mariyada) and to claim paruvu-pratishta-gowravam on their own terms.

MALAS AND MADIGAS: WORK, HONOUR AND SHAME Because it is impossible to disassociate honour from economic status, I describe Dalit forms of work in relation to prestige-honourrespect. At the very bottom rung is a form of bonded labour, which I describe in some detail (despite its demise) because it conveys, in 23 Prasadam here is no different from that offered to, and received from, Hindu gods, and represents ‘the material symbol of the deities’ power and grace’ (see Fuller 2004: 74).

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crystallised form, the experience of shame that accompanies labour.24 Broadly speaking, the difference between honour and shame in the sphere of work is the difference between autonomy and dependency. The dominant castes are predictably characterised by the former, the Dalits by the latter. For a Dalit man especially, key to attaining honour is changing one’s occupation and gaining an education. In Nampalli, the diversity of the crops means that the periods without work are short and the demand for labour is relatively high.25 The demand for male labour is increasing as Dalit men are finding employment outside the village. This puts Dalit labourers in a relatively good bargaining position. According to my informants’ accounts of recent strikes, farmers have been forced to increase labourers’ wages twice in the last decade. For men across the castes, types of work are ranked according to the independence they afford, as mentioned. Accordingly, the most shameful work is that of a jeetham, a bonded labourer tied to a particular upper-caste household through hereditary service or debt. Jeethams largely came from those families involved in the traditional Madiga occupation of leatherwork. These men had the right to the carcasses of their landlord’s buffaloes and in return would be obliged to make them leather goods including shoes and water sacks for irrigation. According to my older informants, the jeetham would be paid yearly in cash and monthly in kind (usually a bag of paddy or maize) and often given two or three sets of clothes per year. In a typical day, a jeetham would rise at dawn, go to his masters’ house, feed the cattle, clean and sweep the stable, collect dung and pile it into a stack; water, feed, wash and milk the buffaloes, take the milk to the dairy. During the day he might take the buffaloes to graze or collect grass for them. Some jeethams would sleep on the master’s veranda or in an outhouse next to the animals or he might be sent 24 The Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act enacted in 1976 outlaws human bondage. However, a Human Rights Watch Report (Narula 1999) estimates that 40 million people in India are bonded labourers. See Breman (1993, 2003), Breman, Guérin and Prakash (2009), Cederlof (1997), Robb (1993) for more on forms of bonded and tied labour. 25 The main crops in Nampalli are rice, maize, bananas, sugarcane and turmeric. Pulses, vegetables, chilli, fruit and flowers are also commercially grown and sold in local markets. The wealthier farmers own tractors but most small farmers plough with owned or hired oxen. There is one rice crop grown per year, transplanted in August/ September and harvested in January, culminating in the festival of Pongal. Soon after, maize is planted on the irrigated land and harvested in May.

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to sleep in the fields to protect the crop before the harvest. The landlord’s wife would keep aside leftover rice from previous night’s dinner. The jeetham would return home to eat and take breaks if there was time. He was obliged to do any work that needed to be done in his fields or in the stables or courtyard, be it taking the landlord’s children to school or unblocking a drain. Jeethams could also be ‘lent’ to the landlord’s relatives to help at ritual occasions, for instance. If there were female jobs to be done either in the fields or the house (making dung pats, sweeping floors and so on), then the jeetham’s wife was expected to do it, as his servitude automatically implied hers, too. The jeetham would typically refer to his master in the most honourable of terms (Lord or Father) whilst the farmer calls his servant, ‘ma madigavadu’, ‘my Madiga’, a demeaning term implying ownership. Patronage dependency was also ritualised in the most intimate spheres of life. Like a parent to a child, the landlord has both the right to control and an obligation to care for his servant. For example, patrons used to provide ‘their Madiga’ with the gold disc of the wedding necklace (tali buttu) for their new bride. The wedding party goes to the landlord’s house, receives it from him with his family’s blessings and carries it back to the groom’s house to be tied around the bride’s neck in the ceremony that marks the moment of marriage. Although today most Dalits buy their own gold disc, in two of the Madiga weddings I attended, part of the ceremony included a parade through the village, from the palli to the uru, for the collection of the gold disc. In giving the tali buttu, there is an implicit sense of the patrons not only giving permission for the marriage but of proprietorship of the bride. In this ritual act of giving and receiving, mariyada is conferred on the giver and chinnatanam (subordination) is conferred on the receiver. Honour and shame then are ritualised products of a starkly economic relationship. Although jeetham service has largely died out in this area,26 some wage labourers still have client-like links with their employers that bear the hallmarks of a similar kind of humiliation. These 26 However, in neighbouring Krishna district, Reddy reports that jeethams were in existence in the 1980s (Reddy 1987: 93) and in Nampalli men were working as jeethams as recently at the early 1990s. The demise of this form of labour is in part because the modernisation of agriculture has rendered many of their services redundant but also because Dalits now have alternative ways of making a living. See Robinson (1988) in reference to Telengana, Breman (1974) and Gough (1960).

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are visible in even the most mundane interactions. Body postures themselves confer mariyada on the addressee and chinnatanam on the performer. While an employer stands upright, twists the ends of his moustache, speaks loudly, authoritatively and at length, his employee lowers his lungi, folds his arms, speaks in a childish tone and avoids direct eye contact (Deliège 1999, Gorringe and Rafanell 2007, Still 2009). Perhaps most prosaically, impolite linguistic terms instantly interpellate the addressee as inferior. Everyday expressions of landlords to labourers such as, ‘Aray! Ammayi!’ (‘Hey! girl!’) or ‘Eh, ra!’ (‘Come here!’) are not just orders; in Austin’s (1962) sense, their utterance subordinates and insults the person addressed. In particular, the feminine ‘Ra-ve’ (‘Come here!’), which can be an expression of intimacy and affection between kin, is an expression of insult and sexual vulgarity when used by a landlord to a female labourer. This treatment actively stakes out Dalits’ marginality and insignificance. It is part of the structural humiliation that comes with being a dependent, a humiliation that is continually reinforced in daily life. Dependency is the reason why jeetham service (and indeed any labour done in a personalised connection with a household) is the most detested form of work of all. In severing these links, Dalits refuse both economic exploitation and ritual subordination. But they also forfeit the protection and goodwill of the upper castes. Work, therefore, is now largely commercialised and anonymised; social interaction between the parties is mostly minimal, often hostile and certainly not characterised by affection (abimanam).27 Agricultural wage labour is a step up from jeetham servitude but is still seen as deeply undesirable. This is the work of the majority (65 per cent) of Dalits in Nampalli.28 This figure is low for a rural area but similar to the Andhra Pradesh average (68.3 per cent of all working Dalits are agricultural labourers according to the 2001 Census). In Nampalli, the proportion of Madigas who work as labourers is higher than that of the Malas (78 per cent of the total Madiga population compared with 58 per cent of Malas). Broken down by gender, 67 per cent of all Dalit women are labourers and a slightly lower proportion of all Dalit men (64 per cent). Taking caste and gender together, the proportion of Madiga women in agricultural 27

See Breman (1974, 1993, 2003) for more on patronage relations in Gujarat. According to my own household survey undertaken in May 2004.

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wage labour is highest (80 per cent) while the proportion of Mala men in agricultural wage labour is the lowest (56 per cent). This is because Dalit men, especially Mala men (nearly half of them) now have various jobs outside farming.29 This information belies the erratic nature of employment in the palli. Except those few government-employed Dalits, no one had stable, permanent employment: most were employed in different kinds of work at different times of year and many had periods without work. In addition to the peaks and troughs of the agricultural cycle, many labourers had periods of illness or exhaustion that prevented them from working. Late pregnancy, birth and childcare took women out of work for varying lengths of time (from weeks to years), depending how long that particular household could manage without the woman’s earnings, the childcare available to her or if she had any complications in childbirth. Women also took time off for life cycle events and to look after visiting relatives. It was common for men to alternate between forms of employment, supplementing their income with other activities and taking whatever work was available at the time. Old people worked as long as they could, but those who were no longer fit enough to labour were looked after by their adult children. Some occasionally engaged in sporadic wage labour. There were also families in which the main earners had died, fallen ill or had an accident. Such ‘household shocks’ could plunge a household into severe poverty. Economic security allows a Dalit man to avoid the shame of servitude, dependence and wage labour and enables him to look after others and acquire his own dependents. It allows him room enough in his house to accommodate guests on ceremonial occasions and resources to provide for his kin and community members. He may lend money, equipment, storage space and he can host elaborate maturity ceremonies, weddings, funerals and prayer gatherings. 29 Where possible, Dalits prefer sharecropping over wage labour as it is seen as less degrading and potentially more profitable. Dalit sharecroppers rent a small amount of land for the agricultural year; they buy all the inputs (seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, labour) and they share the harvest in an unequal but pre-arranged amount (often half to two thirds goes to the landlord, depending on the credit extended). Although many Dalits favour this arrangement over wage labour, the benefits for the tenants were not clear to me: the deal was risky for the tenant and if the crop failed, it left tenants in severe debt. Da Corta and Venkateshwarlu (1999) have discussed this in more detail arguing that it is in fact a highly exploitative form of ‘tied labour’.

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Dalits seek alternatives to agricultural work not just for a more comfortable existence but to acquire prestige. Crucial to the story of Dalits here is the fact that Nampalli is commuting distance from Vijayawada, a city with a population of over one million.30 Vijayawada itself is a burgeoning city known for its automobile factories and workshops but also an important centre for garment, metal and hardware production. It has two major power plants, wholesale markets for the transportation and export of agricultural produce, a domestic airport, and major railway and bus stations. The proximity of Vijayawada and other local towns give villagers to access jobs, colleges, goods, hospitals, cinemas, the police and the local bureaucracy. Today, about a third of Dalits work outside the village, in Vijayawada or other local towns. Among Mala men, 13 per cent (fifteen men) work as skilled labourers (as lorry, bus, auto-rickshaw drivers, mechanics, tailors, a thatcher, carpenters); 8 per cent (ten men) work in Vijayawada in the urban economy (in computer, mobile phone and coffee shops and a courier service), 6 per cent work as unskilled labour (in a sand quarry, house painting, construction), and six men are in low level government employment (in the Post Office and Electricity Department) through the reservation policy. Among the Madiga men, 11 per cent (eight men) work as unskilled labour in Vijayawada (in a shoe factory and in construction); 4 per cent are in skilled labour jobs (auto-rickshaw drivers); and two men work in low level government jobs (the railways and AP Heavy Machinery in Vijayawada) and one works for a micro-credit NGO. Government and white-collar jobs are the most desirable jobs although Dalits in Nampalli have so far only gained access to lower level employment as sweepers or clerks. Migration is not the norm but a few young Mala men have travelled to Hyderabad, Visakapatnam and Machilipatnam to work on a steel plant, the railways, as a mechanic and a clerk in private firm. Notably, it is Dalit men (not women) who have managed to gain jobs outside village farm labour. Only a tiny number of Dalit women (three of them Mala) are working as anything but agricultural labour: two ayahs in a school, one school teacher and one government-employed sweeper. Otherwise, almost all working women are agricultural wage labourers. The exceptions are elderly 30

Census of India 2011

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women, women physically unable to work, mothers with babies or pre-school age children and women married to men with jobs that provided enough income for them to be housewives. About 15 per cent of all Dalit women refer to themselves as housewives. Of these, about 10 per cent are the (mostly Mala) wives of salaried employees who, though physically able, did not engage in wage labour (see also Heyer 2014).31 Dalit men’s search for non-farm jobs is often enabled by women who provide income for the everyday needs of the family in the interim. When men searched for work, women sustained the household. If a man did manage to secure a better-paid job, the women married to these men tended to become housewives. I discuss the rise of the Dalit housewife in Chapter Four. The importance of the city should not be exaggerated. For the majority of Dalit labourers, especially the women, Vijayawada has little bearing on them. They labour on local farmland; their kinship networks spread across villages, less so the towns; their schools, churches, markets are located in the immediate vicinity. With groceries on sale and government supplies available within the village as well as a proliferation of door-to-door salesmen, most Dalits have no reason to go to the city. Illiterate Dalits (who still constitute the majority) avoid going to the city for fear of losing their way, getting cheated and showing themselves up as backward villagers. This is in sharp distinction to higher castes whose business, kinship, friendship and political links give them reason to travel to the city much more frequently and whose scooters and motorbikes allow them to get there quicker.32 At the time of writing, there is speculation that Vijayawada may become the future capital of Andhra Pradesh when Telangana becomes a separate state. This speculation coupled with the growth of the city in the last two decades has resulted in an increase in the value of land in the area and landowners have found themselves sitting on potentially very large assets. Although I never obtained 31 This figure is inexact because some housewives were temporarily so and would have gone back to labour once their children started school, whilst others mixed housework with occasional wage labour. While these women self-identified as ‘housewives’, it is problematic to put these women in the same social category as the wives of male employees. 32 See Upadhya (1988, 1997) for more on the caste and class status of Kammas in coastal Andhra Pradesh.

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accurate information about land prices, there is no doubt that farmers have seen the value of their land increase significantly in the last few years. This will principally benefit large landowners but a minority (10 per cent) of landowning Dalits stand to gain, too. Dalits’ land holdings are mostly less than an acre and none are more than three.33 However, even these very small landowners are now potential ‘lakshapatis’. This has resulted in an odd situation. Landowning Dalits have become much wealthier in terms of assets than landless OBC and dominant-caste families. This has not altered their position in the village very much: they are still viewed as socially inferior and would never be allowed to live in any area of the village except the Dalit colony. But it has made a difference in the palli as these wealthier Dalits differentiate themselves from their poorer neighbours. Landowning families may still engage in wage labour to bring in extra income but much of their labour is on their own land and therefore far less degrading. Dalit landowners also employ their neighbours and kin to work for them in busy periods and they keep as much produce as they need for their own consumption. Their land not only gives them a source of income, it frees up some of their family members for education and gives the boys a chance to search for work in the city. This means that the landowning Dalit households tend to be those which contain a man in salaried employment, with whose savings the land may have been acquired in the first place.

DALIT EDUCATION There are two state schools in Nampalli; the main village school that is attended mostly by Madiga OBC pupils and the school in the Mala palli, which is attended exclusively by Mala children. The mixture of ages and abilities in one class and the shortage of resources mean that those who can afford it avoid the village schools. Ironically, when the main school was built in the 1960s, it was only attended by Brahmin and upper-caste children and Dalit children were forbidden to enter. Over the last half century the situation has reversed; the school is now dominated by Dalit 33 For example, in the Madiga palli, out of forty-four households, six own one acre or less and two households own around three acres.

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children, while the upper-caste children have fled to the private schools.34 While the oldest generation of Dalits in Nampalli are uniformly illiterate, almost all of the younger generation are literate and a handful of young men have studied up to degree level. The overall literacy rate among Dalits in the village (50.5 per cent) is close to the state average for the rural SC population (50.3 per cent).35 In the Madiga palli, 49 per cent were either literate or studying.36 Seventeen people had studied up to tenth class and of those, ten had passed and three had gone on to do either bachelor’s degrees or technical training. In the Mala palli, 52 per cent were either literate or studying. Of the thirty-six Malas who passed tenth class, twentytwo had gone on to do further studies. Of those twenty-two people, eight were engaged in or had completed a degree. Four had dropped out and twelve had done or were doing technical training (ITI) or a vocational course. In Nampalli, the Dalit female literacy rate is 45 per cent overall (compared with the rural SC female average of 40 per cent). This figure hides the dramatic generational differences in literacy rates. None of the elderly Dalit women in the village are literate. In contrast, 86 per cent of Dalit girls aged five to nineteen are in school and can read and write. In the Madiga palli, there are only four girls who do not attend school, although for some, attendance is infrequent. Importantly, the two government schools in Nampalli are both physically and socially accessible to Dalit girls. At the primary stage, at least, there is gender parity in education. However, the dropout rate for girls sharply increases after primary school, as girls have to travel to local secondary schools on foot, by bus or bicycle. This means that out of the seventy-four Dalits that have studied up to 34 One of the most significant determinants of Dalit education is the family’s overall economic situation. This is especially so for girls whose education is seen as more superfluous than of boys. Although the government schools are free of cost, the indirect costs of educating a child can be preventative. These include the lost potential earnings of a teenager, older girls’ help with childcare which enables women to work as well as bus fares (for secondary school pupils), books, pens, pencils, uniforms and satchels. This can mean a small yet significant amount. 35 All the information here is from my own household survey undertaken in 2004. 36 Here literate means people able to read and write and/or those who had studied up to fifth class. It does not include those who could only write their signature.

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tenth class, only thirteen (18 per cent) of these are girls. Out of these thirteen girls, twelve are Mala and only one—Leela, the daughter of my host—is Madiga. There are three Dalit (Mala) women who have either completed or are completing a degree, compared with fifteen Dalit boys who have completed, or are completing higher training or degrees. I discuss young women’s education in more detail in Chapter Six. To summarise, young Dalits are now largely literate and far better educated than their mostly illiterate grandparents; Malas are better educated than Madigas, and boys are generally more educated than girls. While there is scarcely any difference between boys and girls at primary level, girls start to be withdrawn from school from middle and secondary school onwards. In 2004–5, there was no child labour. But older children from the very poorest families did stay at home to look after young siblings when both parents had to work. Cases of this were rare. Dalits investment in their sons’ education (sometimes at a substantial opportunity cost) had not on the whole led to salaried employment. In fact, there were a dozen well-educated Dalit young men in Nampalli who were not occupied in any work. Supported by other family members, these men described themselves as ‘free’ (kali): they were unwilling to degrade themselves in wage labour and yet they were unable to find a job befitting their education. Some had a reputation as troublemakers but others were simply stuck and frustrated. Education had enabled some to access small urban jobs in Vijayawada (for example, the boys working in the mobile phone or computer shops) and it had certainly heightened their sense of entitlement and confidence (see also Ciotti 2006, Jeffrey, Jeffery and Jeffery 2008a, Mendelsohn and Vicziany 1998: 263). Educated young Dalit men were the most reluctant to display the old forms of obsequiousness and they certainly no longer saw themselves as the underlings of the Kammas or Brahmins. Educated young men also tended to have the liveliest political consciousness and the rhetoric of Dalit political groups infused their language with notions of equality, common humanity and rights. Education (or rather ‘educated-ness’) is connected to honour is quite obvious ways. In a society in which knowledge and understanding have traditionally legitimised dominance (Wadley 1994), Dalit education is an intrinsically political act. Most Dalits today believe they have the right and the mental capability to become

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educated. Ideas of Dalits’ ‘natural’ unintelligence still exist but they are largely treated as anachronistic remnants of an oppressed past. Young Dalit men subscribe to a value system in which education, wealth and class are paramount, in which status is achieved not ascribed. Education is seen as the principal route to improvement, progress and ‘civilisation’ (nagari katha). It facilitates the acquisition of ‘style’, improved language, the ability to speak English, better manners and modern tastes (cf. Ciotti 2006, Jeffrey, Jeffery and Jeffrey 2008a, Jeffrey 2010). For young men, education is believed to give access to the modern world and offer the adaptability to move between social environments. The more educated men in the palli are better positioned to acquire honour. Honourable men are described as being able to ‘speak well’, hold an audience and persuade people. They can confidently converse with officials, upper-caste men, policemen, townsfolk or bureaucrats. In contrast to an awkward, lumbering, diffident, tongue-tied labourer, an honourable man expresses himself with eloquence and self-assurance. The attributes of the honourable are often (but not always) the attributes of the educated: dressing neatly, carrying oneself well, displaying good manners and having more refined tastes in music and films. But education only brings honour if it is combined with leadership and wisdom: the ability to solve disputes with fairness and good judgment and the capacity to give advice to those who seek their help. Those who successfully do this may gain prominence in local politics and respect from other local big men, something that further enhances a man’s reputation. If he then gains a position of leadership, he must attempt to represent people and support them through acts of assistance and patronage. The more people who depend on him, the more he is honoured. This is not to say the educated Dalit boys in the palli are all honoured. On the contrary, the ‘troublemakers’ are viewed as disruptive threats to village life, by both older people in their own community and other caste groups in the village (cf. Anandhi and Jeyaranjan 2002; Anandhi, Jeyaranjan and Krishnan 2002). The dominant castes are extremely critical of these young men and describe in detail the ill effects of what they disparagingly call their ‘half-knowledge’. However, this is in part a response to the perceived encroaching threat of Dalits. Although the outcomes of education among Dalits are varied, it is clear that the raised levels of education have largely eroded the myth that Dalits are born for nothing more

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than labour. Indeed educated Dalit youth are living proof that they are theoretically capable of transforming themselves to achieve a similar (or higher) status as their former masters, even though they are blocked by new barriers in practice (Thorat 2002, Thorat and Newman 2010). In addition to education, Dalit politics and alternative forms of work, state programmes for the poor have also substantially improved Dalits’ living conditions, something I have discussed elsewhere (Still 2011) and also documented extensively by Judith Heyer (2000, 2010, 2011, 2012). Almost all Dalits in Nampalli hold Below Poverty Line (BPL) cards, which entitle them to subsidised supplies of food and basic household commodities which they collect at fixed times from a registered PDS (Public Distribution System) outlet. Roads, street lighting, water supplies and draining have been installed in the colonies in the last two decades. The government schools provide midday meals and there is a pre-school nursery which monitors child health and distributes nutritional supplements to children and pregnant women.The government runs a pension scheme for widows and a sterilisation programme, which many women have taken up. In theory, BPL cardholders also had access to a health insurance scheme which entitled them to treatment in private hospitals, new at the time of fieldwork. A new health centre had also been constructed in the village although it was situated at the opposite end of the village from the Dalit colonies. Dalits generally relied on visits from the village doctor and private doctors in the local towns but these new interventions may change this. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act had not taken effect during the fieldwork period but it is likely that it will be playing a part now. Although all of the government development schemes suffered from problems of implementation, uptake and delivery to the poorest (Still 2011); they had nevertheless significantly improved conditions of both colonies. Indeed, the government housing programme had been no less than transformational: it had completely changed the appearance and the status of the palli in the last two decades.

*** I began this chapter by discussing caste as a hierarchy of honour and the relationship between shame, poverty and Untouchability. Through social exclusion and economic dependency, Dalits have

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been kept right at the bottom of the moral economy of paruvupratishta-gowravam. Their work, their knowledge, habits, dress, ways of life have meant that to be Dalit is to be in a position of poverty-induced shame; it is to be constituted through idioms of subordination (Mosse 1996). But the material here corroborates other studies by showing that conditions have improved. Most Dalits in Nampalli feel that life now is far better than it used to be. They report no longer suffering the kind of deprivation that their ancestors did: they do not go to bed hungry as the older generation used to, they can afford to eat rice and curry twice or three times a day and their survival no longer depends on their landlords. Dalits in this area have work most of the year and almost all have near or distant kin who are educated and in salaried employment. Education, non-farm and urban jobs, better-paid wage labour, and landowning have enabled economic independence and upward mobility for some, particularly men and especially Malas. In relative terms, Dalits remain at the lowest rungs of the social ladder but in absolute terms, Dalits’ position has improved substantially.37 The developments described above should be kept in mind as an explanatory backdrop to the following chapters. In particular, the forms of humiliation which Dalits routinely suffered in the past and their continuing educational, political and economic disadvantage are crucial to understanding their current desire for paruvu-pratishta-gowravam, dignity and inclusion. Not only does the situation in Nampalli highlight the differences between the dominant castes and the Dalits, it also highlights the more subtle distinctions between and within the Dalit castes.There are now small but tangible class differences among Dalits in villages like Nampalli. These allow us to make observations about Dalit trajectories of gendered upward mobility more generally. How do families change when their income increases? How do they distinguish themselves from their neighbours? Do their consumption habits, dress, diet, house decoration and social practices indicate an identification with their higher-caste counterparts? Do Dalits sankritise? In the following chapter I suggest that this is not the case. Although Dalits’ actions and values are oriented around honour, they are simultaneously in the grip of a specifically Dalit ‘politics of culture’. This is propagated most obviously by Dalit leaders and 37

See Still (2014) for a review of literature on this subject.

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ideologues but it has taken root in different spheres of everyday life in the village too. This indicates that whilst honour is motivating much of Dalit behaviour, it goes hand in hand with the creation and assertion of a distinct Dalit identity. Fundamental to both is a tightening of restrictions on women.

3 Dalit Women and the Politics of Culture

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nlike adivasi ‘culture’, Dalit ‘culture’ is not seen as a ‘thing of beauty’ (Baviskar 2005: 5109). While adivasis are exoticised as the ‘nature-loving’ guardians of a unique tribal culture (ibid.), the differences that distinguish Dalits are highly stigmatising. At the heart of Dalit stigma is their consumption of beef, their residence in the most degraded space of the village (the palli) and their connection with death, blackness and pollution. These inhibit a romanticisation of Dalits’ way of life and have prevented Dalits from making claims about any kind of special culture in the same way as adivasis. But this is now changing. In the last chapter, I discussed Dalits’ socio-economic and political status and their changing position in a hierarchy of honour and shame. In this chapter, I show how Dalits’ improved status is allowing them to reverse some of the negative meanings attached to Dalit practices. From an anthropological perspective, one of the most interesting aspects of this is the construction and transformation of Dalit ‘culture’. Dalits are selectively appropriating markers of Dalit stigma and transforming them into symbols of Dalit self-respect, a process I refer to as a ‘politics of culture’. This process has been identified by other scholars as a crucial part of Dalit politicisation across the subcontinent (Arun 2007, Charsley 2010, Charsley and

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Karanth 2005, Gorringe 2005). In attempting to reconstruct ‘Dalit culture’, Dalit activism selects, reifies and glorifies the symbols of it. Echoes of this are found in Nampalli as a few young men now pour scorn on the dominant-caste denunciation of Dalit life and celebrate previously repudiated practices. In particular, I examine those things that distinguish Dalits from other castes: the consumption of ‘beef’, black skin and the palli (the Dalit colony), showing how this construction of identity can be seen as both the result of empowerment as well as the basis for future claims to state resources and political power.1 I use the word ‘selective’ because not all the distinguishing features of Dalit life are celebrated. Some are actively rejected, most obviously the traditional freedom of Dalit women. This is not one of the things that Dalits choose to represent Dalit culture because it seemingly cannot be reconciled with a respect-worthy identity. I argue, therefore, that alongside cultural inventiveness and radicalism, Dalits are also displaying conservatism in the sphere of gender relations. This project is far from complete in Nampalli; Dalit attitudes are still mixed. Madigas and Malas display a combination of pride and shame, interest and indifference, at once lamenting and approving the loss of particular ways of life. Internal differences mean that ideas conflict within the community. This contributes to a remaining sense of ambiguity (Deliège 1999) that surrounds Malas and Madigas’ caste status.

THE MEANING OF BLACKNESS AND THE BUFFALO To understand the significance of blackness, the buffalo and the palli, each must be situated within a symbolic framework of substance in South Asia. In this framework, colour, food and place are all connected to ideas of substance, which are in turn linked to purity and pollution, caste and rank. Understanding this symbolism helps contextualise Untouchable stigma and its attempted reversal. Most obviously, food is closely associated with caste. ‘[T]he caste hierarchy is also a dietary hierarchy,’ says Deliège (1999: 104), 1 The word ‘beef’, although commonly used in India, is somewhat misleading. Most upper-caste Hindus regard the consumption of cow and buffalo meat as equally despicable. But Dalit and tribal groups often make a distinction between buffalo and cow meat; many eat the former but refuse the latter.

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For food, too, is ranked: vegetarianism is distinctly the highest; then comes eggs, fish, chicken, mutton, pork, buffalo meat and, last of all, carrion. The Dalit castes are those that eat buffalo meat, and even worse, carrion. Eating buffalo meat is in any case a shameful and degrading practice (ibid.)

In this system, certain types of people can only eat certain types of food and transaction of food between people will indicate something about rank. The food hierarchy then relates to the idea of castes as ‘coded substances’ (Marriot 1990). According to Marriot, these ‘caste substances’ are hereditary matter acquired at birth but maintained by actions such as eating caste-appropriate food. If a person eats the wrong food (if a Brahmin eats meat, for example), they act against caste dharma (duty) and the equilibrium of the caste is upset (Marriott and Inden 1974). Types of food exist on a continuum from kaccha (raw) to pacca (cooked). Kaccha food carries pollution less easily and is exchanged more freely between castes, while pacca food (especially cooked rice) is seen as a vehicle of pollution and is only shared with close kin and caste fellows. In this context, giving food marks superiority while receiving marks inferiority because it implies that the giver’s polluted substance is clean enough for the taker (Marriott 1990). Caste rank can be calculated by observing who eats what and who gives and receives from whom. In theory, then, transactions of substance (like transactions of mariyada) both establish and determine rank (Marriott 1990, Mayer 1960).2 Dalit low status is reinforced and reproduced by their absorption of pollution from those above them, while Brahmins preserve their purity by strictly limiting what substances they accept and from whom.3 Untouchable stigma is not only linked to the fact that they eat the flesh of an animal considered sacred in Hinduism but also because in theory Dalits receive the widest range of food from the widest range of people. A transactional analysis of caste would be fruitless in a village like Nampalli because (like most places) the caste hierarchy has broken down. However, the theory is still important because it helps to explain the symbolic role of food in the degradation of Dalits. 2

See also Dumont’s analysis of food and caste (1970: 141–148). More recent work shows what happens to concepts of purity and pollution and the traditional significance of food in the context of economic liberalisation and urbanisation (Caplan 2002) and the effect of changing gender roles (Papanek 1990). 3

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Colour and temperature are also connected to caste. Like beef, blackness and heat are linked to low status. Brenda Beck (1969) argued that different foods are understood through the idiom of temperature, and in everyday South Indian life almost all foods are classified as either hot or cold. Through controlling one’s intake of hot or cold food, humans control their bodies and environment, and in doing so, achieve mental and physical balance. For example, the ‘hot’ state of couples on their wedding night is balanced by cooling, white foods: a glass of milk and ‘cool’ fruit. Ascetics’ attain power by restricting their intake of food so that the energy stored from abstinence can be channelled into attaining spiritual power. The low castes’ hot food (meat, chilli, onions, garlic) makes them more ‘hot-blooded’ while the high castes’ cool food (vegetables, milk products) renders them more ‘cool-headed’. Coolness is valued over heat (hence the cool castes are superior to the hot castes), although heat also represents power. Beck correlates the varna system to the four basic colours found in Indian ritual: white stands for control and is associated with Brahmins, purity, coolness, daytime and cool food (milk products, rice, cool vegetables and fruit). Red stands for power and is associated with Kshatriyas, fertility, blood, fire, meat and life; green or yellow is associated with the Vaishyas, with leaves, turmeric, fertility and and coolness and black is associated with Sudras and is reminiscent of night, black skin, death and pollution. Beck notes that the combination of red and black in myth and ritual represents danger (Kali and Bhairava are black and red) but red (power) surrounded by white (control) symbolises the auspicious combination of control and power. This can be seen in the red and white forehead markings of Shaivites and Vaishnavites and South Indian wedding saris, which combine white and red. Food and colour are related to notions of balance and have the ability to influence and transform the person who consumes them. Successful manipulation of these natural substances affords a person considerable power (Beck 1969: 565). In the previous chapter I discussed caste as a hierarchy of honour. Here we see how caste can also be expressed as a hierarchy of colour, temperature, food and space. In every hierarchy, Dalits figure as the lowest: they eat the sacred cow, they are dangerously hot, they are associated with black, death and pollution, their occupation and ways of living are characterised by shame and subordination. As such, they must be kept separate from the clean, the white, the pure, the cool

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and the sacred through practices of exclusion and ritual degradation. Within this symbolic framework, Dalits are both intrinsically low by virtue of their natural substance but they also become low by eating buffalo meat, by living in the palli and through their contact with hot, dangerous and polluted substances. In other words, whether one takes a Hocartian or Dumontian view of caste, Dalits occupy the lowest position. What I explore in the rest of this chapter, however, is the ways in which these conceptual orders have been eroded, unsettled and subverted. Dravidian and Dalit politics have provided some of the language and concepts to attack this symbolic domination but it is also fed by people’s own experience and consciousness. Blackness, beef, leather and the buffalo are briefly discussed in turn.

THE POLITICISATION OF BLACKNESS AND THE BUFFALO Part of the undesirability of black skin in India is of course its association with Dalits. Dalits and the low castes are certainly perceived to be darker than everyone else, and by virtue of their work in the sun and endogamy, Dalits do have slightly darker skin than the upper castes, although the endless exceptions to this rule make skin colour an inaccurate indicator of caste identity.4 The loose connection between rank and physical skin colour has been an important element in the racialisation of caste in India.5 Today, Dalit activists continue 4

See Béteille (1967: 48) on local racialisation of caste. Racial theories of caste were first developed in the nineteenth century by scholars and administrators such as the English missionary, Robert Caldwell, the German Indologist, Max Muller, and the colonial administrator and ethnographer, Herbert Risley (Dirks 2001: 144). Drawing on these theories, nineteenth-century reformer, Jotirao Phule, asserted that the Dalits and Sudras were the original inhabitants of India, who were conquered by the foreign-born ancestors of the Brahmins, the Aryans, approximately two thousand years ago (Omvedt 1994: 241).The Dravidian movement elaborated this ‘Aryan theory of race’ to build, ‘the most broad based and enduring anti-Brahman (anti-caste) movement in twentieth century India’ (Dirks 2001: 144). E. V. Ramaswamy Naicker (Periyar) claimed that the ‘true’ Indians (the Dravidians) were pushed south by this fair-skinned conquering race and dark-skinned natives were incorporated at the lowest rung, as slaves and servants. South India (Tamil Nadu especially) was reframed as the heartland of the dark-skinned, original people who were urged to break free from Brahminical imperialism. The ‘Adi-’ or ‘original people’s’ movements of the 1920s and 1930s also posited the Dalits as India’s original people, the sons of the soil. In contrast, Ambedkar rejected a racial theory of caste (to him, castes were social divisions amongst one race). But, as Omvedt says, the ‘Phule/ Ambedkar/ Periyar tradition represents the effort to construct an alternative identity 5

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to draw parallels between the Dalits in India and black Americans in the United States, with whom they believe they share a history of racially-based exploitation and marginalisation in dominant, white society.6 Activist-scholar, V. T. Rajashekar (1987), for example, explicitly relates the Dalit and black experience and names Dalits the ‘Black Untouchables of India’. Similarly, literary critics have drawn parallels between Dalit and black writing.7 Dalit organisations have often drawn upon the Black Civil Rights movement both directly and indirectly (the Dalit Panthers took their name from the Black Panthers, and Dalit activists use the slogan, ‘black is beautiful’) and scholars have compared and contrasted the movements (see for example, Singh 1999). Although racial theories of caste have largely lost credibility, blackness remains politicised insofar as it is associated with Dalits and the lower castes (Fuller 2011). Being as they are at the heart of Untouchable stigma, beefeating and leatherwork are also highly-charged political issues.8 For example, Gundimeda (2009) reports on a recent controversy over Dalit students’ demand for a beef stall in the student festival of ‘Sukoon’ in Hyderabad Central University. This demand drew the attention of high-profile commentators and an embittered 45-minute debate was aired on the programme, ‘Face the Nation’ on the CNN-IBN Live channel chaired by Sagarika Ghosh in April 2012.9 As Gundimeda (2009) points out, it was a highly symbolic demand: the stall was not desired simply to provide students with a different variety of food; it was a demand for the recognition of the value and worth of ‘Dalit culture’ as a whole, and as a sign of Dalits’ entitlement to belong in the University. As such, the student body and University’s treatment of this demand was seen by Dalits as acutely representative of their treatment in the public sphere more of the people, based on non-north Indian and low caste perspectives’ (1994:244). In academia, the race-caste debate has received sporadic academic attention over the last century, petering out as racial theories lost credibility. See Fuller (2011) for a discussion of race and caste in reference to the USA and Sharma 1999: 15–20 for an overview. 6 For more on the Dalit Panther Movement and the Dalit Liberation Panthers, see Gorringe (2005), Joshi (1986), Murugkar (1991), Singh (1999). 7 See, for example, Narang’s (2002) collection, ‘Writing Black, Writing Dalit: Essays in Black African and Dalit Indian Writings’. 8 In the first half of the twentieth century, Hindu reformism envisioned Dalit progress through vegetarianism (Jangam 2005). 9 Accessed on You Tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RripPCOSN8s on 18th September 2012.

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generally. The University’s concession to the beef stall was, for that reason, a coup for Dalit student body. In Andhra Pradesh, the politicisation of the buffalo and buffalo meat is best illustrated by the work of Kancha Ilaiah, a prominent activist and professor of Political Science at Osmania University in Hyderabad (and one of the participants in the televised ‘beef controversy’ debate). I cite him at length here because to my mind his work is the best example of what I refer to as the ‘politics of culture’. Nampalli Malas and Madigas are not followers of Ilaiah and most have not heard of him. But he is well known public figure and the ideas in his books have been influential. So although it is impossible to make causal connections between the text below and discourses in the village, the work of Ilaiah and others has contributed to a general sense of ‘Dalit pride’ that the educated Dalit youth promulgate as far as their home villages. In his most recent book, Buffalo Nationalism: a Critique of Spiritual Fascism (2004), Ilaiah sets out a manifesto for ‘buffalo nationalism’ as opposed to the ‘cow nationalism’ of ‘caste Hindus’ and the Brahmins. He says: The buffalo here represents the whole Dravidian, now Dalit-Bahujan culture.10 It represents the notion that black is beautiful. It represents human dignity and the dignity of labour. It represents the equality of colour and the end of racism, an egalitarian and productive nationalism ... once black is accepted as a beautiful colour and the buffalo is accepted as a nationalist animal the exclusivist and iniquitous sanctity of the Vedas dies (Ilaiah 2004: xxx).

In this extract we see how Ilaiah links the putatively negative colour black with the buffalo and associates both of these with the Dravidians or ‘Dalit-Bahujans’. In this attack on Brahminism, he turns the dominant symbolic order of colour and caste (as described by Beck, summarised above) on its head. Blackness and the buffalo are no longer degraded despised elements at the foot of the dominant value system, they are instead placed at the top. Ilaiah uses notions of indigeneity and belonging as the basis of this alternative value hierarchy: Dalits and buffaloes are indigenous to India, in contrast to the alien cow and foreign Aryan Brahmins. 10 Ilaiah defines Dalit-Bahujan as the ‘productive castes’, broadly the Dalits and the lower castes.

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But he also uses ideas of morality. The Dalit Bahujans are, he says, productive, caring, loving and honest and these qualities render them morally superior to the murderous and unproductive caste Hindus and their brutal gods: The buffalo is portrayed in Hindu iconography as the bearer of the God of Death [...] It is unnecessary to point out the coercive message that these images send out to the people who love, rely on, care for, cultivate with, profit from and prize the buffalo, and who have accomplished the feat of domesticating this unique animal. If there is one symbol that exalts the culture of the Dalit-Bahujans and simultaneously brings the sophistry of Hindutva crashing down like a house of cards, it is the buffalo (Ilaiah 2004: xxxi).

Ilaiah has become a controversial figure, and there has been much criticism of his work, especially regarding his category ‘DalitBahujan’ and his use of Hindu mythology.11 Nevertheless, many of his ideas have acted as touchstones for activists, campaigners and Dalit theorists in their attempts to reverse negative images of ‘Dalit culture’. Leatherwork, largely renounced as a degrading practice, is now glorified by activists who call leather workers ‘organic engineers’ and ‘the original technical specialists’. In one speech, an MRPS leader told the assembled crowd how Stalin’s grandfather was a shoemaker and yet he became the leader of one of the greatest nations on earth (Gundimeda 2006). If Adi-Hindu leaders believed that Untouchables could integrate by assimilating and effacing difference (Gooptu 2001: 162), today Dalit difference is firstly constructed, then venerated and legitimised in its own right.Through re-imagining and re-evaluating Dalit practices, a politicised vision of Dalits is creatively produced. This is a process that Ilaiah calls ‘Dalitisation’12 (Ilaiah 1996)—the opposite of M.N. Srinvas’ ‘sanskritisation’—also called ‘Dalitism’ by Robert Deliège (2010). 11 The conflation of ‘Dravidian’, ‘Dalit’ and ‘Bahujan’ is especially problematic in light of the ‘Mandalisation’ of politics, the current conflict between SCs and OBCs, and because OBCs never suffered Untouchability. 12 “Dalitisation requires that the whole of Indian society learns from the Dalitwaadas ... It requires that we look at the Dalitwaadas in order to acquire a new consciousness. It requires that we attend to life in these waadas; that we appreciate what is positive, what is humane and what can be extended from Dalitwaadas to the whole society” (Ilaiah 1996: 116–17).

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MADIGA AS A NAME But does ‘Dalitism’ or ‘Dalitisation’ exist in the village? And what relevance does it have to Dalit women? There are indications that it does. Let us start by looking at the name ‘Madiga’ itself. This name has for a long time been the source of embarrassment to Madigas. Kamma parents threaten to marry their daughters to a Madiga if they misbehave,13 upper-caste men playfully insult their friends by saying they have ‘the brain of a Madiga’, and the name is used in conjunction with other words as a form of abuse, although less publicly now. To the Telugu ear, the word Madiga sounds coarse and in polite conversation one would try to avoid using it. In government offices, officials use the acronym ‘MDG’ for Madiga and ‘ML’ for Mala or even their more sanitised state categorisation, SC-B for Madigas and SC-C for Malas. One of the aims of the MRPS was to create a sense of caste pride among Madigas and as part of this, they focussed attention on their caste name. Madiga leaders decided to add on their caste names to their personal names. This was an extraordinary move since the only people whose names designate their caste are Brahmins, Reddys and Kammas (after all, who else would want to advertise their caste?). The MRPS president and general secretary renamed themselves ‘Krishna Madiga’ and ‘Dandu Veeraiah Madiga’ to show that they too could be proud of their caste identity. Their movement was known locally known as the Madiga Dandora (the Madiga announcement), which made an implicit reference to the Madiga caste profession of ‘town crier’. The idea was that for the first time, Madigas had their own message to announce, not just to the village, but to the state and the nation too. Like the name itself, the Dalit drum, known as the dappu or tapetu in Telugu, has also undergone a dramatic re-signification. Instead of this special kind of drum being a symbol of pollution and the drumming of it a low-status profession of the Madigas, it is now proudly asserted as the symbol of the MRPS. Today, skilled Madiga drummers inaugurate rallies, meetings and political speeches by playing the drum and marches are led by drummers. Drumming of the dappu is not only vaunted as an art form unadulterated by Brahminism but an important part of Andhra 13

Sambaiah Gundimeda, pers. comm.

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folk life.14 For Madiga activists and their sympathisers, the dappu drum marks liberation from upper-caste oppression and its beat is a celebration of this specifically Dalit art. In Tamil Nadu too, Arun (2007) documents an identical process in reference to the Pariyars’ parai drum. Likewise, Dalit art and dramatic forms which celebrate a distinct cultural heritage and of course the explosion of Dalit literature (Dalit Sahitya) are all gaining prominence (Gorringe 2005: 77, 121; Michael 1999: 30, Satyanaryana and Tharu 2011, Zelliot 1992: 321).15 What this goes to show is that a substantial part of Dalit politics is in fact a ‘politics of culture’. Dalit activists are not simply making demands for resources, state benefits and political power; they are seeking to destroy the value system, which has so debased them in the first place. By constructing and vilifying ‘Brahminical culture’, and re-presenting and glorifying ‘Dalit culture’, they are crafting a distinct identity for themselves, and investing that identity with a sense of pride. As Satyanarayana and Tharu remark, ‘[Dalits] rework caste to affirm the solidarity of a community, regain a world and affirm self-possession and confidence’ (2011: 13). This construction of Dalit culture stands in contrast to the origin myths described by Deliège (1997, 1999), which explain Dalit degradation as a tragic mistake or accident which might eventually be rectified to restore Dalits to their originally high position (Gorringe 2005: 121). It also differs from the medieval Bhakti traditions; and the twentieth century Gandhian, reformist and Adi-Hindu movements, all of which, although often radically egalitarian, counselled Dalits to repudiate ‘bad habits’ such as drinking and beef-eating in order to assimilate as Hindus. Now something quite different is occurring. In this mature phase of Dalit political assertion, leaders are not asking their followers to stop engaging in those practices that define them as Dalit; on the contrary they are celebrating their practices as equal or even superior to everyone else’s. It is on the basis of this cultural equality or superiority that Dalits are seeking rights and entitlements in society at large. Of course, the politics of culture builds on the deep and widespread influence of Phule, Ambedkar and Periyar who in different ways 14

See for example, Dr P. Kesava Kumar’s blog (accessed 05.04.2012) http:// untouchablespring.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/dappu-symbol-of-dalit-protest-dr.html 15 See Satyanaryana and Tharu’s (2011) introduction for a review of some of this literature since 1980s and the collected works in their anthology.

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advocated the destruction of the dominant Brahminical Hindu value system and enabled Dalits to create radically alternative visions of society in the first place (O’Hanlon 1985, Omvedt 1994, Zelliot 1992). The reversal of the negative meanings associated with Dalit caste professions, family organisation, creative forms and ways of living can be in part attributed to the powerful discourses originally spread by these ideologues, although the form that this politics of culture is now taking (especially the elaboration of individual caste identities) is not something that Phule, Ambedkar or Periyar might have either predicted or advocated. What relevance does this politics of culture have at the village level? How do such ‘Dalitised’ representations play out and what effect, if any, does militant rhetoric have on the people it claims to represent? While there may be no direct link between politicised discourses at the state or national level and Dalit attitudes in the village, I suggest that they do inform changing ideas about identity. In the following paragraphs, I show how mundane markers of identity have already become sites of contestation and contradiction.

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF BLACKNESS Even the most obvious marker of identity, the caste name, carries varied connotations. Madigas, for example, have little hesitation in using their caste name but they are aware of its mixed meanings. On the one hand ‘Madiga’ carries negative connotations and the upper castes occasionally use it an insult. On the other hand, the name represents ‘their people’, many are aware that it has been invested with pride and that it is the title chosen by their most respected political leaders. There is less ambivalence about blackness in Nampalli. People of all castes unequivocally considered fair skin attractive and black skin unattractive. Although there is variation in skin colour within all castes, Kammas, Komatis and Brahmins are slightly fairer than the Dalits. But few Dalits had resigned themselves to a state of blackness and for special events or on trips out of the village, Madiga women especially did as much as they could to lighten their skin tone. They applied talcum powder to their necks, faces and arms and women applied whitening creams, such as ‘Fair and Lovely’ (sometimes called ‘snow’). These were expensive and prized products, thought to make one’s skin lighter, smoother and more beautiful.

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Looking fair is most important at the time of marriage. Before a wedding the bride is instructed to stay out of the sun, and if possible, she is prevented from working in the fields to this end. The day before, and the day of, the wedding the bride and groom are rubbed with turmeric, a preparatory ritual which is said to improve the skin. Judgements about beauty are liberally pronounced, and the skin colour of new brides and (to a lesser extent) bridegrooms is closely scrutinised. Good-looking but dark-skinned Madiga brides were derided as ugly by informants, while to my mind plain-looking but fair-skinned brides were admired for their attractiveness. With typical customary rough playfulness, the groom’s relatives will pass judgement on the bride’s appearance saying, ‘She is very black, isn’t she?’ Fair skin is such a strong indicator of physical attractiveness that the two are often conflated. To describe someone’s physical appeal one can substitute the word ‘white’ (tella-ga) for beautiful (as in the English word ‘fair’) and the word ‘black’ (nalla-ga) for ugly, using sounds and facial expressions to amplify the effect. If Madigas wanted to stress someone’s appeal they would compare their skin colour to my own saying, ‘She was so white she was almost red!’ This was not to say that my own skin colour was considered beautiful. Rather, my ‘red’ skin and apparently ‘red’ hair was far from the cosmetic ideal. The more I integrated, however, the more pleasing my physical appearance became. Women perceived my hair to have grown darker and my skin to have become fairer (although I thought my skin was tanned and my hair bleached). To them, I looked better and more ‘Indian’.16 In this sense, fairness is not simply a physical feature; it is a metaphor for social acceptability. The reverse is also true. When someone was displeasing and unacceptable they could be described as black. Nagamma explained her late husband’s divorced from his first wife by joking, ‘Ammo! Do you know how black she was?’ In contrast, Nagamma herself was light-skinned and happily recalled the beauty of her youth; her fairness had brought the love of her husband, a good marriage and many children. Here, blackness might be understood as index, as a way of communicating that someone was unappealing, almost irrespective of their actual skin colour. With its deeply negative connotations, blackness stands in for other forms of (non-physical) unattractiveness. This is not to wholly disassociate signifier from 16

Emma Tarlo (1996) and Katy Gardner (1991) describe similar experiences.

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signified. Blackness affects life chances in very real ways. It is well known that a very dark-skinned bride will have to compensate for the ‘defect’ with a larger dowry, and a ‘black’ groom, in the absence of wealth, may be spurned purely on the basis of his appearance. Skin tone is connected with social position in obvious ways. Fair skin indicates wealth enough for the ‘luxury’ of seclusion while only those compelled by poverty work in the sun. In its association with manual workers, blackness serves loosely as a marker of socioeconomic status. The association of blackness and badness is most commonly seen in Telugu popular film. Goondas, rowdies and criminals are stereotypically black-skinned. 17 While the villains with more developed characters, the masterminds behind the plot, are often fair (Muslim, North Indian or from a rival upper caste), the street mobs and the hired brutes are often black, cumbersome, bloodthirsty, muscular men, employed to mindlessly respond to the whims of their evil master. The audience has no empathy with them and can enjoy seeing them defeated by the film’s protagonist. In contrast, the generally fair-skinned hero stands as an embodiment of beauty, goodness and justice, which invariably prevail at the end. Unlike the heroine, most films also feature a sexualised woman who tries to seduce the hero in one of the dance scenes. She may be a westernised ‘go-go’ dancer, a rustic country girl, a half-dressed tribeswoman or a glamorous prostitute. These women are often (but not always) darker than the heroine, especially the rustic village seductresses. In these scenes, blackness is used to conjure images of the violent or sexualised lower castes. Although activists attack the prejudice against dark skin, the distaste for blackness is so ingrained that even politically aware Dalits mock dark skin. I was present during a conversation in which educated, politicised Dalit students in Hyderabad made fun of their friend who was entangled in a relationship with a dark-skinned Dalit girl. They saw no contradiction in referring to her using colourrelated derogatory names even though they share ideologies which venerate the dark-skinned castes. In the abstract, the idealisation of fair skin is criticised but in day-to-day life the preference for fairer skin and less ‘Dravidian’ features is ingrained. Discussing this very issue, a member of the Madiga student group at Hyderabad 17

Goondas and rowdies are criminal thugs and henchmen.

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University pointed out that even Ambedkar is depicted as almost white-skinned.

BUFFALO AND BUFFALO MEAT The status of the buffalo and buffalo meat was less clear-cut. In keeping with the Indian notions of food discussed above, there is a strong connection between Dalit food and Dalit temperament. Madigas and Malas tend to eat more ‘hot’ food than other castes in the village. Although the daily meal in Dalit households is not dissimilar from that in upper-caste household (rice, lentils, chutney, vegetable curry), Dalits generally prefer to eat meat when they can. They tend to use more chilli, onions and garlic, and less curd, buttermilk and clarified butter. Vegetables, milk and sweets accounts for the fairness and plumpness of the uruvallu, they say, while their own ‘hot’ temperament is associated with their consumption of chilli, onions, meat and alcohol. Dalits and non-Dalits broadly share ideas about hot and cold foods and their effects, just as Beck (1969) described but Dalits do not believe they justify social hierarchy. In contrast, the uruvallu believe that Dalits’ diet contributes to their volatile and uncontrolled temperament. For uruvallu, Madigas and Malas are thought to be driven by their bodily instincts, desires and temper, a physicalisation which serves to legitimise subordination. We have already seen how the caste hierarchy is also a dietary hierarchy. However, just as the caste hierarchy is contested, so the food hierarchy is as well. Eating habits are more malleable than they appear and meanings of food change according to context: in one place buffalo meat might be a despicable marker of Untouchability, in another it may be a proud symbol of identity; dietary rules adhered to at home maybe ignored when eating outside. Vegetarianism is not considered superior everywhere and among some it is actively scorned. Eating practices are strongly gendered too: men are far less subject to rules of commensality and eat outside the home more often than women. Moreover, what people tell you they do in theory is quite different in practice. Focussing on these instances tells us something important about the negotiation of food and status by different sets of people. As the dietary hierarchy breaks down, Dalits are attempting to appropriate the symbol of buffalo meat.

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Within the community in Nampalli, buffalo meat is eaten as regularly as the family can afford. For some, this is only on special occasions but for others buffalo meat is eaten most Sundays, especially in periods of intensive work when wages have been paid. Buffalo meat is often served at funerals and widowing ceremonies and it is often the meat of choice at church feasts and after prayer gatherings. Buffalo meat is not, however, served at weddings, maturity ceremonies, pregnancy rituals and post-partum ceremonies. The significance of this is unclear, and ‘custom’ (sampradayam) is the reason given. It is a biblically acceptable meat and widely enjoyed by all Dalits and yet it is not considered an appropriate food for auspicious life-cycle events. Buffalo meat is cheaper than other meat (although Dalits say that the price is going up with demand). Whenever they have spare cash, men travel to buy meat from the local markets for their wives to cook. Occasionally, buffaloes are slaughtered in the palli by Dalit men themselves. The sale of fresh buffalo meat is announced in both colonies by a Madiga dappu drummer. People also eat dried buffalo meat sold in the two grocery shops in the palli although some turned their noses up at dried meat. Dalits are selective about the kinds of meat they eat and some animals are taboo: mutton is liked but too expensive, fresh fish is not preferred (and anyway mostly unavailable) and pork is morally dubious (some said Christians should not eat pork). Dalits are insistent that they would not eat cow meat (avamamsam) on moral grounds (it is wrong (tappu) to cut the flesh of a cow). Neither do they eat carrion flesh of any animal, which is seen as a repugnant practice of scavengers. Being selective about food is a mark of one’s social standing and my informants always tried to represent themselves as discerning eaters. In the uru, the mere utterance of the word dunnamamsam (buffalo meat) is offensive. Even though the uruvallu were curious to know if I ate buffalo meat, they were reluctant to mention the word ‘meat’ (mamsam), let alone the word dunnamamsam. Instead, they would ask if I ate ‘non-veg’. Dalit friends instructed me not to readily admit to eating buffalo meat otherwise ‘people will think that you just eat anything.’ In other words, buffalo meat in itself was not the problem, it was also the lack of discernment and rapacious appetite that eating it implied. The more one is able to choose what one eats, how, when and with whom, the better. The lower the status, the narrower one’s

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choices. Tribal people’s diet (thought to include frogs and squirrels) is disdained by Dalits because it implies the suspension of principles due to hunger. On return from a Madiga wedding, my companion recalled the destitute tribal family who came to eat the leftover food. She described how they would ‘eat without shame’ with an open mouth, rolling rice with the entire hand, without having washed beforehand. In contrast, Dalits portray themselves as discerning eaters. Status hangs not only on what is eaten but how it is eaten as well. Buffalo meat is thought to have specific effects on the body both immediately after consumption and cumulatively over a lifetime. It is known to induce sleepiness but it is also thought eventually to reduce intelligence. A female informant joked, ‘If you eat chicken you can run around [fast enough to make a whirring noise, giragira]. If you eat buffalo meat, you fall asleep just like that.’ Unlike chicken, which is hot and energy-giving, buffalo meat is soporific and heavy. After eating buffalo meat and drinking alcohol Dalits say that one is overcome with a drunken sleepiness, referred to as ‘moothu ekkutundi’ (literally ‘sleepiness climbs up’).18 The word moothu is closely connected in sound and meaning to the word modhu. Modhu means ignorance and lack of awareness, a mental unconsciousness characteristic of the uneducated. Moothu refers to the physical unconsciousness induced by buffalo meat or alcohol. In these words, ignorance, dullness and Untouchability are semantically connected. Dalits say that excessive buffalo consumption affects the articulation of words and intellectual ability in general. They say that if a person eats too much buffalo meat, their tongue will grow ‘fat’ (louw-ga) in their mouth. The body acquires a kind of heaviness, which is at first temporary, but with cumulative consumption eventually becomes more permanent. Vegetarian food, on the other hand, although bland, is thought to increase mental and linguistic agility. To this end, children are fed leafy vegetables before their exams. Dalits say that upper-caste tongues are quick and flexible; they use long words, they have complex names and the priests in the temple, although ridiculed by Dalits, can nevertheless recite all the names of the gods and offer long-winded prayers to them. 18 Alcohol is thought to heat the body, arouse the passions and ‘make your veins stand up in your arms’ as one informant put it. But after the heat has subsided the body cools down and becomes sleepy.

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In sum, it is thought that the more buffalo meat one eats, the more ‘like a buffalo’ one becomes: slow, tough, insensitive, heavy, unrefined yet docile, strong and hard-working. For the dominant castes, Dalits are low status not so much because they eat sacred animals but because the stupefying effect of buffalo meat and hot foodstuffs means that they are seen as lacking knowledge and control. They believe that Dalits are both inherently unintelligent from birth but also acquire ignorance through living in the palli. This is explained by their intrinsic make-up (gunam) in combination with their diet. This link between buffalo meat and ignorance is internalised by some Madigas and Malas themselves. On this point then, there is some accord between the Dalit and the dominantcaste view. Within the community, Dalits are not ashamed of buffalo meat eating but neither do they talk about it completely freely. If buffalo meat was cooking and someone asked what is for dinner, the cook would reply ‘meat’ (mamsam). From this answer, it is obvious that they mean buffalo meat for any other meat would be referred to directly. Even though people enjoy eating buffalo meat and eat it as much as they can afford, open questions about dunnamamsam provoke embarrassed laughter. Even though Madigas largely ignore the stigma of buffalo meat, they are aware of it nevertheless. This is similar to Deliège’s findings. He says, ‘The fact that they do eat buffalo meat and at the same time deny it is highly significant: they want to show their respectability but at the same time do not attach much importance to the dominant values’ (1999: 64). We know, then, that Dalits manipulate, evade and ignore hegemonic values rather than openly challenge them. But there are signs that this is changing. Dalits resent this imposed stigma and dislike Kamma hypocrisy on the matter. They allege that Kammas taste their buffalo meat curries during lunch breaks in the fields and that they eat buffalo in hotels, sometimes without knowing. (Indeed, the uruvallu are genuinely concerned about the content of curries in restaurants.) Dalits suspect that these castes are not as strict as they seem and that secretly they desire buffalo meat. In their homes, Malas and Madigas relish talking about the taste of buffalo meat and believe it to be one of the most delicious meats available. Buffalo meat brings strength, health and power to the body. During one conversation, Venu, a Madiga labourer, dramatically pulled his arms across his chest and cried, ‘ballam!’ (strength).

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Workers need buffalo meat to maintain the stamina required for labour and to fight off disease. Dalits also claim that doctors are advising people to eat meat to prevent ill health, thus drawing on medical professionalism to validate their customs. James Staples (2008) reports that buffalo meat had become a celebrated sign of Christianity among low-caste, leprosy-affected Christians in a nearby district. For his informants, buffalo meat is validated through its link with white Christian missionaries, contemporary western-sponsored churches and western modernity more generally. To reject buffalo meat is to arouse suspicion that one prefers an upper-caste Hindu diet or, as Staples puts it, to take a ‘proto-Hindu stance’ (2008: 42). Indeed, that buffalo meat is served at prayer gatherings in Nampalli indicates a similar Christian endorsement of meat. Again, Christianity is used to legitimise an otherwise shameful caste practice. By positively identifying themselves with the Christian West, Dalits are able to denigrate the Hindu vegetarian bias. To the ‘enlightened’ youth, especially young men, buffalo meateating is consciously celebrated. Srinu, the educated nephew of my host, certainly made no secret of eating buffalo meat. When I asked whether buffalo meat dims the senses or makes Dalits unintelligent, he said that those are just specious falsehoods told to Dalits to keep them backward which no one believes anymore. Dalit youth completely reject ideas about Dalit lack of intelligence and the effect of buffalo meat on the brain and tongue, although they maintain that buffalo meat enhances physical strength. One young man asserted that the strength gained from meat was important, not for agricultural labour but to win street fights. Rather than making Dalits good workers, meat enhances men’s street credibility and masculinity. For such men, buffalo meat-eating is a politicised act: a confident display of their caste identity. Indeed, there are some circumstances in which eating buffalo meat facilitates association with Dalit men. My research assistant, Joji, for example, reported that his upper-caste friend often accompanied him to a regular haunt of Dalit students in Hyderabad called the Kalyani Hotel, known for its ‘beef’ curries. Like most upper-caste men, it would be unthinkable for Joji’s friend to bring meat into his vegetarian family home. But in restaurants and in the hostel, Joji’s friend enjoyed all varieties of meat. Eating buffalo meat in the Kalyani hotel gave Joji’s friend access to a male Dalit friendship

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group in which buffalo meat was a marker of inclusion rather than exclusion. This is not an isolated case. In spheres in which Dalits have a strong social presence and political voice, the stigma of buffalo meat has been erased. Madigas’ connection with the buffalo is further reinforced by their traditional occupation of leatherwork and drumming. Drumming is still an important part of Madiga identity but it is regarded with ambivalence. Many talk of the skill needed to play the dappu well and recall the expertise of community drummers. They refer to the professionalisation of dappu and point out that now other castes earn a good living from drumming. However, Madigas do not encourage young boys to learn the dappu and they do not play at village festivals or upper-caste ceremonies. As it is for dappu, so it is for leather work. Old men proudly describe the elaborate process of tanning and the tools needed for such a job. They say that society used to depend on Madigas to produce shoes. One man commented that Chandra Babu Naidu gave Madigas Rs 1116 (an auspicious amount) every year, as no one else could supply him with such good quality shoes. But although some regret that no one knows how to do this anymore, on the whole, Madigas see tanning as a degrading practice that they are glad to have relinquished. Some see the irony in the fact that a few Madiga young men currently work in a Marwari-owned shoe factory; their kula vruthi (caste occupation) has been replaced by a non-stigmatised profitable high-caste enterprise in which Madigas act as cheap labour.

THE PALLI AND THE URU Like food, the division of uruvallu and pallivallu is indicative of more substantial difference between types of people. Theories about substance in South Asia hold that culture, moral substance and bodily essences are indivisible and they are constantly subject to transactions of coded substances between people. This suggests fluidity in personal authority and rank rather than a rigid caste hierarchy (Marriott 1968). Other scholars have described how the nature and character of people are believed to be affected by the water, food and air of a particular place, and that the local substances imbibed and digested are understood to affect temperament and character. This particularistic relation between food and character,

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illustrated in the discussion of buffalo meat, can be extended to notions of place as well. Daniel (1984), for example, says of Tamil villages that, ‘an ur is an entity composed of substance that can be exchanged and mixed with the substance of human persons’ (Daniel 1984: 104). This means that, ‘Urs have the same qualities and attributes that humans do and that these are substantial qualities’ (ibid.). This, he argues, is the reason for Tamils’ concern about compatibility between people and places. But how do Dalits relate to their surroundings, given that they know the palli is a less desirable residence than the uru? The following is a description of the journey from uru to palli based on field notes of Mariamma’s brother, Thomas’ village: In the uru, the roads are wide and the houses are whitewashed with stone courtyards, coconut trees, flowers, herbs and shrubs. Children run about the streets and old men sit on stone benches. We pass a school, a community hall, a neem tree, some shops. Further on, the large concrete houses are replaced by smaller houses with muddy courtyards and a few thatched houses. This is the Muslim part of the village, Thomas tells me. The houses are less ostentatious and the road is uneven. We cross over a bridge, the uru-palli divide, and pass a group of young men dressed in jeans, who scrutinize us both. At the side of the road, pigs snuffle in pungent mud and stray dogs root around in dumps piled high with rubbish and plastic bags. Either side of the road there are piles of excrement and a trickle of blackened, filmy water. A man brings his little son out to squat in the stream and Thomas shouts at him, ‘Why don’t you take him to the fields? It’s filthy!’ There are concrete houses and thatched huts next to tumbledown shacks giving onto the polluted river. The puddled streets are narrow and buffalo sheds and chicken coups nestle next to the houses. Babies balance on their older sisters’ hips with mucus running from their noses. A few young boys play games, hit dogs with stones and smile guiltily when Thomas asks them why they are not at school. An old woman with thick glasses hobbles down the street, her threadbare cotton sari pulled between her legs. Bow-legged, old men roll tobacco leaves between crooked fingers. Most other adults are at work in the fields.

Arguments like Daniel’s seem unproblematic in reference to the uruvallu who generally live in more pleasant surroundings than the Dalits. In a place where the food, air, water and surroundings are

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nourishing, clean and agreeable, one might happily talk of people and place sharing substance. But can we apply this to the palli? Is an argument which asserted that Dalits share the substance of the palli, equivalent to saying that the Dalits are intrinsically ‘dirty’ people? If so, Daniel’s view looks strikingly similar to the typical upper-caste view that the Dalit palli is just an extension of the Dalit body: dirty and disordered. Although most of them had never set foot in the palli, the uruvallu only had to point to the state of it to understand the condition of its inhabitants. For outsiders, the palli in all its sensuously imagined stench and disease is a symbol of Dalits themselves. But for Dalits, the palli is scarcely a reflection of their ‘dirty’ characters or their symbolic exteriority; it is merely a sign of their lack of resources and poverty. They simply do not have the money to build large houses. If they were richer, they might live differently but their living conditions are as they are because they are poor. Residents are critical of misuses of public spaces by offending neighbours and most people make efforts to improve the palli. But often it is to no avail and they have to put up with the streets as they are. The trees, bushes, animals and roads of the palli are valued insofar as they are of use. If they are not needed for shade, trees and shrubs are chopped down for firewood and rubbish is thrown into the bushes without much thought of aesthetics. At night, Dalit men bathe on the sides of the roads in their lungis, washing from a bucket and a jug. Women also bathe outside in their saris but they conceal themselves in the shadows in between houses. Women wash clothes by rubbing them with soap and slamming them against the concrete roads. People kept the roads clean in order for these activities to take place, not through a particular sense of pride or neighbourliness. Dalits treat the palli with characteristic practicality: it holds no special place in their affections and has no deep meaning for them. Rather, the palli is simply a place to exist. The state of the palli reflected their poverty, but also their pragmatism. Dalit women’s care of their homes is a case in point. On the one hand, Dalit women simply have less time to spend on beautifying their houses and streets. They are occupied from dawn until dusk with labour. Cleaning is undertaken to keep the house functional but they have little time to do much more. In other words, they might want their houses to look like those of the uruvallu but poverty made it impossible. On the other hand, Dalits are less obsessed with

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cleanliness that the upper castes. While upper-caste women spend time drawing elaborate moogu patterns at the entrance of their houses after finishing the morning’s cleaning, Dalit women only do so in a cursory manner. This is not only because they have less time, it is also because it is not particularly important or interesting to them. Dalits’ more distanced attitude to their residence is illustrated by the fact that while they refer to Kammas as the uruvallu, they rarely call themselves pallivallu. Being pallivallu is not a particular point of pride for them and thus it is not a form of identification they use. Indeed, the two words for Dalit colony, ‘palli’ and ‘wada’, are pejorative. Within Nampalli, Dalit informants talk about going from the uru to the palli, or going from the Madiga palli to the Mala palli, referring to them simply as locations that one moves between. For Madigas, their own living quarters are understood in straightforward geographical terms. So while, the uru has the character of the Kammas, Madigas and Malas do not see themselves as embodiments of the palli: they are in but not of the palli. Arguments about substance, place and person might be qualified, then, by taking into account the extent to which people themselves identify with their residence. However, there are certain ways in which the palli is seen as superior to the uru. Intentionally or not, some Dalits reinterpret the negative symbol of the palli by idealising their own treatment of space, if not the space itself. One main difference is that streets in the palli are used as a kind of public theatre: the arguments that are held behind closed doors in the uru are brought out into the open in the palli. Day-to-day squabbles are a regular occurrence in the palli as they are in most neighbourhoods. But in the palli, when an argument becomes serious, it is taken onto the street. Neighbours watch intently, comment on the side-lines but usually do not intervene. The public nature of conflict means that violence and injustices can be monitored, adjudicated and kept in check. In contrast, Dalits quote the saying, ‘Kamma arguments do not go beyond their walls’.19 This implies a domestic secretiveness of which Dalits disapprove. Dalits had heard stories of Kamma daughters-in-law who had been strangled, covered in kerosene and set alight, or pushed down wells for the sake of more dowry, and regular news reports on this issue confirmed their view. These malicious acts were done in secret and testified to the surreptitious cruelty of the dominant castes. For 19

‘Kamma gottlu godalu datodu’.

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Dalits, the openness of the palli is much healthier. In this sense, Dalits see their own use of space, if not the palli itself, as superior. As the palli becomes an increasingly politicised symbol, these private ways of validating Dalit space gain significance. The fact that Dalits live in their own distinct territory does not just mark the preexisting difference between the ‘clean’ and the ‘unclean’, it allows for a separate (and antagonistic) culture to flourish. The palli both encourages caste cohesion and marks caste segregation. Gorringe captures the duality of this situation, recognising the solidarity the palli allows (‘havens of security and strength’ 2005: 195), but also the exclusion it represents. He says that Dalit colonies are increasingly places within which activism can arise and expand outward into the wider community (Gorringe 2005: 181). The palli both protects and excludes; it is at once a space of caste unity but also a symbol of ‘caste apartheid’. At the same time, conditions in the palli are improving rapidly, as I described earlier. With the help of government subsidies, the majority of the huts have been converted into concrete houses and the narrow palli streets have been surfaced with cement. There are streetlights and a basic drainage system. There are community buildings and shared water taps and efforts are made to keep the streets clear of debris. It is not just that Dalits are now positively evaluating the colony; the physical conditions of the colony are clearly improving as well. In both these ways, the stigma of the palli is beginning to loosen.

*** This chapter has shown Dalits’ ambivalence towards blackness, the buffalo, buffalo meat and the palli. These aspects of Dalit identity are at once a source of shame and pride, as Dalits experience a transition from a stigmatised to a more positive and politicised identity. As Dalit activists work towards making Dalit culture ‘a thing of beauty’, ordinary Dalits are likewise appropriating and subverting the symbols that define their inferiority. The connection between low caste, blackness and undesirability is deeply entrenched. Fairness is not only a by-word for beauty but for social acceptability too. This is one marker of status that Dalits have not yet been able to imbue with positive meaning. However, the meanings of beef are changing and have been reversed in some

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contexts. Many Dalits are now proud of eating beef; they associate it with caste pride and Christianity. Celebration of beef is now becoming more open. The palli, too, is no longer unambiguously a site of stigma. Of course, Dalits probably never unquestioningly accepted outsiders’ view of them. Indeed, anthropological work shows us that Dalits have always valorised their own ways of living and have privately disregarded their criticisms (Gough 1960, Vincentnathan 1993). However, the current re-evaluation of Dalit identity has different significance from the ways in which Dalits internally celebrated their community previously. Such representations are not simply a crutch for Dalits to manage oppression; rather, they form the basis for claims to rights, political power and social recognition. They are not an effort to rationalise the regimes of symbolic value (of honour, purity, morality, colour, temperature and so on); they are instead an attempt to replace them. More than this, they are now part of a much more ambitious project of the ‘Dalitisation’ of society. The evidence presented above shows that these ever-more influential discourses of ‘Dalit pride’ are catalysing change in prosaic but vitally important ways. Representations of Dalit identity, however, depend on political and social influence and an economic base if they are to take root. As Mosse says, ‘The ability to acquire and sustain alternative identities, or to redefine the meaning of symbols of inferiority, depends crucially on having the power and resources to change existing relations of dependence’ (1996: 2). The changing significance of this ‘politics of culture’, then, is intimately linked to Dalits’ socio-economic rise described in the previous chapter. Throughout this chapter I have referred to the cultural politics of Dalits in general. However, I should point out that this masks the identity politics between the castes. Madigas are celebrating a specifically ‘Madiga’ identity and Malas similarly. Indeed these identities are evolving in counter-distinction to each other as the political state-level rivalry between the two castes intensifies. In the village, this means that although common symbols such as beef, blackness and the palli may be adopted by all Dalits, drumming, tanning, leatherwork and of course the caste name ‘Madiga’ is specific to Madigas while dominant symbols of the Dalit movement such as Ambedkar have been appropriated principally by the dominant

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Dalit caste, the Malas. As such, cultural identity politics tends to manipulate the division between the Dalit castes to either emphasize existing difference or underplay similarity. This means that alongside the ‘Dalitisation’ of society, we are also witnessing the fragmentation and polarisation of the major Dalit caste groups and strengthening of individual Dalit caste identities in opposition to each other. How is this relevant to the situation of Dalit women? The important point here is simply that the politics of culture is selective. While some aspects of Dalit life and identity are glorified and asserted, others are effaced. One of these, I suggest, is the traditional relative freedom of women. One might expect, for example, that assertive, powerful, economically productive Dalit women might be well placed to take centre stage in Dalit ‘culture politics’ and yet it seems that the opposite has happened: women have been marginalised. In the sphere of politics, Dalit women have been unable to advance into the ranks of leadership and Dalit women’s concerns have not been addressed adequately. Their exclusion has prompted them to establish their own organisations in response (Baghel 2009, Gorringe 2005, Hardtmann 2009, Rao 2003, Rege 2003, Subramaniam 2006). In the sphere of representation, rather than being celebrated for their assertiveness and freedom, Dalit women seem to be represented in more sanitised terms. Here I turn back to Ilaiah (1996) as an example of the politicised attempt to construct ‘Dalit culture’ in general and female sexuality in particular. Ilaiah attempts to represent and construct Dalit sexuality so that it is at once identifiably ‘Dalit’ and yet in keeping with the dominant model of paruvu-pratishta-gowravam. Rather than choosing to celebrate Dalit women’s sexual and marital autonomy, instead Ilaiah suggests that Dalits have a kind of down-to-earth disinterest in sex. For them, sex is simply an unelaborated activity engaged in quite naturally as part of their work-oriented lives. And yet, reading between the lines, the Dalit (or ‘dalit-bahujan’ as Ilaiah would have it) male concern about Dalit women’s sexuality is quite evident. Ilaiah reverses the dominant stereotype of sexualised Dalits and de-sexualised ‘caste Hindus’. Instead, he speaks of dalit-bahujan sex as ‘natural’ and wholesome, performed not for ‘pleasure’ but for reproductive purposes (1996: 32–35). In contrast, he describes Brahmins’ ‘sixty-four forms of sexual expression’ and the worship of the promiscuous god Krishna by young Brahmin girls (1996:

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33). He depicts Brahmin sexual activity as obsessive, recreational, decadent and indulgent. Brahmins have ‘unnatural’ sex for pleasure while Dalits have ‘natural’ sex for procreation. Interestingly, this anti-Brahman diatribe echoes Hindutva propaganda against sexually depraved, overly libidinous Muslims (see for example, Basu 1995, Hansen 1996, Sarkar and Butalia 1995) and mirrors the upper-caste stereotypes of hot, sexualised Dalits. The use of sexual perversion is, as we know, a well-worn method of stigmatising the ‘Other’. The point here, however, is to show the Dalit male angst around sexuality in general and the sexual freedom of Dalit women in particular. If we take Ilaiah as representative, it indicates a Dalit desire to purify Dalit women’s sexuality, bringing it within the limits of ‘natural’ procreation, implicitly in the context of marriage and family life. Dalit women’s desire, pleasure and more liberal attitudes to sexuality seem not to fit with this new, politicised vision of ‘Dalit culture’. In this particular respect, Dalits seem to be advancing a patriarchal conservatism at odds with the radicalism of Dalitisation more generally. Why this is the case should become clear in the following chapters. For now, what this suggests is that Dalits are at once disrupting regimes of value but also accepting and appropriating patriarchal aspects of them.

4 Dalit Women’s Everyday Life, Work, Kinship and Shame

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ne might say the case of Nampalli fits the general model described earlier: as Dalits move up in status, gender relations become more unequal. However, although this gives us a simple structural model of upward mobility, it is a little too neat and a little too general. It does not give us much idea about the values that underpin complex notions of ‘status’, the process of appropriation involved or any sense of contradiction or resistance that inevitably accompanies it. It also conceals value judgements about moving ‘up’ or ‘down’ when for Dalit women, as I’ve suggested, it is more a matter of moving from one set of constraints to another. In this chapter, I show the ways in which Dalit women are quite different from their dominant-caste counterparts. The main difference is of course the levels of labour force participation. For all its hardship, life in the palli is generally more egalitarian largely because Dalit women work outside the house and in some cases are the principal bread-winners. In the case of Nampalli, economic productivity gives women a certain level of autonomy.1

1 This has been a much-debated question in the literature (see Jeffery 2000; Kabeer 2001; Kapadia 1995, 2002) and not everyone would agree with my statement here. Heyer (2014), for example, argues that the quality and type of work that women do has an impact on their levels of autonomy, not simply work on its own: salaried

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The organisation of kinship is closely linked to women’s labour and has implications for marriage arrangements, dowry payments, childbirth, women’s bargaining power in the household, divorce and remarriage. Their labour results in a more female-centred kinship structure, which puts Dalit women in a generally stronger position in their conjugal home. Socio-economic difference has resulted in a distinct socialisation and the cultivation of alternative female subjectivities among Mala and Madiga women. Dalit women not only ‘talk differently’ (Guru 1995), they think and act differently too. However, at the same time, it is women’s work and independence that bring shame onto the Dalit castes. Wage labour brings Dalit women independence amongst their kin but it demeans them in the eyes of society. Here it is important to examine not just women’s labour per se, but the meaning of this work and how it relates to the organising principles of paruvu-pratishta-gowravam. Women’s agricultural labour is heavily associated with moral laxity, and as such, is a key part of the perceived degeneracy of the palli. The close association between women, the fields and illicit sex is, I suggest, one of the principal reasons why agricultural and domestic wage labour is so despised and why Dalit men and women wish to withdraw women from work as soon as they are able. The new standards of ‘civilisation’ and ‘culture’ require that Dalits eradicate the distinctiveness of Dalit women and conform to the norms of paruvu-pratishta-gowravam.This enables women to escape the hardship of labour but it also marks the demise of gender equality. Before I turn to women’s work, it is useful to consider what exactly is meant by female shame. Here the notion of boundaries (addhu apphu) is crucial. In Chapter Two, I described how giving respect (mariyada) is achieved by drawing boundaries: it is the act of distinguishing people through particular respect-conferring actions. Here we can apply the same concept of distinction to understand feminine shame: the more boundaries that are marked, the more honour a woman acquires. Women are naturally associated with shame because of their link with sexuality and fertility. In the folklore of agricultural employment is likely to bring women more autonomy while low paid, menial, exploitative work is disempowering for women. While I agree that there is no clear cut link between work and female autonomy, the material from Nampalli suggests that even the low-paid agricultural labour of Dalit women has positive implications for women-centred kinship and behavioural norms as I show in this chapter.

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communities, women are often linked to regeneration, creation and life (Wadley 1994: 41).2 In Nampalli too, femininity is commonly compared to a field with the associated metaphors of men’s ‘seed’ and female ‘soil’. Women’s power is derived from their capacity to ‘digest’ and cultivate men’s seed to produce offspring (Wadley 1994: 41). But the source of women’s potency is also the source of their impurity. Through menstruation, childbirth, child rearing and the absorption of semen, women are believed to be more polluted, and more vulnerable to pollution than men (Yalman 1963: 41). Femininity is diffuse, permeable, fertile, easily penetrated and quickly polluted. Like the lower castes in general, women are also thought to have less self-control and ‘understanding’ and so require uppercaste male domination (Wadley 1994: 58–59). Hence, women are characterised by both a lack of self-control and an ‘indiscriminate fecundity which can only be redeemed by constraining and putting limits around it’ (Delaney 1987: 41). In Hindu mythology, these female characteristics represent power and danger. Indeed, power itself is feminine (Egnor 1980, Fuller 1984: 31, Higdon-Beech 1982:116, Wadley 1980). Just as Kali danced on top of the corpse of Siva, it is believed that this feminine force can trample on masculinity and unleash chaos (Babb 1970, Bachetta 1996: 147). In mythology, the reason for women’s subordination is not due to their weakness but rather because of their potentially chaotic power. It is precisely because of this imagined power that we find a tradition of female and caste shame in India (Wadley 1980: xiv). These ideas of femininity help to explain the centrality of the notion of limits or boundaries in the constitution of women’s shame. ‘Siggu’, the Telugu word for shame, shyness or modesty has to do with keeping within prescribed boundaries, what is called, ‘addhu apphu’ ‘within the limits’.3 In everyday life, the more boundaries a woman has (through veiling, seclusion, restricted interaction), the more honour she brings to the family, community and village. Displaying appropriate shame entails sharing substance (food, drink, sex, conversation) with appropriate people at appropriate times 2 This echoes Sherry Ortner’s (1972) argument that women’s association with nature is at the root of their universal subjection. 3 Reflecting the importance of this notion among the Telugu middle classes in Hyderabad, ‘Within the Limits’ is the title of Amanda Gilbertson’s (2011) PhD thesis.

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and places. Dalit women are neither veiled nor secluded; but there is nevertheless an admiration for the shy, respectful woman who keeps within the village, the house, the back rooms, covers herself and only speaks, moves, eats, sleeps and drinks in a limited way with designated kin. For example, accepting too much food without refusing it first can indicate a naive shamelessness for women. One evening, on my return from a meal at a Kamma friend’s house, my ‘brothers’ teased, ‘Did you eat until your belly was full?’ They said that ‘girls should not go around ‘shamelessly’ (siggulekonda) eating anywhere’. Indiscriminately eating food with a number of different people in the village implies a lack of discernment, a willingness to accept the substances of wide range of people. Indeed, if we accept the parallels between food and female sexuality (Wadley 1994: 41–52), it represents a form of promiscuity. A woman who has shame is a woman who keeps within the prescribed limits. Siggu implies layers of enclosure within these social and physical boundaries (cf. Seizer 2000, 2005).4 The notion of boundaries is apparent in accusations of promiscuity. In Telugu one would say, ‘adi gali tirugutundi’, which literally translates as ‘it/ she roams about in the wind’ (adi (‘it’) is a deliberately demeaning pronoun). ‘Tirugutam’ (roaming) generally refers to moving about without purpose in the public sphere. It is largely an activity of men rather than women. But ‘gali tirugutundi’ (‘roaming in the wind’) suggests moving from a bounded area such as a house, a street, a community or a village into outside spaces, away from civilisation, wandering without direction or purpose. It is evocative of the movement of the ghosts that hover around the outlying areas of the village. Roaming in the wind connotes danger and lack of control. Promiscuous women and ghosts are beyond the limits of civilisation; they transgress boundaries and present a threat to moral order. A woman who is promiscuous is quite literally a woman without boundaries. Siggu is most easily understood by its absence. A shameless woman is loud-mouthed; she does not control her language or her temper, she speaks without thought or control. She moves her body excessively, unselfconsciously, without restraint and unaware of the 4 Susan Seizer’s article (2005) is especially illuminating here as it illustrates how the highly stigmatising work of special drama actresses in Tamil Nadu is mitigated by the actresses’ attempts to enclose, separate and draw boundaries around themselves.

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way she holds herself. As one informant put it, ‘She lies with her legs hanging either side of the cot before her father-in-law’. She goes outside the house, does not look after her children, ‘roams about’, travels on buses and trains, holds meetings, talks in public, converses freely with men and is promiscuous. A shameful woman is indiscriminate in what, where and with whom she eats and drinks. She has no control or limits and becomes shameless and unworthy of respect. It is no coincidence then that in Telugu to describe a shameful woman, one would say, ‘dani ki addhu apphu ledu’ meaning ‘she has no boundaries’. Female honour and shame are thus clearly caste- and classinflected. The attributes of a shameless woman also happen to be typically lower-class and Dalit, whilst the attributes of a modest woman are typically middle-class and upper-caste. In fact, to most Telugus the description above is a Dalit woman: lacking in manners and refinement, unselfconscious, careless, indiscriminate, promiscuous, disorderly, and sexually rapacious and therefore in need of ‘civilisation’. The fact that most Dalit women are not like this does little to alter the force of the stereotype. In both caste and gender terms, Dalit women’s power and danger justifies their double subordination. If it is Dalit women’s labour, lack of education, freedom of movement, outspokenness and their presence in the fields and the public sphere that are responsible for them being seen as shameless, then it is predictable that Dalits seek honour by trying to reverse this.

THE MEANING OF WORK: AGRICULTURAL LABOUR, DOMESTIC SERVICE AND HOUSEWORK The paradox of women’s work is that it brings them a great deal of value within their own community and yet it lowers the status of the caste as a whole. Keeping Telugu notions of shame and limits in mind, a brief look at the organisation of women’s labour should show why this is so. For both women and men, there are broadly two types of labour in Nampalli: wage labour (kuli punni) and contract labour (‘contract’ punni). Both farmers and labourers generally favour contract labour and the majority of work is done under this arrangement.

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Dalit labourers prefer not to be watched by the landlord as they work; they can work at their own pace and they can organise the work times as they wish. The faster they get the job done, the more they earn. Farmers also prefer contract work because they know that workers tend to work harder and their contact with labourers is minimised. As in other paddy growing areas of South India, there has been a ‘feminisation’ of agricultural labour (Bennet 1992, Da Corta and Venkateshwarlu 1999, Garikipati 2006, Kapadia 1992, Walker and Ryan 1990) as new technologies have replaced male labour and as women take over some of the jobs that men used to do.5 This trend may now be reversing, however, as recent research shows that female labour force participation appears to be declining (Heyer 2014, Mazumdar and Neetha 2011). This matches the all-India level data which shows that, ‘male labour force participation rates have slightly increased in the last 20 years while female labour force participation rates have slightly decreased in the same period (Deshpande 2011: 127). Although the evidence is somewhat contradictory or at least reflects a changing scenario, the fact that a minority of Dalit women in Nampalli are for the first time becoming housewives may be part of this broader trend. I turn to Dalit housewives a little later. The majority of Dalit women workers are employed to weed, plant, harvest and sort the crops. Of all the types of wage labour, the most degrading is that which involves squatting and bending, performed on someone else’s land. Although much of the work in the fields is done by women, they are paid less than half the rate of men. In 2009, the rate of a day’s wage labour for men was Rs 100 while for women it was Rs 50. This difference is due to the scarcity of male labour in the village and the perception that men’s work is more strenuous or skilled. Men are employed to fetch and carry, load, pack, dig, plough, spread pesticides and fertilisers and do any work involving animals, equipment or machinery. Labourers are organised into groups by team leaders from their own castes called ‘maistris’ (cf. Kapadia 1995). The maistris 5 In 1991, in Andhra Pradesh, 51.7per cent of agricultural labourers were women. 63% of female rural workers were agricultural labourers compared to 37 per cent of men (da Corta and Venkateshwarlu 1999). The proportion of female agricultural labourers has increased with the technological changes of the green revolution, the introduction of high yielding varieties of paddy and the movement of men from agriculture into other kinds of wage labour (ibid.).

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are assertive women and men who act as intermediaries between landlords and workers. They galvanise the workers and collect and distribute wages. The gender and caste composition of the work teams is strikingly homogenous: women and men work in separate teams and each team is made up of people of the same caste. Normally, the farmer comes to the palli on a motorbike and informs the maistri of the type of work, the location, the hours and the terms of labour. The maistris will then select workers to form teams. She tries to gather the young, fit and quick women in order to enhance her own reputation as maistri and to maximise the profit of the contract: the quicker they get the job done, the higher the pay. The best work teams are in high demand in peak times. In April/ May 2009, in the critical initial few days of the maize harvest, farmers were paying Rs 3000 for a team to harvest an acre, my informants reported. To avoid the heat, the women worked in the early morning, rested in the afternoon and returned to the field in the evening, sometimes working into the night. Working like this, they earned the equivalent of Rs 300 per day. In contrast, as a wage labourer, there is no incentive to exhaust oneself by working quickly, and workers admit that they sometimes take relief from hard labour by pretending to work or ‘acting’ (‘nanchintam’). As contract work encourages labourers to work fast, those agricultural jobs that need to be done slowly and diligently are deliberately paid at a daily rate. These include jobs such as planting turmeric, lentils and maize as well as weeding. Wage labour is divided into two periods of four hours and labourers are paid a half or full day rate. The morning session is from about 7am until 11 or 12pm and the evening session is from about 3pm until 6pm. Elderly workers are excluded from the work teams by the young because they complain that they hold them up. Old men and women are often left with no work at all or forced into taking very low-paid odd jobs. Unlike in upper-caste households in which senior members of the family have authority, elderly Dalits’ diminished productivity can leave them vulnerable and dependent on their family members. Here, it is productivity not seniority that matters. In 2008, Dalit women protested against their low rates of pay and demanded a raise from Rs 30 to Rs 50. Some of the female maistris from the Madiga and Mala palli met and discussed the issue. Taking some of the best women workers, they went to the uru to confront

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the main employers. The farmers refused to pay so the women went on strike. The women hired auto rickshaws and went to work in a neighbouring village instead. The strike took place in January at the time of the paddy harvest and the sowing of maize seeds. This was an extremely busy time and the farmers were in urgent need of the women’s labour. After several days, one of the Kamma farmers approached his maistri and agreed to increase the wage up to Rs 50. The other landlords objected to being held to ransom but as it was a critical point in the year, they were forced to concede. The women’s strike automatically increased men’s pay rates as well from Rs 70 to Rs 100 although it is unclear why. Dalit women’s labour is crucial to the functioning of households, families and the community as a whole. Although women receive roughly half the salary of men, it is their wage that maintains the household. Women’s earnings are mostly spent on food, clothes, the needs of their children and daily household expenses while men spend a much larger proportion of their wage on their own consumption, particularly on alcohol (cf. Harriss-White 2003). Women tend to work more days in the agricultural year than men: there is more female work available, and women are less selective about the kind of work they will perform. We know from Chapter Two that a significant minority of Dalit men are employed outside the village. Young Dalit men with education hope to find white-collar employment or a government job but the search is rarely fruitful and the men must be supported through periods of unemployment. This means that many of the unor under-employed Dalit men rely on their mothers’ and sisters’ very low but regular income to sustain them (cf. Anandhi and Jeyaranjan 2002). In labouring families, men earn more than women but their periods of work tend to be more irregular and their earnings are rarely devoted solely to the needs of the family. In most houses, wages are not pooled. Daughters usually give their wage to their mothers and young teenage sons give their wage to their fathers. But older sons keep their own wages and wives do not hand over money to their husbands. Not only do women contribute more of their earnings to the household, they also take the responsibility for savings, loans and their repayment. In 2009, almost all palli women were members of the women’s savings and credit DWCRA (Development of Women

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and Children in Rural Areas) groups. These groups are well attended and have helped some of the women buy the inputs for rented land, to purchase chickens, buffaloes and sewing machines and to set up teashops. There are other commercial lending organisations in the village, too (as well as individual loan sharks) although some of these may now have disappeared with the crisis in micro-finance in Andhra Pradesh in 2006 (Reddy 2012). An important part of women’s lives is the care of water buffaloes and the sale of milk. Buffaloes are scrupulously cleaned, fed, washed and grass is gathered after they have returned from a day’s work. Their dung is collected for fuel and fertiliser and the milk is sold to Goud and Chakili (OBC) middle-men who sell it to the dairies in town. Dalit men generally collect the income but it is the women who do much of the work of nurturing them. The other kind of work available to Dalit women is domestic work in upper-caste households. Often this is part of a long-standing patron-client connection. Women domestic servants do menial chores such as washing, sweeping and cleaning and small jobs in the landlord’s fields. At peak times they are obliged to labour for them even if there are opportunities for higher paid labour elsewhere. At harvest times, they may be found sitting in their landlord’s courtyard helping prepare the crop for storage, household consumption or sale. Women are paid in cash for their services but they may also be rewarded in kind with gifts of cooked food, snacks, sweets, fruits, clothes or ritual items such as sari blouse material. But like jeetham service, domestic service is a marker of caste degradation and only those who are willing to submit to such symbolically-loaded forms of servitude will engage in it. Nowadays, younger Dalits regard this as an outdated form of humiliation, associated with the old days of Untouchability. It is largely only elderly women who engage in it; the widowed wives of former bonded labourers in some cases.These are women whose frailty has weakened their capacity for labour or whose precarious position in their own households has led them to lower themselves for the sake of security. However, some still feel a strong obligation towards their patrons and place faith in their benevolence. Family members often rebuke old women for continuing to work in their houses and instruct them to refuse food and gifts. In the current climate of inter-caste tension, these submissive women are pulled in conflicting directions.

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Apart from paid labour, women’s work is also of course essential to the overall maintenance of the household. Dalit women perform almost all of the housework: at dawn they folds up the mats and blankets on which the family have slept and collect up dirty clothes. They hand wash all the family’s clothes, a job which takes an entire day for the novice. They wash the previous night’s dirty dishes, cooking pots, pans and plates with ash or soap if they can afford it. In larger families, women cook rice for the working members to take to the fields for lunch. On their return from the fields, they sweep and clean the house, light fires, cook and prepare hot water for baths. They must also find time to collect fuel and wood if they cannot afford to buy it. At the end of this strenuous regime, they are the last ones to bathe and eat, usually finishing the least nutritious remains of dinner at around 9pm before falling asleep on a mat on the floor. Work has implications for the way in which Dalit women are socialised. Even cursory observation suggests that Dalit women are more independent than upper-caste women: their language, movement, manner and clothes are quite distinct. Dalit women are much more accustomed to interacting with men for work purposes and they are used to having to bargain, argue, negotiate and defend their entitlements if they have to. At work, Dalit women express themselves in a forthright manner; they unashamedly swear, make jokes and playfully banter with co-workers and employers. Dalit women’s manner of speaking is direct, assertive and coarse. They are expected to look after themselves outside the house and they stridently reproach men they find offensive. Their way of communicating has none of the shy, clipped refinement of upper-caste, educated women. They call out to work mates in the fields, they shriek at children across the palli and they argue with neighbours with open-mouthed ferocity. Their language is fluent, articulate and uninhibited, unconstrained by sanskritised elaboration of Brahminical language. Indeed, some of the words they use are different altogether and taken from the dialect (i.e. kwarka instead of chira (sari), rekhalu instead of cheyitulu (hands), pellam instead of barya (wife), mogadu instead of barta (husband)). Dalits are ridiculed by the educated, for whom these words represent a rustic lack of sophistication. Dalit women’s clothes, taste and way of dressing are distinguishable as well. In general, younger Dalit women favour fashionable synthetic

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saris in bright, garish colours whereas upper-caste women tend to prefer more muted and subtle tones. Elderly women wear darker coloured cotton saris in the older style. Dalit women tend to dress for practicality rather than modesty. If time allows, they take pride and interest in their appearance but day-to-day, they are not concerned with wrapping the sari to perfection. They forego the use of sari pins at the shoulder and pay little attention to the way the sari falls and the folds at the front (kuchilu). They wear their saris high off the ground, hitching their saris up to their thighs when transplanting rice; tucking in the end of the sari at the waist or pulling it between their legs whilst at work. Few women are anxious about covering their blouses or navels, something about which upper-caste women are more mindful. Indeed, old Dalit women do not bother wearing blouses at all.6 Their dress affects the way they move. Unconcerned with a slip of the sari or a pin at their shoulder, their bodily movements are less restricted. While upper-caste women move through male-dominated public areas with head bowed and minimised movement, Dalit women have fewer inhibitions. Practical and dextrous, they move with ease, physical assurance and self-confidence in the fields, on their way to work and in the palli.7 Dalit women are not ashamed to work and some use it as proof of their superiority to the dominant castes. Working Dalit women are extremely fit and they rank themselves according to their capacity for work. Any woman can tell you who is the fastest at planting rice, pulling up turmeric roots, weeding and so on and these women are admired for their physical ability. They see their bodies as intrinsically stronger and capable of hardship. While their bodies are quick and competent, they see upper-caste bodies as soft, weak and incapable. Kamma women have neither the correct physical make-up nor the ‘habit’ (allavartu) of work, they say. They cannot bear as many children or perform hard labour. ‘Kammas just sit in the house and 6 This has historical significance. In the past, Dalit women were forbidden from wearing blouses and jewellery since these were markers of high status and men could not wear shoes through the uru. Defying these injunctions would be taken as a sign of insubordination. These rules are not enforced today but some old women are not in the habit of wearing blouses and prefer to cover themselves with just the sari. 7 Their body language dramatically changes in the presence of the landlords and in their employers’ houses, however.

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don’t do anything. They get all the diseases: ‘sugar’, ‘BP’ [diabetes and high blood pressure] and paralysis. All they do is stay inside, watch TV and lie about’, my neighbour commented. Similarly, the most derisory comments Mala and Madiga women could muster about western women concerned their laziness: they got up late, did not know how to wash or sweep and they had machines to do everything. But Dalit women’s work is unceasing and many barely have any time to rest and recuperate. Consequently, Dalit women believe their bodies deteriorate faster. Work in the sun makes them black, childbirth and breastfeeding makes them weak, and relentless activity leaves them depleted. Many women, particularly the poorest and least nourished soon feel the strain of hard, repetitive agricultural, domestic and reproductive work. Muscular aches and pains, stiffness of joints, and ill health from exhaustion are common. By their midforties, when women have undertaken years of this arduous routine, they see themselves as old and spent. Partly because they are labourers, women and men mix relatively freely. There are domains which are, of course, overtly gendered (kitchens and the drinking hut, for example) and women and men in larger families tend to sleep in separate areas (men and their sons in one area, women and daughters in another). Women and men also have separate designated areas in the fields for defecation and ritual events and ceremonies are obviously segregated. But in day-to-day life, sex segregation is not at all strict. Far from being banished from the public sphere, women are just as comfortable in the space of the palli as men: they chat in the teashop, they go back and forth to buy groceries, they hold meetings on the roadside, they sit outside together picking stones from rice, relaxing, chatting or preparing food. Certain domestic tasks are done jointly now and again: sons might join in a women’s conversation and help women fry quantities of snacks for a ritual occasion, husbands might fetch water or take over the strenuous pounding of rice flour at the grinding stone. Women’s labour and active role in the household and community mean that relegation to the inner domains would be both impossible and undesirable. In the palli, there is no tradition of joint family living and most households consist simply of married couples and their children. Nuclear family arrangements mean that a woman’s principal obligation is to her husband and children. She must show respect

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for her affinal kin but her behaviour is not under the scrutiny of her husband’s family. There is much less emphasis on displays on deference to senior men of the family and community. Few would question the importance of women to a healthy household. Apart from bringing in an essential wage, without women, there would be no one to cook, clean, wash clothes, make fires, fetch fuel and water and raise children. It is not only their domestic role which is crucial; in this part of India as elsewhere, girls of seven or more are relied upon to help look after their younger siblings. Girls will rarely be left completely unsupervised with very young children but they will take charge of their sisters and brothers while their mother completes household tasks in the early morning and at night. As shown in Chapter Two, virtually all children (including girls) attend school. I did not know of any young girls engaging in wage labour. However, children from poor families will be sometimes left to occupy themselves in the house during the day while their parents work. This is especially the case where there is an older sister around. In this situation, female neighbours who are not working due to age, illness or young children of their own are asked to keep an eye on them. Girls around eight years who have already learnt how to cook rice, wash dishes, sweep and clean and are considered old enough to be a temporary caretaker of young siblings. This frees up the mother to work and trains her for married life. All this means that women are not terribly different in status to men. As working, earning members of the family, Dalit women are accustomed to being in the public sphere; they are able to manage relations with co-workers and employers, they are used to handling money and budgeting. Referring to Dalit sweepers in North India, Searle-Chatterjee (1981) went as far as to say that Dalit women’s work had resulted in reversible sex roles: men doing women’s jobs and women doing men’s. This is not quite true for Nampalli (I never saw a man cleaning, sweeping or washing) but by force of circumstance, Dalit women live by far less strict gender codes.

WOMEN’S WORK AND FEMALE-CENTRED KINSHIP From a young age, girls contribute to the household economy. Teenage girls bring in a decent wage and are some of the most energetic workers in the palli. To lose a mature working daughter through marriage is to lose a major source of help and income. This

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used to be reflected in the payment of bride price or token gestures of dowry paid in the recent past. Even in 2004–5, Dalit grooms were still bearing the lion’s share of the expense of the wedding celebration itself (cf. Srinivas 2005: 5). Indeed, a calculation of the wedding gifts and wedding expenses shows that the cost of a marriage for the groom’s family can be more than the bride’s. For example, Bulli and Thomas married in April 2005. She was a seventeen-year-old agricultural labourer from Nampalli, educated up to secondary school level whose family owned a small amount of land. Thomas was an ‘outsider’ bridegroom from a nearby village who had failed his Intermediate exams and worked as an agricultural labourer and a shop assistant. Both families were of roughly the same socio-economic status. In the dowry discussions, it was agreed that Bulli’s family would give Thomas Rs 35,000 in dowry and a gold ring costing Rs 4,600. Like all brides, Bulli was also gifted a range of household items (pots, basins, cans, utensils, buckets, a gas stove) from relatives, which she would take to her new conjugal home. In this case, the total value of all these household items can be estimated at Rs 15,000. If one includes these items, the dowry and the gold given to the groom, the total worth of all the goods flowing from the bride’s side to the groom’s side is approximately Rs 55,000. Strictly speaking, however, the household goods and cooking equipment do not belong to the groom and in the case of a divorce Bulli would take these back. In return, it was agreed that Thomas’s side would give Bulli a gold wedding necklace (Rs 25,000) and a gold disc (Rs 500). The groom’s side bear the expense of the ‘pradanam’ (a basin of ritual items given to the bride) while the bride’s family feed the groom’s party when the basin is given. In this case, the total worth of the goods flowing from the groom’s to the bride’s side is about Rs 30,000. However, unlike upper-caste weddings, weddings are customarily held at the groom’s house and paid for by the groom.Thomas’ family had hired a carpeted stage and ‘setting’, gold-coloured velvet chairs, a microphone, a photographer, a videographer and a lighting assistant and the band. These expenses in themselves amount to tens of thousands of rupees. If we take into account the overall wedding expenses, the groom’s side bears most of the burden. This is in stark contrast to Kamma weddings in which the bride’s family pays most. Dowries can run into lakhs of rupees, extravagant wedding gifts of jewellery and clothes

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are now the norm, and gifted household items may include scooters and furniture. Although a crude indicator, the major differences in marriage payments tell us something of the relative ‘worth’ of women in the uru and the palli. Dalit women’s economic productivity not only has implications for their value in the marriage negotiations, it also gives them greater autonomy within marriage. As we know, divorce, ‘love marriage’ and widow remarriage are more common among Dalits than the upper castes (Den Uyl 1995: 196, Deliège 1997: 224, Pillai-Vetschera 1999). Although undesirable, it is possible for Dalit women to survive on their own earnings. This allows for an element of choice in their marital arrangements and enables them to escape abusive marriages if necessary, as we shall see in Chapter Seven. In the past, it was relatively easy to dissolve a marriage if both sides agreed to it. This was known as ‘odili pettadam’ or ‘letting go’ of a wife or husband. Genealogies show that around a third of Nampalli Dalits over the age of fifty had divorced (often more than once) and almost all had remarried. The deceased father of my elderly neighbour married five times. Of course, for Dalits, men are still greater (goppa-ga) than women and any household in which a wife dominates her husband is seen as transgressive. Dalits, too, see sons as important as they inherit any property, receive dowry, take over the family home and take care of aging parents. Rani explains, ‘We always think that it is good to have a boy ... If it is a boy then he carries the lineage. If it is a girl then she goes to her mother-in-law’s house. That is why people prefer sons’. But even so, it is rare to find parents lamenting the birth of a girl. In fact, couples are often disappointed if they do not produce a daughter. My neighbour, Bujji, spoke about her sterilisation after the birth of her second daughter. Her decision had partly been influenced by the incentives offered by the government’s ‘Rendu Chaloo’ (‘Two is Enough’) campaign but she also explained that she was happy to have two daughters because girls form closer emotional bonds with their parents and are more likely to look after them in old age. Despite the fact they move away after marriage, Bujji explained, it is widely believed that girls have more love for their parents. Although her husband’s statement reflects the growing interest in dowry (and hence preference for sons), Vanaja’s view is still typical of many women:

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CS: Who do you have more love for, daughters or sons? Ram: Sons; because we don’t have to lose money. With sons we know we will get money for dowry. Vanaja: What do you mean sons! Daughters care for their parents much more than sons. Whenever they have any kind of fever or cold, the daughter will come from her mother-in-law’s house to look after them. The son might live next door but he won’t look after his parents. He goes about his own business and forgets about them. But daughters lovingly take care of their mother and father.

Most Dalit daughters are married nearby into neighbouring villages. In the case of cross-cousin marriage, the new bride lives in her mother’s brother’s or father’s sister’s households. In Nampalli’s Madiga palli, of the seventy-one married couples, thirty-three unions are between kin, while thirty-eight are between non kin.8 In the Mala palli, of the eighty-nine married couples, twenty-eight are between kin and sixty-one between non-kin. The difference between Malas and Madigas notwithstanding, broadly speaking, the younger and more educated the couple, the more likely they are to be married to an outsider. That said, in 2004–5, just under half of all Madiga marriages were between actual or classificatory cross-cousins. Given that there is not always a cross-cousin available, this is a very high proportion. Anthropologists have shown the ways in which the Dravidian kinship9 is more favourable to women (Agarwal 1994, Dube 1997, Kapadia 1995, Kolenda 1987, Uberoi 1993). As the ones who move house at marriage, women are acutely aware of the importance of a hospitable conjugal environment. Parents often prefer to marry a daughter to a cross-cousin marriage or her maternal uncle because they have the advantage of knowing the family already. Indeed, there is particular closeness of brothers and sisters in South Indian families and the exchange of children in marriage represents a practical and emotional reinforcement of the sibling bond (Trawick 1990). The symbolic importance of the relationship between a girl and her mother’s brother (manamama) is also still widely and visibly celebrated. Even when girls are married to non-kin outsiders, it 8 Here, ‘kin’ refers to actual cross-cousins (MBD or FZD) as well as more distantly related classificatory crosscousins. 9 For more on Dravidian kinship see Dumont (1968), Moffatt (1979: 174–176), Deliège (1997: 170–222), Trautmann (1981)

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is the mother’s brother who ‘makes the girl into the bride’ (pelli kutheru cheyatam) in the rituals before her wedding and at her first menstruation ceremony (bunti/ pushparvati). The latter ceremony closely echoes the marriage rites and publicly communicates the manamama’s special role of guardianship as well as his right to her fertility through marriage. In a known and close family, parents are reassured that their daughter will be looked after. They believe she has less chance of being trapped in an unhappy home. There is also less adjustment needed; she ‘stays close’, simply moving position in the family rather than moving out of it. Indeed, she may move just a few houses away from her parents. This is not to say a cross-cousin is always preferred; with kin, one is aware of a family’s negative traits in advance. Moreover, some say that marital disputes between crosscousins necessarily involve the wider family and can be much more damaging. However, there are other reasons for ‘outsider’ preference when families start to engage in strategies of upwardly mobility (see Chapter Six). Women’s work and Dravidian kinship change the way Dalits are socialised. All Dalits have a both a personal name and a ‘house name’ (intiperu).Within each caste, there are a number of families who share the same intiperu who form a patrilineage, descended from a common ancestor. At marriage, a woman takes her husband’s intiperu and becomes part of his patrilineage. According to their intiperu, Dalits divide themselves into marriageable and unmarriageable groups described as varsa (affines) or varsa kadu (not affines). Dalit kinship is characterised by caste endogamy (Madigas marry Madigas), but intiperu and varsa exogamy. Varsa means that all cousins conceive of each other either as potential spouses or siblings and their respective families as affines or consanguines.10 This means that if Madigas from distant regions meet, by establishing their respective intiperus, they should be able work out whether or not they are marriageable. One’s mother’s sister’s or father’s brother’s children are referred to as siblings. The words for one’s marriageable ‘cousin’ (maradalu for girls, bava for boys) are heavy with meaning. The bava does not have a right over his maradalu but he does have quite a strong claim. 10 For example, among Madigas, there are five different intiperus (A, B, C, X, Y) in the community. These are split into two exogamous varsa groups (ABC and XY), so that As, Bs and Cs can marry Xs and Ys.

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Because cross-cousins are destined for each other, I was told that many people’s first sexual experiences are with their cross-cousins, something which in turn may encourage them towards marriage. There seems to be no particular preference for marriage to FZD over MBD; it is other factors (the groom’s age, job, education, character, appearance, home village) that bear on the decision. Dalit social relations are worked out in kinship terms and personal names are suffixed by their kinship relation (Mariamm-akka, ‘Mariamma older sister’). People speak about others by using their kinship position (‘your mother’s mother said this’, ‘your younger brother did that’), and everyone knows how they are related. Before children learn the personal names of their community members they learn their relation to them and the behaviour appropriate to that relationship. Boys as young as five know that their maradalu is a ‘special’ relation and engage in teasing relationships, known as ‘sisaalu cheyatam’ in Telugu. Bava and maradulu will keep a distance from each other but when they do interact they may joke or flirt with each other. For example, the 11 year-old daughter of my neighbour would pull the shirt of her cousin sister’s husband when he came for a visit and tease him saying, ‘You’ve got arms and legs! Why don’t you go and heat some water for my bath?’ Another unmarried girl teased her older uncle saying, ‘Mamaya, don’t take my elder sister as a wife, why don’t you take me instead?’ The use of these terms not only represents kinship relations but to a certain extent helps to forge them. A girl might effectively repel a suitor by referring to him as ‘brother’ or a woman might refer to her husband as ‘bava’ when in fact they are not cross-cousins at all. In using these varsa-sensitive kinship terms Dalits assert their affinal or consanguinal relationships with their neighbours every time they call out their name. Indeed, this forms a central part of their socialisation. Cross-cousin marriage brings about a different form of socialisation and interaction. While men and women unknown to each other are governed by more formal codes of conduct, Dravidian kinship converts the opposite sex into kin: either a blood or marriageable relation or a derivative of one or the other set. Women and men relate to each other then as consanguines or affines within dense webs of kinship. These are not distanced relationships between outsiders, marked by formality and the exchange of respect. Rather, the socialisation practices engendered by cross-cousin marriage give rise to closer ties between women and men.

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After marriage, Dalit women rarely sever the bonds with their natal home. If their marriage takes place before their maturity ceremony they may continue living at home for a number of years. For the mature bride, the first few months of married life are divided between the natal and conjugal home. After the wedding, the bride and groom go on a series of trips between their respective villages, known as nidralu. After the wedding ceremony, the first trip back to the bride’s house is for the consummation of the marriage. After this, they go back to the groom’s house for three, five or seven days. This is followed by return trips to the girl’s mother’s house of diminishing frequency and duration until the girl is settled. During the monsoon, it is customary for young newly-married women to go and stay at the mother’s house. In the lunar month of ‘ashada masam’, the girl’s parents come to collect her from her husband and she joyfully returns home for several weeks. When her husband comes for her, he brings a set of new clothes and gifts for his parents-in-law. In July/August, in the lunar month of ‘srevana masam’, women from the bride’s house take the girl back to her husband’s house again, taking with them a special white sweet, betel nut and bananas for the groom’s family to herald the bride’s return. It is customary for Dalit women to give birth in her mother’s house and many women stay there until the baby is a few months old. Indeed, if a Dalit girl falls pregnant several times, much of the early stage of her marriage may be spent in her ‘mother’s home’. Even when her children are a little older, a Dalit woman has the right to return to her natal home at any time. Daughters go back for life cycle events and celebrations, to help take care of ailing parents, to assist with domestic chores in a family crisis or in the event of a conflict with their husbands’ family. During the rice harvest, several married girls return to Nampalli to take advantage of the work available. It is also fairly common to find uxorilocal marriage in Dalit communities if there is more work or inheritable property in the bride’s village. Women enjoy returning to the communities in which they grew up. They move about freely, socialise with everyone, flirt openly with men of their age and enjoy being treated as a daughter again, especially with the added prestige of having successfully married and borne children. In the tea shop one day, I was talking to one of the village daughters who had returned to her mother’s home for a few days. I asked her how long she would be staying. This provoked

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a lighthearted discussion during which one of the younger men claimed that a girl always belongs in her mother’s house. He said, ‘If you ask any girl here, ‘What’s your surname (intiperu)?’ they will smile and say, ‘Which one?’ To prove his point he turned to the visiting girl and asked teasingly, ‘Truthfully, what’s your real surname?’ Giggling, she eventually replied with her maiden name. Vindicated, the man laughed, ‘You see!’ This humorous conversation accurately conveys the way in which Dalit women are never wholly incorporated into their husband’s lineage; they are always part of two families, their own and their husband’s. Dalits seem to accept the closeness and permanency of the relationship between a daughter and her parents, especially her mother. Indeed, the very fact that the natal home is called the ‘ma ammavallu illu’ ‘my mother’s people’s house’ or ‘my mother’s house’ is, in itself, suggestive. This is substantiated by reports from other anthropologists which show the close ties that daughters maintain with their natal homes in other parts of India, too (Grover 2009; Jacobson and Wadley 1992: 55). Although Dalit women may appear quite different from others, the distinction should not be exaggerated. As in other castes, marriage and motherhood are the most important events of women’s lives and are celebrated as extravagantly as possible. Married fertility is glorified in the institution of the ‘parantalu’, the ‘auspicious wives’ who, as fertile, married representatives of each caste lineage, play a role in all propitious ceremonies in the palli. In fact, certain rituals indicate that Dalit beliefs about the place of women are little different from the upper-castes’. It is difficult to interpret the widowing ritual (gaju pootha), for example, as anything other than an enactment of the social death a woman suffers at her husband’s decease. On the third, fifth, seventh or ninth day after the day of the husband’s death, the widow sits in her marital home with an empty stool next to her, dressed in colourful saris and adorned in bangles and flowers. Guests give her gifts and apply turmeric and vermilion all over her face, neck, stomach and feet. This is a re-enactment of the preparatory rituals of the wedding ceremony. And yet because the heavily decorated, ‘bridal’ widow is usually old and infertile, she appears a gruesome caricature of a bride. The widow is then taken outside the village to an exterior place such as a burial ground or a site of defecation whereupon she is stripped of her ‘wedding’ clothes. Her bangles are smashed off her wrists with a sickle and the

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jasmine flowers are pulled from her hair. Her plait is undone, her hair loosened, the turmeric and vermilion are wiped off her face and her wedding tali is removed. As she squats half-naked, she is washed with five pots of water, poured by affinal female kin. Her entire head, face and body are then shrouded in yards of white cloth. She is then led blind back into the village and her house whereupon she is seated and fed lumps of jaggery (bellam). In symbolic terms, this rite of passage marks a woman’s transition from one state to another, passing through a ‘liminal’ period (van Gennep 1960, Turner 1966). And yet the lived reality of Dalit women contradicts the message of this brutal ritual. Dalit widows do not suffer anything like a social death in their day-to-day lives; they continue to work, some re-marry and others find more freedom after their husband’s death. In practice, Dalit widows are not regarded as inauspicious, and none that I knew had made significant alterations to their diet or clothing. In fact, if they are old women, they can enjoy freedoms that young women are denied. Similarly, against the supposed Hindu ideal, most Dalit women find the idea of worshipping their often drunken, ‘goodfor-nothing’ husbands ludicrous. Clearly, the realities of Dalit life and work mean that feminine ideals are either non-existent or only taken half seriously.11 There is a distinction between Dalit women and others. Unlike others, Dalits are socialised as workers as much as wives and mothers. Work brings women freedom in the public sphere and their earning capacity gives them influence. Their income positively affects dowry, marriage and kinship and gives women autonomy as wives, mothers and daughters-in-law. But while work brings Dalit women value within their own communities, it brings shame on the Dalit castes as a whole. The link between work and sex helps to explain this.

WOMEN’S WORK, SEX AND SHAME Dalit women’s status as workers is a crucial explanatory factor in their construction as ‘shameless’. As Kalpana and Vasanth Kannabiran say, ‘Women at work can never quite escape being defined as sexual objects. Sexual access, ranging from small intimacies right through to actual intercourse is often assumed to be part of the working 11 See Raheja and Gold (1994) and Tarlo (1996: 168–201), for more on women’s resistance in India.

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relationship’ (2002: 85). This is seen as something natural and inevitable when men and women are alone. Working Dalit women, who are seen as intrinsically ‘loose’, are even more vulnerable. However, not all sexual relationships are forced. Agricultural wage labour for women is shameful in part because it is linked with commercial and consensual illicit sex. As noted above, women’s work is for the most part responsible for many of the differences in Dalit women’s dress, speech, movement and behaviour. At work in the fields, away from husbands, children, housework and the confines of the village, Dalit women playfully converse with other female and male co-workers in often witty, ribald and bawdy language. The hard monotony of labour is lightened by such joking and flirtation, which give rise to friendships and sometimes relationships, mostly between male and female workers but occasionally between male employers and female labourers. The light-hearted repartee that is exchanged between the supervising landlord and the female workers in the fields would never be witnessed within the confines of the village. But in the fields, social interaction is far less inhibited. This kind of interaction between Dalit women and men of their own and different castes is both indicative and productive of the loosened social rules in operation outside the boundaries of the village. The symbolic significance of the fields is inversely related to the symbolic significance of the village and the palli. The heart of the main village is the centre of civilisation. Here one finds symmetry, order and routine. In contrast, the fields represent its antithesis: nature, darkness, unpredictability and danger.12 It is well known that certain places outside the village (fields, cemeteries, ponds, trees, empty places) at certain times (afternoon and night) must be avoided by those who are easily frightened, especially pregnant or menstruating women or anyone with a weak constitution. The idea of going for a walk in the fields by oneself is utterly alien, as I found to my detriment early on in fieldwork. On my return, Nagamma, the grandmother of my household, angrily warned me of the perils of the fields: dogs, snakes, scorpions, wandering men and mad people. If the village is the site of order and control, the fields are associated with lack of control and absence of boundaries: freedom 12 Accordingly, the palli is a liminal zone between the outside realm of the fields and the orderly interior of the uru (Deliège 1999, Mines 2005). Residents of this palli are literally and symbolically ‘in between’ village civilisation and the wilderness of the outside.

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from the strictures of village life. There is also a certain sensuality associated with the end of the working day in the fields. During the day, the fields are the site of the hard grind of repetitive, difficult and tiring physical labour. But once the sun dips, the temperatures fall, the visceral relief of the end of a day’s labour is palpable. Walking home, the air feels cool and the mood is relaxed. Away from the chores, strife and claustrophobia of the palli, in the early evenings, the fields are a place of momentary liberation. The fields are primarily a place of work for labourers. But they are also the site of illicit sexual activity ranging from rape (hence Nagamma’s allusion to ‘wandering men’) to love affairs. After many months of living in the palli, when my closer female friends began to talk to me more openly about relationships, I asked how people found any privacy in the confines of the palli. They intimated that at dusk or at night, the fields were where affairs were conducted. So well known is the connection between sex and the fields that doubt is cast on any woman seen on their own heading away from the palli after dark, even if they are quite innocent. Indeed, the words, ‘the fields’ (pollalu) themselves have sexual connotations when used in a certain context and the term ‘work’ (panni) has a well known double meaning in Telugu. Sukanya, a Dalit labourer, explains, ‘If [a Dalit girl] goes to fields she will get all the bad habits (chedda alluvartulu). If the farmer’s son wants to go with the girl and if the girl is attracted, it is very easy.’ This association between work, sex and the fields is partly the reason why labour is so shameful for women. If one were to judge by the rumours, the incidence of extramarital relationships is fairly high. Most of these affairs occur between women and men within the same community but extracaste liaisons are not unknown. Those few cross-caste relationships that exist are more difficult to conceal and are treated with much more seriousness. They are the cause of a particular kind of caste humiliation for men; supposed proof not only of their inability to protect their women but also of their inability to materially (and physically) satisfy their wives. In the rare cases of relationships between lower-caste women and upper-caste men, it is not unusual to find some kind of financial element. In long-term love affairs, the onus is on the more affluent man to provide for her in some way to show his care for her. Mostly these relationships are secret but the more long-standing affairs are less carefully hidden. One of the lower-caste maistris, for instance, lives unmarried with a Kamma

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landlord while his wife lives separately in the marital home. Although this situation has continued for years, there is no question of the maistri and the farmer getting married. These relationships are seen principally as love relationships, although the financial benefits that can accrue from such liaisons are not of course irrelevant for impoverished lower-caste and Dalit women. Whilst intimate, love relationships exist between Dalit women and upper-caste men, other pairings are simply commercial transactions. Some dominant-caste landlords were said to be paying labourers for sex. Just as maistris are the intermediaries between the landlord his labourers over matters of work, some maistris can also help to arrange meetings between couples. It is rare but not unheard of for maistris to be paid by the farmer to act as a kind of pimp, I was told. At work in the fields, her job is to facilitate contact between the landlord and the women workers. If the landlord is attracted to one of the team he asks the maistri to get her to bring him some water in a hidden place in the field. If she is interested, she will co-operate. The maistri only chooses workers who are prepared to engage in this kind of activity, she will not choose women who would object. The amount of money women receive from the farmer depends on the woman in question and how much the farmer is prepared to pay. Female informants say he may pay Rs 100–200 but much more if he has a special interest in her. Since landlords are not able to sexually exploit Dalit women in the way they used to, nowadays they must pay for that which they used to obtain by force. This can be interpreted as a move from violent sexual abuse of Dalit women under conditions of structural subordination to an exploitative commercialisation of women’s bodies under conditions of poverty and vulnerability. Dalit men are not unaware of these arrangements or the pecuniary incentives for poor women. One Madiga informant claimed that nowadays some Dalit women would voluntarily ‘take the hand’ of a Kamma man if they thought there was any money in it (cited in Still 2008: 15). For many women though, it may be less a question of moral choice than of destitution. Given the historic sexual humiliation of Dalit women, nowadays Dalit men are extremely vigilant. Dalit political groups in the area give Dalits some recourse to justice and dominant-caste men know that they cannot get away with the abuses of the past. The fact that in the summer of 2008 male Madiga leaders went to the sarpanch’s

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house to report that an upper-caste landlord had allegedly touched a Madiga woman’s shoulder in the fields gives us an indication of the gravity with which these matters are taken. Women’s work in upper-caste households is most closely associated with sexual servitude and for this reason it is the most shameful form of work. In addition to old women, a minority of younger Dalit women earn extra income through engaging in domestic work. But for young, fertile women it is much more shameful. Most husbands would prefer to go hungry than allow their wives to work in other men’s homes. This means that only the most impoverished women or widows undertake this work. Shame and destitution are thus closely linked. Dalit men do not even like to admit to the existence of female domestic work. In a group interview, male Madiga elders claimed that while no Madiga women undertake domestic service, Mala women frequently go to their masters’ houses and ‘eat leftover rice’. Although their statement is not factually correct (there are Madiga domestic servants) it is noteworthy that the men refuse to publicly acknowledge this and use it as a way of denigrating their caste rivals. Sexual service is assumed to be part of domestic work. Regardless of her actual conduct, the worker is seen to be willing to consume the substances of the upper castes, implied in the phrase, ‘eating leftover rice’. In Nampalli, affairs between upper-caste women and Dalit men are the most controversial of all the extra-marital unions. This is all the more so in the current climate of politicised caste conflict. Some of the younger generation of educated Dalit boys now make a point of pursuing upper-caste girls in order to make a statement about their own desirability and entitlement to mix with the women of traditionally higher status groups (cf. Anandhi and Jeyaranjan 2002). In Nampalli, the only opportunity for Dalit boys to converse with Kamma girls is on the bus from the city, at the bus stop in town or in the classrooms of the local colleges. Kamma men are vigilant about such ‘friendships’ and any interaction between Dalit boys and their daughters would not be tolerated within the village. Dalit youth are of course aware of the significance of their overtures towards women who have been historically guarded from the predations of outside men. Kamma anxieties about inter-caste unions were agitated by a Kamma girl in Nampalli, who in 2002 had married her Madiga

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classmate who lived in a local town.The man was from a middle-class family, he had excelled in his education and he worked as a journalist for a reputable local newspaper. His family were wealthier than hers, he spoke good English and he had relatives in the West. But despite his class credentials, their marriage was condemned in Nampalli, and some of her family had cut them off. Nampalli Madigas also had mixed reactions to the marriage. Some thought that it showed how the young are beyond reproach while others saw it as evidence of the desirability of ‘our Madiga boys’. With money and education, caste does not matter, they observed. Indeed, had the boy been a village labourer, it never would have been allowed.

*** This chapter has shown the importance of women’s work in sustaining the household. The value of women is reflected in Dalit kinship patterns, which continue to favour women. Dalit women’s distinct socialisation results in different attitudes, values and behaviour. Unlike others, Dalit women have a certain amount of power in their conjugal homes, they are able to look after themselves and make their own choices, albeit in circumstances of hardship, inequality and deprivation. Forms of prostitution are undoubtedly a last resort in the face of extreme poverty. But Dalit women also form other consensual relationships, not only because they have the opportunity but also because ideologically they are different from the dominant castes. As a result of working outside the house, Dalits place less emphasis on shame (siggu) and are currently less driven by the imperatives of honour. They are freer to act on their own desires and more independent to do so. The sanctions against women are also less severe because working women have a means of survival if they are abandoned. But while work brings Dalit women value, it also degrades them in wider society. The link between work, sex and the fields (as the site of consensual and commercial sexual relations) as well as rape and harrassment helps to explain this. It is precisely because of this link that Dalits’ most pressing task in the pursuit of honour is to get Dalit women out of the fields. This is the principle reason, I suggest, why Dalits are seeking to make their female kin similar to the women in the uru. This purification means that many of those aspects of Dalit life which are good for women are being eroded. This is happening in several different ways.

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Principal among them is the fact that women are giving up labour in those households in which men have gained secure enough nonfarm employment to support their wives and children at home. These new forms of employment (described in Chapter Two) have given rise to the first generation of Dalit housewives. As it stands, Dalit housewives are a minority in Nampalli (as noted earlier, 83% of Dalit women work in Nampalli) but this small group has significance beyond its numbers. These women embody an ideal towards which labouring families aspire. Although Dalit women workers express some ambivalence about this new trend, on the whole life in these families is seen as better. The life of a housewife is described as ‘sukham’ ‘contented/ comfortable’ and it features strongly in young Dalit women’s aspirations. In some respects, women’s lives do genuinely improve once they can escape the monotonous, poorly paid and exploitative grind of wage labour; Heyer (2014) in particular shows this persuasively. However, seen in its wider social and cultural context, the withdrawal of women from work has negative knock-on effects. Cross-cousin marriage and Dalit kinship are affected because upward mobility entails a rising preference for prestige marriages with educated outsiders, described for Tamil Nadu by Kapadia (1995) and ethnographically illustrated in the following chapter. Dalit women’s very strong link with the natal home (one retained well into marriage) weakens and female-oriented customs become more tenuous. When women relate to men as outsiders rather than consanguinal or affinal relations, entire webs of social conduct change. Dalit women’s socialisation as workers and their associated freedoms in dress, language, movement, demeanour and attitude are all curtailed. Even ideals of love, formerly linked strongly to the amount of paid or unpaid work a woman performs for her family members, begin to shift. Most importantly, concerns about honour and female sexuality increase, sometimes accompanied by violence against those women who do not conform. Although life becomes less arduous, new hardships emerge. Paruvu-pratishta-gowravam is not easy to attain, however. It requires substantial physical, financial and religious effort, as we shall see in the following chapter.

5 Honour and Shame in the Madiga palli Leela’s Elopement, Possession and Marriage

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eela was seventeen at the time of fieldwork and conformed to all the ideals of Telugu beauty: fair skin, plump cheeks, long eyelashes and thick black hair in a waist length plait. She was the third child of four and the only daughter in my host family. Every day she woke at dawn, swept the house, milked the buffaloes, scrubbed the dishes and washed all of the family’s clothes on the edge of the road. After she had hung them out to dry, she would sit on the doorstep with a cup of tea, combing coconut oil into her hair in the morning sun before heading off to the fields, lunch box in hand. The family doted upon Leela, especially her mother Mariamma, who bought her expensive medicines, bangles and fruit from the market and put aside bits of meat, fresh curd, milk and sweets for her. The mother and daughter of the family suffered the heaviest burden of work and Leela in particular resented such a gruelling regime. It was not intended that Leela should become an agricultural labour like all the other girls. She was bright and the only Madiga girl in the village to pass her tenth class exams. Her parents admitted her into a private girls’ boarding school for her Intermediate education, very unusual for a rural Madiga girl. As the educated only daughter of the family, Leela would have been in an ideal position to marry ‘up’ and her education was meant to facilitate this. Leela’s parents

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had set their sights on her father’s sister’s eldest son. The boy lived in the local town and his father was a government employee. Through his father, her cross-cousin had good prospects for a job in the Electricity Department and he could offer Leela a sedentary life as a semi-urban, middle-class housewife. The match was seen as an excellent combination: a cross-cousin marriage that fulfilled kin reciprocity and would not require the high dowry associated with a salaried ‘outsider’ bridegroom but also a prestigious marriage into a better life. Both families had informally agreed on it and they allowed the cousins to talk alone on the roof one evening to encourage their familiarity. But Leela was as reluctant as her cross-cousin was keen, mainly because she was in love with another boy called Chinna, one of the village troublemakers. Chinna had failed his tenth class exams, dropped out of school and was unemployed. His father had died some years previously and his ‘lifestyle’ (a word he used himself) was subsidised by his mother who worked as a government-employed sweeper. Chinna swaggered around the palli in the latest fashions and sometimes drove a borrowed motorbike through the narrow village roads. He conspicuously consumed alcohol and smoked cigarettes in the village centre and he behaved in a deliberately provocative manner towards the upper castes simply to entertain himself and his friends. He liked to give the impression that he was involved in criminal activities in the city (he would brag that he was a policeman one day, a Naxalite the next) and he consciously modelled himself on the cinematic figure of the ‘rowdy’. Leela’s elopement with Chinna represented a crisis for my host family and it significantly altered relationships not only within the family but all the lineages of the Madiga community. This chapter describes the elopement, Leela’s subsequent spirit possession and her marriage a year later. It shows the multiple strategies used by the family to reassert their authority and deal with her transgression. One of the reasons why the elopement was such an affront to paruvu-pratishta-gowravam was that Leela and Chinna shared the same house name (intiperu) and were classificatory siblings. In the village, elopements, pre-marital affairs and pregnancies can usually be solved by legitimating the indiscretion through marriage. But for a couple who lived in the same village and who grew up calling each other brother and sister, marriage was impossible. It was this, not necessarily the affair in itself that was most problematic.

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While all affairs cause shame, some cause more shame than others. The love affair of an unmarried virgin daughter is considered more shameful than the extra-marital affair of an older woman. A public elopement or an affair that results in pregnancy causes more shame than a discreet affair. An incestuous affair or an affair outside the caste is worse than an affair between couples who are potentially marriageable. Shame also affects those of higher status who have more prestige to lose. These factors make Leela’s case especially useful in illuminating paruvu-pratishta-gowravam. The material here illustrates the ways in which families acquire, lose and regain paruvu-pratishta-gowravam over time. It shows one family’s careful accumulation of honour over three generations, their sudden fall in status after the elopement, the ways in which they limit the damage to their reputation and rebuild their position. This allows for an appreciation of the elements that comprise ‘good standing’ and the ways in which families can be particularly vulnerable to shame. Overall, we see the crucial role of honour in local conceptions of social status and its significance in the context of Dalit upward mobility.

*** Through a combination of hard work, political success, educational achievements, land, wealth and ‘good’ actions, my host family had gained respect (gowravam), and a good reputation (peru) not only in the Madiga palli, but also in the village as a whole. The grandmother of my host household, Nagamma, married Peraiah shortly after her maturity ceremony. Although it was Peraiah’s second marriage, it was a good match: it represented an alliance between two large Madiga lineages from villages with a history of marriage exchange. Their marriage was a joint wedding between two sets of siblings: a brother and sister from one village married a brother and sister from another. This is known as kondamarpulu, when two men exchange their sisters for wives, a form of marriage celebrated for the simultaneous reciprocity it marks. Nagamma and Peraiah had five children; two sons and three daughters, Nagaiah, Romila, Chinnaromila, Rayappa, and Devamma. Nagamma had two miscarriages before she became pregnant again. This time, she vowed to their household god, the snake god, Nagendraswamy, that if the child survived she would give the child

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the god’s name. When a son was born, they held a ceremony at the Nagendraswamy temple and a feast in the palli. Nagaiah was an adored child and he grew tall and strong. His parents worked tirelessly in the fields and they fostered good relationships with their patrons in the uru. Nagaiah was bright and his parents were determined that he should be educated. They sent him to a teacher who ran a makeshift school in the Mala palli. Nagaiah continued in a government school up to secondary level. He married a girl from Nantal and their first child was a healthy boy, Srinu. Two years later Nagaiah’s wife died after giving birth to a daughter. The baby girl, Anjamma, was raised on buffalo milk by her grandmother and her teenage aunt. Nagaiah later remarried and had two sons by his second wife. As a young man, Nagaiah was charismatic, articulate and interested in politics. Through his parents’ good relations with their employers, Nagaiah cultivated friendships with Nampalli Kammas in the Congress Party in the early 1980s.With their support and through a reserved seat in the panchayati council, he became sarpanch, the first Madiga village president. Nagaiah was no puppet president; he was active and confident in his role as sarpanch. He made substantial improvements to the Madiga palli including roads and streetlights and he secured funds to convert the hut in the Mala palli into a government school. Nagaiah made alliances across the castes and was popular among his own people. Stories about his time in office abound; his reputation and the family honour increased substantially. The height of Nagaiah’s political career was marked by an alleged handshake with the then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, on his trip to rural Andhra Pradesh, so I was told. But Nagaiah’s success drew enemies from other political parties as well as conservative villagers who objected to a Madiga becoming president. In 1985, Nagaiah died in suspicious circumstances after consuming a drink given to him during a village meeting. During his time in office, Nagaiah was able to accrue some wealth and the family acquired land. At first, they bought three quarters of an acre of irrigated land. The profits they made from cultivating this land allowed them to buy more land in subsequent years. By the time I got to know the family in 2004, they had secured two and three quarter acres of wet and dry land, more land than any other family in the Madiga palli and indeed many families in the uru. Even though the family still work as agricultural labourers, the price of land in this area has given them valuable assets.

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Nagaiah’s eldest children by his first wife, Srinu and Anjamma, were left orphaned after their father’s death. They were neglected by their stepmother and Srinu spent most of his childhood in government boarding schools for SC and ST children. Nagamma, his grandmother, looked after him when he was in Nampalli but since he had no parents, from an early age he occupied himself in cleaning jobs in the city. His fortunes changed whilst working as a servant in a prestigious Jesuit private college. The Jesuit fathers noticed he was keen to learn, and they admitted him into the school on a scholarship. It was here that he excelled, soon coming top of the class in most subjects. Later he scored top marks in his degree in a well-reputed university and he went onto study at post-graduate level, an unprecedented achievement. Nagaiah’s sisters all had good reputations and married well, especially the eldest, Romila, who married a distant relation, a government employee in the Electricity Department who lived comfortably on the outskirts of a nearby town. The match between Rayappa (Nagamma’s second son) and Mariamma was arranged early but she moved into her conjugal home three years after the wedding once she had matured. Rayappa and Mariamma were cross-cousins, related both patrilaterally and matrilaterally because of Nagamma and Peraiah’s kondamarpulu marriage. Mariamma said that as a new bride she brought good fortune to the family, as the ideal bride is supposed to. Of Rayappa and Mariamma’s four children, all except the second son were educated far higher than their peers in the Madiga palli. When I joined the household in 2004, Satish, the eldest, passed his tenth class exams in a state-aided Catholic school; and he went on to complete his Intermediate exams in Civics, Economics and Commerce and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Applications in a Jesuit private boarding school. As a ‘tenth pass’ student, Leela was easily the most educated Madiga girl in the palli, and Sukdev, the youngest, was studying at Intermediate level in the same Jesuit boarding school in which Srinu had studied on a scholarship. Polaiah was roughly nineteen at the time of fieldwork. Having showed no interest in school, he was an illiterate agricultural labourer but the highest earning member of the family. At the time of fieldwork, all except Sukdev were living at home and Rayappa and Mariamma were discussing plans for the marriages of their eldest three children. The family enjoyed considerable social standing. Their educational

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achievements, their previous political influence, their land and income had given them a reputation to rival that of a Kamma family and had set them apart from their Madiga neighbours. But their elevated status had led my hosts to make small, quotidian status distinctions between themselves and others, which had endeared them neither to extended family members nor to other Madigas. At the pregnancy ceremony of Rayappa’s niece, for example, Mariamma insisted on being served by her niece’s sisterin-law, inside the house, separately from everyone else who were served in long lines just outside the house, seated on the floor. They did not attend the life cycle rituals of the poorer Madigas and they joked at impoverished families whose semi-clothed children were left to roam the palli during the day. Leela, Mariamma and Nagamma rarely attended the ramshackle palli church, preferring to patronise a pastor who visited them in their own house. They had somewhat neglected Nagaiah’s second wife and two sons who had fallen into poverty since Nagaiah’s death. Their land meant that the eldest son Satish and Rayappa could work on their own fields rather than engage in wage labour on upper-caste farmers’ fields. This put the family in a different socio-economic category from most of their neighbours and gave them increased independence from uru farmers. It meant that they did not have to toil side by side with their caste fellows or suffer the daily indignities of wage labour. Neighbours’ annoyance with their displays of superiority occasionally culminated in arguments. For example, in the hot season, there was a fierce conflict over the communal tap situated on my hosts’ vacant plot of land opposite the house. Although the tap was public, Rayappa did not want his rivals trespassing on his land. Others felt that Rayappa had no right to control the use of the tap. Kutti, an old man engaged in a long running feud with Rayappa, accused him of being too proud. He mimicked Rayappa twisting the ends of his moustache like a king and keeping a towel on his shoulder like a landlord. ‘Who do you think you are to stop us using the tap? Show us your plot certificate!’ Kutti demanded. ‘What need is there for us to show you anything?’ Rayappa retorted, as their respective wives shouted at each other. At the heart of the conflict, of which this argument was just one example, was the community’s objection to what they saw as my host family’s superciliousness. It was no surprise that some were quietly pleased when their pride was knocked by their own daughter.

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THE ELOPEMENT: ‘HONOUR IN THE ROAD’ During the first term at her boarding school, Leela ran away and came back home. It was later discovered that Chinna had been writing letters and visiting her and he may have convinced her to return to Nampalli. In Nampalli, several people were aware of the affair but Kalyani (their aunt) was thought to have encouraged it by allowing the couple to meet in her empty house. There are so few moments of privacy that arranging amorous meetings requires the collusion of others to keep them secret. In the afternoons, when most people were out at work, Chinna would wander past Leela’s house and ask, ‘Has the electricity come yet?’ On hearing this Leela knew that Chinna was waiting for her. On two occasions Mariamma found the couple together in the back room of the house and chased the boy out. Mariamma did not speak about these incidents until after the elopement when she claimed that he had threatened Leela with a knife. But no one believed that Leela had been there involuntarily. One afternoon in May, Leela was in the house and Rayappa was tending to the buffaloes. Rayappa heard someone ask again about the electricity. He became suspicious and watched the house from the shed. When Leela slipped away, Rayappa’s suspicions were confirmed. That night he angrily confronted Mariamma and blamed her for allowing this to go on. Srinu was called from Hyderabad and together the family decided that Leela should be sent away to stay with her aunt in Komburu. She was enrolled in tailoring classes there, which she attended for a few days. One day she did not return. When the family went to the class, the room was locked and they were told there had been no class that day. Leela had secretly communicated with Chinna and they had planned their escape to a nearby town. By chance, they were seen by a relative who returned to Komburu to tell the family. Some of the men in the family rushed to town to look for them while a relative went to Nampalli to inform them that she was missing. News of the elopement spread quickly. Rayappa’s family were devastated by the thought of their precious young daughter in the hands of boy widely thought of as untrustworthy. Rayappa left for Komburu while the rest of the family stayed in Nampalli. They did not go to work, they barely washed or ate and no one slept properly for five days.

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A few houses away, Chinna’s family were also anxious that a case against them might be filed with the police. Chinna’s uncle, Gopalan, came to tell Leela’s family that the couple were hiding in Chinna’s mother’s friend’s house in Amirpet. He said he felt compelled to tell them as Leela was also a daughter of his own lineage. Accompanied by Satish, Gopalan phoned Rayappa in Komburu. Rayappa and his brother-in-law hired a taxi, returned to Nampalli to pick up Satish, Gopalan and other men, and the group left for Amirpet. Amirpet is small town on a national highway, a notorious centre for prostitution. Rumour has it that brothels in Amirpet offer free lodgings to eloping couples whereupon the boy is beaten up or offered money for his girlfriend, who is then taken to work in a brothel in Mumbai or Chennai where she cannot be found by relatives. Some suspected that Chinna had wanted to sell Leela into prostitution, a story that only exacerbated the animosity between the families. In the middle of the night, the men from Nampalli found Leela in Chinna’s mother’s friend’s house in Amirpet, as Gopalan had said. Chinna himself was nowhere to be seen; he had apparently managed to escape when he heard them coming. Leela was brought back to the village and beaten. Bruised, broken-lipped and exhausted, she was lain down on a cot in the house. Srinu returned to Hyderabad. Infuriated with the family, he did not return to Nampalli for over a year.

*** A few days later, I walked into the main room of the house to find it full of relatives and heavy with incense. Leela had been possessed by the snake god Nagendraswamy and a shrine to him had been set up in the corner of the room with three limes, candles and flowers placed in front of it. Leela was lying on the cot in a state of disarray with family members standing around her. She was wearing the top half of a salwaar kameez but her legs were bare. Her long hair was loose and dishevelled. Saliva, sweat and other stains marked her clothes. Her eyes were bloodshot and rolling back in her head. Red vermilion had been thickly smeared on her forehead and turmeric paste on her neck. Her maternal aunt and cousin had come from their respective villages and were sitting on the cot, holding down her flailing limbs, trying to cover her legs as she kicked. Satish brought more incense and the room filled with smoke. The women wafted

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the incense around Leela’s head until she coughed and choked. Her breath quickened, she sat upright and demanded eggs, coconuts, vermilion, ash and neem branches, which relatives duly went to fetch. An egg was cracked into Leela’s mouth and she drank unpasteurised milk. Mariamma’s brother’s wife smeared ash across her forehead, throat, arms and stomach as Leela waved neem branches around her, tore the leaves off and threw them on the ground. Leela’s possession came in fits and starts, precipitated by the incense each time. The following morning, after Leela had bathed and changed, Mariamma’s brother’s wife wafted the incense into her hair. Mariamma offered limes, vermilion, turmeric and a camphor flame to the shrine of Nagendraswamy. Leela started to wail, her hair became loose and her sari came undone. Breathing heavily through her nostrils, Leela sat up in her undergarments and looked over at the shrine, as if transfixed by the flames. The ten or so relatives present during Leela’s possession were mainly female kin from Mariamma’s natal village, Chilapeta. Romila and Samelu and others from Rayappa’s side were absent. Those present had different reactions. Some cried and others looked frightened. Mariamma crouched near the bed, wept and arranged the shrine. Other women hovered around Leela in anticipation, addressing her reverentially as ‘swamy’. When Leela was in a heightened state, the women and Rayappa’s sister’s husband asked what they might fetch for her. Sitting on the cot next to her, Mariamma’s eldest brother’s wife and daughter were absorbed in the possession and their reactions stimulated the mood. When Mariamma went to fetch the Bible, as if unable to bear its presence, Leela shouted, ‘No! I am a god! Not that! No!’ They directed the possession, asking, ‘Tell us what you want, we will get it for you’. Without such goading, the possession seemed to flag a little. At a point when the god seemed unforthcoming, Leela’s aunt said, ‘If you don’t make a few more demands, we will not believe that you are a god’. Other family members seemed notably uninterested. Leela’s father, Rayappa, her brother Polaiah, and grandmother, Nagamma, all observed at a distance. During one phase, Leela started to murmur Srinu’s name, saying that she wanted to speak to him. Mariamma told me to phone him. When I spoke to him, he was furious. He felt that this was a false possession, which showed the family to be gullible and irresponsible.

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After two days of intermittent possession, Leela was taken again to Komburu where there lived a powerful devotee of Nagendraswamy who worked as an exorcist. She took Leela to the prayer room, whose centrepiece was a large poster of Nagendraswamy. Mariamma, accompanied by her brother-inlaw, told the woman everything that had happened. The woman interrogated the spirit through Leela and finally made her diagnosis. It was not Nagendraswamy possessing Leela, it was an evil spirit in the guise of Nagendraswamy. She exorcised the evil spirit with mantras and prayer, using the benign force of the real god against the malicious spirit. She then gave Leela two protective charms (anchanalu) one to be wrapped around the arm and another for the waist. By harnessing Nagendraswamy’s superior force, the exorcist was able to identify the spirit and exorcise it.1 The amount (Rs 1500) Mariamma and Rayappa paid for the exorcism suggests that the family saw this action as necessary. Over the following weeks Leela stayed inside, barely ate and hardly uttered a word. No one in the house spoke about the elopement until Rayappa came home drunk at night. He blamed Mariamma for allowing the relationship to continue. ‘This is on your head!’ he would say, ‘You have spoiled the family. Our prestige and reputation (paruvu-pratishta) is finished because of you!’ Rayappa fell into a depression about the situation. When the women of the family wept about the elopement, they lamented their lost prestige, their spoiled name and their honour, commenting, ‘Our prestige has been thrown into the road’ (mana paruvu bazaar-lo ekicharu). One evening with Nagamma, she listed out the names of all of the women of the family, telling me that they had been ‘good’ (manchiga). Leela had been raised with the most pride (garvam) and yet she brought the most shame (chinnatanam). Her actions had affected the entire family’s prestige while Chinna’s family’s reputation had been left more-or-less intact. It was during this time that Mariamma began to employ the services of an itinerant Pentecostal pastor, who started to visit regularly. Each time he visited, Mariamma talked to him about the 1

The exorcism conforms to a pan-Indian pattern. As Fuller explains, ‘An exorcist can succeed because he is voluntarily possessed by his own tutelary deity, typically a goddess or another little deity, who is more powerful than the spirit. The deity working through the exorcist, converses with the spirit, speaking through its victim, and either persuades it to leave peacefully or drags it out forcibly’ (2004: 232).

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family problems. He listened carefully, gave advice and conducted prayers. She paid him Rs 10 on each of his visits. The pastor agreed that an evil force had possessed Leela but he said that their recourse to the exorcist was not the right solution. Evil had entered the house, he said, because they had not prayed enough, they had not been to church regularly, and they had neglected the Bible. Because of this, Jesus had been unable to safeguard their family against malign influences. Convinced of this, Mariamma put up an image of Jesus on the wall and in the evenings she would haltingly read the Bible while the rest of the family watched television. She galvanised Nagamma, Leela and me for prayers in the back room where... We stood in a circle with the ends of our saris over our heads and said prayers. Although Leela seemed rather bored by these sessions, Mariamma wept, declared wretchedness, muttered words of praise (‘stotram, stotram, stotram’), beseeched Jesus for mercy, forgiveness and protection from evil. It was during this phase of heightened religiosity that Mariamma, Leela and I accompanied other Nampalli Dalit women to the Pentecostal church in Pallakonda, where hundreds gather every other Saturday for emotive prayers (‘kanni eeti pradana’ (‘crying prayer’), worship and healing. It was this church trip that provided Leela a second chance to escape. At the end of the day-long service, Leela and Mariamma went to queue for the great vats of food served to the entire congregation. Suffocated by the crowds, I said I would wait at the entrance for them. Amongst a frenzy of worshippers, beggars, salesmen, hawkers, buses, rickshaws and bicycles, Mariamma eventually appeared to meet me looking panicstricken. Seeing that Leela was not with me she strode off, elbowing her way through the jostling crowds. Sometime later, Mariamma emerged, gripping Leela by the arm, with the end of her sari tied to her daughter’s. Leela was out of breath and sweating and her sari was muddy and ripped. She had tried to elope with Chinna again. We hastily squashed into the bus back to Nampalli and by the time we arrived back night had fallen. Leela was sobbing as Mariamma frogmarched her back to the house. Predicting trouble, an elderly neighbour ominously reminded me that as her ‘elder sister’ (akka) I should ‘keep her near me’. Satish was livid when Mariamma told him what had happened. He opened the back door and shouted insults and threats across the palli towards Chinna’s house. Polaiah was also furious. He grabbed

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Leela and shoved her in the back room of the house. Mariamma and the two brothers beat her and verbally abused her. They threatened to kill her and Polaiah brought out a stick. Not knowing how serious the threats were, I grabbed her and lay on her to try to protect her. Pushing me away, Satish began an interrogation, asking if she wanted to marry him. Eventually, through her tears, she said that she would. Polaiah clapped his hands over his head as if praising god that the truth had come out. They asked who had arranged it, who had phoned whom, who had helped, what role Kalyani played. Leela denied everything and cowered in the corner. Her ripped sari had come loose and her bangles had broken. When Rayappa arrived home from the drinking hut, he responded to the news by angrily shouting around the colony. By this time Leela’s lips turned pale and she began to vomit. She whispered that she had drunk rat poison on the bus on the way home and indeed her plastic water bottle smelt of it. Leela crawled outside to the back of the house to be sick. A small crowd of Madiga women had gathered at the back of the house and whispered anxiously to each other. Rayappa heard that she had tried to kill herself but drunk and belligerent, he declared that she should die for what she had done. ‘Let her die!’ he repeatedly shouted. Women neighbours held back Leela’s head and poured bitter soap nut solution (normally used as shampoo) down her throat to make her regurgitate the poison. They urged me to take her to hospital, even if the family did not allow it. ‘They won’t agree!’ they said, ‘they will say they want her to die but you must take her anyway!’ It was by now late at night but together with two women neighbours, I went to fetch the village RMP doctor from the uru. He came to the house, looked at Leela, declared it an attempted suicide, told us to take her to hospital and hurried off. Some of the women sent for a three-wheeled truck from the uru and it arrived outside the house. Rayappa tried to send it away declaring, ‘Let’s see if she lives or dies! Let her die!’ But women neighbours called the truck round the back of the house. Leela was placed in it and we took her to the hospital at about midnight. The hospital is known for treating suicide attempts without reporting them to the police. In exchange for keeping quiet, they charge extortionate amounts for a stomach pump (Rs 6,000) despite using the most rudimentary equipment. The hospital was squalid with patients’ excreta putrefying on the floor. Leela stayed there

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for a week, her body bruised and distended. In the meantime, I contacted Srinu in Hyderabad to ask his advice. Not only was he uninterested in her recovery, he was angry with me for intervening in the situation and for bringing her to hospital. He believed that she should have died for what she had done, or at least allowed to die through suicide. Her death would have been a fitting punishment for twice attempting to elope and it would have removed the shame that had blackened the family name. Mariamma stayed with Leela in the hospital, hardly eating or sleeping. Satish and Polaiah brought food and relatives visited. With every new visitor Mariamma’s narration of events became more elaborate. She said that ‘that boy’ was performing sorcery (chattabadi) on her and that he had tried to kidnap her at the church. The blame was also laid at the foot of their malicious Madiga neighbours who put the evil eye (dishti) on the house out of jealousy. A week later, Mariamma and Leela returned from hospital, gaunt and exhausted. Too ashamed to enter the house, they sloped off to an elderly relative’s hut at the back of the house. After the men had gone to bed, they crept in and fell asleep on the kitchen floor. In the following weeks, Leela stayed in the back rooms of the house, only going outside when necessary with her mother. She barely spoke, she ate leftovers silently and alone, she did no household or agricultural work and she slept for much of the time. This was a difficult time for my host family and it was the most stressful period of fieldwork for me. As my fictive ‘younger sister’ in the household, I was fond of Leela and she had helped me settle in.We often ate together, she plaited my hair and showed me how to tie jasmine flowers and we chatted in the evenings and sometimes even shared a cot. In retrospect, I question how much my presence in the household affected the course of events and whether the family would have actually tried to kill Leela had I not been there. By the time this happened, my presence in the house had become much more normalised and my sense is that I had little impact on the course of events. Even though it is impossible to know for sure what would have happened, I am not convinced that they would have acted differently without me there. What was important perhaps was their display of their will to kill her even if they had no genuine intention of actually doing so. Whatever had happened, she was their dearly loved daughter after all. Despite Gopalan’s help in retrieving Leela, the two families were so bitterly divided that the rest of the palli were forced to

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choose their loyalties. Gossip spread across the entire village as the story of the elopement, possession and suicide attempt was told and retold. Some spread the rumours and made jokes, which tortured my host family and convinced them that their neighbours had all conspired against them. No one was to be trusted. Their response was to further isolate themselves from the rest of the community. Rayappa turned to alcohol, Satish became sensitive about others making a fool of him and he stopped fraternising with his age mates in the palli. Polaiah lashed out at those who muttered insults or cracked jokes and he got into two fights during that season. Nagamma was typically stoic but she lamented their hard-won reputation (peru). The household boundaries tightened and no one other than close kin entered the house. Children who used to watch television in the house were angrily told to get out and neighbours stayed away. My research activities ground to a halt as the family discouraged me from talking to anyone and normal socialising was reduced to a minimum. The back door and the windows that faced Chinna’s house were kept locked and Rayappa asked if I could contribute money to build a cement wall around their property to curb further intrusion from their distrusted kin and neighbours. By this time, Chinna had returned to the village. Mariamma and Rayappa were not convinced that they had effectively dealt with the source of their misfortune. This time, the problem was not an evil spirit or their lack of piety; it was Chinna controlling Leela through sorcery (chattabadi). The family employed a counter sorcerer, an ordinary-looking man Madiga man from a nearby village, to thwart Chinna’s sorcery and protect the household from any further evil. The counter sorcerer needed a photograph of Chinna or a piece of his hair or clothing through which he could control him and I was instructed to photograph him. The sorcerer said that their misfortune was emanating from a doll that Chinna had buried near to the house on which Chinna had performed chattabadi. The household was also suffering from a malign force called ‘nara dishti’, a variety of the evil eye. To combat this, the sorcerer gave the family charms wrapped in cloths, which were inscribed with powerful mantras. That night, Rayappa and the sorcerer buried charms in the earth at the four corners of their property.

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On his next visit, the sorcerer performed a ritual prayer on Leela in the house2 to expel nara dishti and protect Leela from chattabadi. He instructed Mariamma to perform this puja twice a day to drive away the bad influences. All the while, Mariamma continued praying to Jesus. But Jesus’ protection and the puja could only go so far. For Leela, marriage and resettlement was seen as the only reliable solution.

POSSESSION TO RECLAIM HONOUR What do Leela’s elopement and possession, tell us about paruvupratishta-gowravam among Dalits? Here I focus on the role of the family in the course of events. I suggest that the spirit possession, sorcery and evil eye absolved Leela from responsibility, allowed her reincorporation into the household and reasserted the authority of the family. All of this was crucial if the family were to reclaim paruvu-pratishta-gowravam. We recall that Leela was possessed by an evil spirit masquerading as a god, which was exorcised using the power of the real god, Nagendraswamy. Madigas believe that spirits and ghosts (dayalu) are around them all the time but lonely places outside the village are especially dangerous. Weak people are at risk because they say spirits enter a person when they are startled. The moment a person gets a fright (darchukovatam) is the moment the spirit ‘catches’ hold of them. Men (and foreigners) can go on their own to the fields at night because they are less fearful and therefore less vulnerable (Fuller 2004: 240). That the spirit struck an adolescent, Dalit girl is unsurprising; young unmarried women are universally the most common victims of possession (Deliège 1999: 259; Fuller 2004). This fact has led some to view possession in terms of its cathartic potential. Kakar calls women’s possession a ‘convulsive release 2 While Leela bathed and changed into clean clothes, the sorcerer put turmeric water, five dried chillies and a ball of human hair in a small brass pot. After mixing these together in the pot, he sprinkled water in the corners of the room to create a sacred space. He put five limes, a coconut, cumin seeds and three rice balls (black, red and white) on a brass plate. With incense, he made an arch from Leela’s feet to her head and back again, wafting the smoke over the anchana on her arm. He did the same arching movement with the brass plate of ritual items and then finally with a coconut. He instructed Leela to smash the coconut at her feet and then throw it backwards over her head and out of the door.

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of pent-up aggression and a rare rebellion against the inhibiting norms and mores of a conservative Hindu society’ (cited in Fuller 2004: 233). Fuller describes fits of possession as, ‘culturally tolerated opportunities to complain about female inferiority and subordination’ (2004: 233). It is true that Leela’s possession liberated her from the usual restrictions of everyday life and allowed her to behave as if a god: she could boss her relatives about and demand that they bring her food and ritual items. Her speech, movements and behaviour were immodest and domineering. But can her possession be explained as merely ‘letting off steam’? Leela was not particularly comfortable as a demanding god; she was rather unimaginative and awkward, sometimes not convincing at all. We recall that her aunt even threatened not to believe her unless she improved the performance. The situation was worsened by some of the men suspecting a fake possession, especially after Srinu had cast his aspersions. Moreover, in everyday life Leela was not particularly repressed; she was the adored only daughter of an important family. She frequently lost her temper and spoke her mind. This possession, then, does not fit the description of a ‘convulsive release of pent-up aggression’. Although the exorcist successfully removed the spirit, Mariamma was not convinced that the charms were enough to protect them in the future. On the pastor’s advice, she turned to prayer. It was not that Jesus had caused the misfortune but rather through their neglect of prayer he had withdrawn his protection. Dalit Christians believe that the Christian god is more powerful than the other gods and all lesser supernatural forms perish in their presence. A Christian exorcism would have been an option but on the suggestion of Rayappa’s brother-in-law, they chose to employ a Hindu exorcist. When exorcism and Christian prayer both failed to stop Leela’s second elopement, another explanation was sought: sorcery (chattabadi). The ultimate aim of chattabadi is to gain power over people. If sorcery works, the sorcerer can make his subject ill, seduce them or even kill them. Muslims are said to be experts in chattabadi (some say they invented it), but any man with thirty-two teeth (i.e. young adult men) can learn it. Once he has mastered mantras and spells from a ‘large book’, the sorcerer makes a doll of the intended subject through which he controls his subject. Stories about boys becoming obsessed with girls and performing chattabadi on them to

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make them fall in love with them are common. The family suspected that Chinna had learned how to do chattabadi or employed a teachermagician (mantrikudu) to achieve his malign aims for him. The sorcerer not only dealt with chattabadi, he expelled nara dishti. Dishti (the evil eye) can be intentionally or unintentionally cast by anyone on anything. When a person looks with intense and jealous desire at a house, a field, a beautiful girl, a handsome bridegroom, a new car, a baby or almost anything desirable, the object of the gaze may be adversely affected. So if the house collapses, the crops fail, the bridegroom becomes ill, the car breaks down or the baby dies, it may be attributed to dishti. Desirable objects all need to be protected from dishti. From what other anthropologists have told us about dishti, it is no surprise that my host family became victims of it. Fuller (2004) is helpful here: Social equals, who are nonetheless doing a bit worse than oneself, are the people whose envious eye may cause harm, and in this respect the evil eye serves as a brake on ostentatious flaunting of success and a reminder that others, even in one’s own social group, are less fortunate in life ... People who complain loudly about the evil eye tend to attract the contemptuous comment that their behaviour towards others, rather than just the latter’s envy, lays them open to attack. Hence to accuse people of the evil eye may be taken as a sign of one’s own meanness and vanity ... Adults make themselves vulnerable by fear of others, as well as by lack of generosity and unjustified pride. Indeed, and this is crucial, any sort of weakness makes a person vulnerable to mystical harm (Fuller 2004: 238–9).

My host family believed that they were surrounded by slightly poorer, envious people. In turn, the community saw my hosts as proud.The family’s response was defensive self-isolation, represented by the proposed construction of a cement wall around the house. Each of the family’s responses to misfortune had one thing in common: the externalisation of blame. It was not just that Leela had eloped; she had eloped and then returned home. The family could not accept their daughter back easily after such a betrayal. Such damaging volition warranted her death after all. The real problem, then, was how to reintegrate her. Their answer was to attribute her actions to some other force: an evil spirit, Chinna’s sorcery or the

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evil eye caused by jealous neighbours. All of these explanations displaced the malevolence from Leela onto an exterior force. Leela was instead an innocent victim; no longer dangerous, unpredictable and treacherous but weak, passive and persecuted. Did they really believe in the possession, chattabadi and dishti or was it just a ruse to absolve their daughter from responsibility? We saw how some were not convinced by the possession and how Leela relied on certain people to guide the possession. We also know that previously Leela was interrogated about her elopement, asked how she organised it, who had helped her and what had happened. She was subsequently beaten and threatened with death. All of this suggests that they were punishing her for something she had done of her own free will. But this is not necessarily proof that it was all an elaborate subterfuge. After all, the root cause still needed to be explained. Religious and supernatural beliefs do not preclude Leela’s own agency in the overall account. The family’s recourse to a host of ‘Hindu’ beliefs may at first seem at odds with their identification as Christian.3 But Dalits themselves see no contradiction in this. The family’s engagement of various religious specialists is consistent with Dalits’ belief in the co-existence of supernatural and human causes of misfortune, which for them exist uncategorised under religious denomination. In this case, they looked to such beliefs to explain and solve problems in an essentially pragmatic manner. When one remedy failed another one was sought.4 The belief in a range of sources of misfortune mean that problems and solutions are swiftly re-conceptualised. But one can never be sure of the real cause or whether the power invoked has been effective enough. Leela’s family ceaselessly sought different ways to harness forms of power to their advantage. But no solution seemed final. All of this relates to the wider issue of gender, power and misfortune. Women were both blamed for the misfortune and took more responsibility in dealing with it. Most obviously, it was Leela 3

This is not altogether surprising. Anthropologists have shown that beliefs in the evil eye, Hindu gods, spirits and ghosts do not necessarily conflict with belief in the Christian God and Jesus in India (Caplan 1987). 4 See also Deliège (1997: 251–296; 1999), Freeman (1979: 38) and Gough (1993: 174).

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rather than Chinna who was seen to be at fault over the affair; she was blamed for not repelling Chinna, allowing her reputation to be spoiled and not keeping ‘within her limits’. Mariamma was also seen as guilty. The elopement may never have happened had she kept a closer eye on Leela, condemned her when she discovered the couple together and told her husband about their relationship. It was also the women’s fault for not praying enough. It was Mariamma who was instructed to undertake the counter-sorcery rituals and who was instructed to pray and read the Bible. Similarly, women are believed to both cast and receive dishti more than men and they are more vulnerable to spirits and chattabadi. In Leela’s case, women were most involved in the work of possession, provoking and encouraging her. The people most affected by low-level supernatural affliction and who spend most time dealing with it are women. In contrast, the people who have access to the powers to counteract these supernatural afflictions are mostly men.5 The possession, Christian prayer, chattabadi and dishti tell us not only about gender but also about power relations within the family and the community. As noted, the usual explanation about women’s cathartic release through possession does not help us here. Stirrat’s (1992) approach is more instructive. In his analysis of spirit possession in Sri Lanka, he tells us that, Demonic possession at Kudagama is primarily concerned with attempts to impose power over others, particularly young women, not with attempts to challenge the power of those in authority or as an expression of internal psychic conflicts ... Rather than see demonic possession as being the problem which has to be solved, as most academic analysts do, at Kudagama in the majority of cases possession is the answer to a whole series of problems. Once parents have persuaded their errant daughter that she is possessed, control has been re-imposed. And this is why those cases where control is at issue are so important: they can succeed in a way that so many others cannot (1992: 112).

His analysis resonates with this particular case. We recall that Mariamma and her female kin played a key part in arousing the possession. They wafted incense around Leela’s head, they put neem branches in her hands, cracked eggs into her mouth, smeared her with turmeric and vermilion, wailed and sobbed, offered her their services 5

The female exorcist is an important exception here.

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and asked her such leading questions that it was almost impossible for Leela to resist the possession. The words that Leela uttered in her trance were not spontaneous but the product of a dialogue between Leela and Mariamma’s relatives. However reluctant Leela might have been, she performed in the way the family were compelling her to. In fact, the women were so instrumental in initiating and structuring the possession that it was only in response to their stimulation and goading that Leela was able to sustain it. The family chose a certain explanation and solution, and Leela fell into line. When she asserted her own desire and made the second elopement attempt, she had to submit to yet more rituals, this time for chattabadi. The beatings, verbal abuse and the ritual activity might all be seen as a way of knocking Leela’s unruly agency into submission. The reassertion of the family’s rule over her was eventually (if tenuously) achieved and the family could start to rebuild their status.

LEELA’S MARRIAGE AND ‘PRACTICAL KINSHIP’ Elopements, unplanned pregnancies, extra- and pre-marital relationships are neither new nor unusual in Dalit communities. If couples had fallen in love, parents contrived to get them married if they could. Their attitude was often pragmatic: ‘If that’s what they decide, then what can we do?’ they said. This meant that the divide between love and arranged marriage was not always clear. Paruvu-pratishta-gowravam is lost when there is irrefutable evidence of a breach of propriety, in other words, when it is public. Unless there is proof that an affair has taken place, accusations of promiscuity can be dismissed or denied. In the event of a pregnancy or elopement, families go to great lengths to make the mistake look as though it was intended. In the course of arranging a girl’s marriage it is not necessarily the assurance of her virginity that is most important but a convincing distance from any public scandal. Similarly, emphasizing the importance of ‘bluff’ in hypergamous alliances, Caroline and Filippo Osella (2000) similarly show how Izhavas in Kerala employ strategies to inflate their own status as far as plausibly possible, obfuscating more tawdry realities (Osella and Osella 2000: 91). The elopement meant that Leela’s family had to find a way to publicly downplay the disgrace and save face. Leela’s marriage shows how, through ‘bluff ’ strategies, the scandal was managed. This is part

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of what Bourdieu (1990) calls ‘practical kinship’, where parties collude in a ‘sort of collective bad faith’ to hide the disjuncture between the idealised rules and rituals and the actual political functions of marriage. Practical kinship tends to bend the rules to find ‘honourable solutions’ to family problems, exactly what occurred in Leela’s case. The elopement meant that a prestigious upward marriage was now out of the question. With a modest dowry (to compensate for moral ‘defects’ but give the impression of a decent marriage), Leela’s family sought to restore paruvu-pratishta-gowravam by marrying her to unrelated man from a distant village a year later. Since no higher status family would accept a ‘spoiled bride’, he was inevitably from a family of inferior status to her own. As work routines resumed in the household, family members applied themselves to the task of finding a match. Relatives were marshalled and in February Vilamma, Leela’s father’s sister’s daughter, sent news of a potential match. The boy, Venkatesh, was from a family of landless labourers; he was less educated than Leela but he had some casual work in a photo studio. In normal circumstances he would not be considered. But with Chinna still lingering, they knew they would have to compromise. Venkatesh lived in a village distant enough for Leela’s fall from grace to be concealed. All marriage arrangements would have to take place in secret, and all the rituals held at the bride’s home would have to be held somewhere other than Nampalli. Since Romila’s family was the most well established, the ceremonies would take place in their village, Belampet. Venkatesh and his family were invited there for the first of these: marriage looks (pelli choopalu). The two seemed agreeable to each other and the two families consented to it. The match was provisionally agreed. A week later Mariamma, her sister, Rayappa, his three sisters and their husbands went to Venkatesh’s village, Lakkapodu, to settle the dowry. Three hours bus journey away from Nampalli in a dry, sandy coastal area, Lakkapodu itself was more of a small town than a village. On arrival, we all went to Romila’s daughter, Vilamma’s house, through whom the match had been arranged. In the evening, Leela’s female kin inspected the house that would eventually become her home. Venkatesh lived with his parents in a two-roomed house, much smaller than Leela’s. The women loudly noted its modest dimensions and lack of consumer goods.

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The men on both the bride and groom’s side sat down together in a circle on a tarpaulin sheet with the women within earshot on the veranda. Rayappa’s brother-in-law, Samelu, who had come dressed in a silk shirt and gold jewellery, asked how much they wanted for the dowry. The pastor, acting as the groom’s spokesperson replied, ‘One lakh, a gold chain and a watch’. Our party shook their heads and asked sarcastically, ‘Is that enough for you?’ Rayappa explained that although he had land, his debts meant that he could only afford a dowry of Rs 20,000, a gold ring and a chain. By this time the women had come closer to the edge of the circle. Mutterings broke the silence and Samelu told the story of one of his relatives who had a prestigious job but refused to take any dowry, implying that high demands were a mark of low class. ‘If we want to give something for the girl then take it, but otherwise, it’s not good to demand too much’ he commented pointedly. Again, Samelu asked Venkatesh’s elder sister’s husband if they had any wishes. The groom’s brother lost his temper, ‘Wishes! What wishes could we have! We’ve already said one lakh, do you think we are asking for more? Why are you going on asking about our wishes? We’ve stated our case, what more is there?’ After an irate hubbub the women arose, grumbling that the discussion was not going on properly. When the men stood up, a heated discussion ensued. The women were already shaking their heads, meandering back towards Vilamma’s house and the men soon followed. Back at Vilamma’s house, everyone fell about laughing, ‘One lakh! Who do they think they are! Have they got any land? Have they got any property? Have they got a good house? Son-of-a-bitch!’ said Mariamma’s elder sister,Yelamma. ‘I thought we could give at most Rs 30,000, a ring and a chain. If later there’s a need, we could help, if he wants to set up his own shop or something’, added Rayappa. Samelu had expected them to demand that much and then lower it, but they did not budge. Romila complained, ‘Why did they keep us waiting around for so long? The whole day we sat around for them. Yelamma lost money by closing her shop for the day. They have no respect (mariyada).’ Rayappa turned to me and explained, ‘If someone comes to our house, from when they arrive until they leave, we show them mariyada and send them away well. But see how they were!’ Some days later in Nampalli, as Leela, Mariamma and I walked back from the fields, Mariamma said that Samelu had received a

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phone call from Lakkapodu informing him that they would accept Rs 40,000 dowry, a ring and a watch. They will give the bride three narasalu of gold and a ring. Then Mariamma looked at me and half-jokingly said, ‘We are selling off our girl for Rs 40,000!’ Mariamma resented Leela being dispatched so ‘cheaply’ to such a family. But Leela herself seemed ready to go, happy to get away from all the trouble. Shortly after this, the bride and groom’s respective elders (peddalu) and the local pastor met in Belampet (Romila and Samelu’s village) to set the date and time for the wedding (an event called lagnam). An auspicious date in mid-April was fixed, after the forty days of Lent and Easter. Both sides marked the agreement with a meal (a ceremony known as ‘anampappu’, ‘rice and lentils’). The week before the wedding, Leela was brought to her mother’s natal village, Chilapeta, for her wedding preparation rituals (nalugu veyatam). These rituals should take place in the bride’s own home but Chilapeta was the best alternative. The bride was taken to the houses of the elders, her aunts and close female relatives. In each house, she was placed in a ritual space marked out by elaborate chalk patterns (moogu) drawn on the ground. An empty stool to symbolise her husband’s seat was placed next to her. Wedding songs were sung, Leela’s skin was rubbed with turmeric paste and her head sprinkled with rice. These rituals are usually a poignant moment during which elders, kin and community ritually mark the girl’s departure from her natal home. But in an unfamiliar village the rituals were slightly lacklustre. On the eve of the wedding, a feast was held in Belampet. None of the Nampalli Madigas were invited. After the feast, at three in the morning, four male elders and a female relative of the groom, appointed as a companion for the bride (todi bidda) arrived carrying the pradanam (the wedding basket containing gifts to the bride for the wedding day). Food was served to the guests, women sang songs and Leela was washed and rubbed in turmeric by classificatory sisters. The pradanam was presented and checked by the Belampet elders. After all the exchanges were complete, pink dye, coconut and turmeric powder were distributed and the men joyously chased around, throwing dye at each other. On the day of the wedding, after Leela had been dressed in her finery and Romila had led prayers, Leela’s female kin on both her father’s and mother’s side tied the bheeyam motha, a kilo of uncooked

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rice, dates, betel leaves and a blouse piece placed in the end of the wedding sari and tied in front of the bride’s stomach to represent pregnancy.6 Leela’s manamama (mother’s brother) placed silver toe rings and wedding shoes on her feet and her maternal grandmother then covered her feet three times with uncooked rice. Everyone cried as Leela climbed into the hired ‘Tata Sumo’ jeep bound for Lakkapodu. Leela gave betel nut to Satish who put his hands together in a sign of worship (dandam). On arrival in Lakkapodu, there was a great commotion as everyone piled out of the jeep to meet the band that was to lead the procession to the house. We stopped to eat at Vilamma’s house and the men went off to drink. After Leela had endured a ‘photoshoot’, the band started up and Rayappa, carrying her luggage, led the procession to the groom’s house. In the groom’s house, Leela released the bheeyam motta into a basin, changed into old clothes and was brought to sit next to the groom on a stool. Both of them faced the conjugal house. After blessings and amidst wedding songs, the couple, sitting side by side in their underclothes, were rubbed with turmeric paste by young married women on the groom’s side. Leela and Venkatesh changed into their wedding clothes. There was a flurry of activity as women pulled Leela into her silk sari, powdered her face and twisted her hair into plaits. Leela was delighted to see that two of her friends from Nampalli had come accompanied by an old male relative. They held her hand, laughed with her and Leela cheered up considerably. On seeing Leela’s friends, Mariamma felt anxious that the wedding and its whereabouts was now public knowledge in Nampalli. As anticipation grew my research assistant, Joji, received a call on a mobile phone from someone claiming to be a Detective Inspector saying that the police were on the way to Lakkapodu to put a stop to a ‘forced marriage’. Joji recognised Chinna’s voice immediately. Word got round, and prepared for a fight, the men headed to the outskirts of the village in case Chinna arrived to disrupt the wedding. The women were alarmed and Mariamma was in tears, worried that someone from Venkatesh’s side would find about Chinna or that the police might get involved. 6 Later the rice from the bheeyam motta is used to cook sweet rice (pongal) in couple’s new home when they return after the consummation.

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Meanwhile, the bride and groom were ushered to the stage. The pastor delivered a sermon to the distracted gathering and the photographer shone his lights on the couple. The groom’s father and Leela’s maternal uncle held the couple’s hands. Into the microphone the pastor asked the pair if they agreed to the marriage. Leela’s family were concerned that Leela might refuse to say the words and bring the wedding to a halt. Her public agreement was crucial if a case of ‘forced marriage’ was brought against them. To everyone’s relief, she agreed. Venkatesh tied the wedding tali round her neck and they were married. The rest of the rites went smoothly and Chinna never turned up. The newly-weds and their entourage returned to Belampet the following evening for the consummation of the marriage. As is customary, the bride’s brother refused entry to the house until the groom gave him money. But Venkatesh put in only Rs 20, which provoked slightly aggressive taunting. Leela’s relatives demanded Rs 116 after which the groom was allowed in. After the meal, Leela was prepared for the wedding night, reluctantly dressed in a new yellow sari (a gift from her husband) by her mother and aunts. They made jokes, chuckling that there would be no need for sari pins tonight. The groom, dressed in a new lungi, waited for her in next room until she was led in by her mother, sisters and aunts. There were meant to be games arranged by the women to help them break the ice and the room should have been decorated with flowers, fruits and sweets. But no one had decorated the room and the flowers, sweets and games had been forgotten. Eventually, the couple were given the obligatory glass of milk, someone found some cardamom sweets for them and they were left alone. Venkatesh’s relatives went up to the roof to sleep. As Leela’s kin left to sleep next door at Samelu’s house, the women on the roof shouted down, ‘Why didn’t you tell us that we needed to bring the flowers?’ Romila shreiked back, ‘Aren’t you married yourselves? Don’t you know these customs?’ Venkatesh’s sister accused us of being too greedy and demanding too much money from the groom on his arrival. Leela’s aunts replied, ‘You didn’t even give the money you were supposed to so what are you doing starting a fight with us? It was your job to give the money and you didn’t! What kind of people are you? Don’t you know the ways of doing things?’ The argument was just one manifestation of the tensions underpinning the entire wedding. There was a general consensus

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that Venkatesh’s family were ill-mannered and lacking mariyada. This was most obvious from the diatribes against their food, habits and surroundings. Leela’s maternal uncle was most indiscreet in his complaints, ‘What kind of curry was that? Did you see the size of those cheap grains of rice? How will she manage with the cooking here? They offered us leftover food and sour curd! What a way to treat people! This girl’s fate (tala rata) is not good.’ There were barelyconcealed comments that the water was salty, the soil was sandy, the land barren, the rice was too thick and their curries were inedible. Worse than this, they did not know about the correct rituals and customs, deference or politeness. Not only were Venkatesh’s family lacking land, employment and education, they also did not show enough recognition of this status difference. This superciliousness did not go unnoticed and by the time the groom’s party returned to Belampet for the consummation, conflict was brewing.The tensions were all in some way related to the inverted status of bride and groom. In normal circumstances, families such as Leela’s try to marry their daughter ‘up’. In marrying her ‘down’ everyone would guess that there was some problem, which had decreased the bride’s ‘value’. Indeed, questions must have been asked as to why the Belampet elders had taken part in the wedding, why the marriage looks, the anampappu ceremony, the nalugu, the consummation and indeed all of the ceremonies before and after the wedding were not taking place where they should: in Leela’s own village. This represented an affront to kin, community and elders in Nampalli and it would have been suspicious to the groom’s family. We can only assume that Venkatesh’s family knew that something was awry and that there was a problem between the family and their community. Seeing as Venkatesh had ambitions to open his own photo studio and the family had demanded one lakh dowry, perhaps the groom’s family saw the advantages of marrying into a wealthier Madiga family. In addition, he was obviously attracted to Leela. Regardless of the motives, given the circumstances, the groom’s family were clearly annoyed that the bride’s family were showing anything other than gratitude to them for taking a troublesome daughter off their hands. None of this was at any point made explicit. Despite the glaring abnormalities, the groom’s family never questioned Leela’s family. The arguments were about minor issues: food, manners, forgetting the flowers and so on but the underlying issues were never addressed.

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Were they to reveal such issues they would embarrass and dishonour both Leela’s family and their own. They simply made their evaluations on the information they had available and decided to go ahead in spite of it all. Both parties had an interest in colluding in the ‘bluff’, which in the end successfully enhanced both families’ social standing and more-or-less rectified the elopement scandal. The spectre of Chinna’s possible disruption of events was worrying primarily because it would have punctured this delicate relationship. But Chinna never turned up and the problem of which everyone was no doubt was aware, was discreetly managed.

*** Leela’s story illustrates how a family gained, lost and then attempted to recover paruvu-pratishta-gowravam and shows how female sexuality plays a crucial part in local conceptions of social status. If the possession, chattabadi and dishti represented the family’s short-term solutions, then Leela’s marriage was the long-term solution. The initial strategies served to externalise the blame, to absolve Leela from responsibility and to allow her reincorporation into the family. They represented the reassertion of the family’s control over their daughter. But she was only ever partially blameless; all of these strategies were attended by violent punishment, which in some way attests to their belief that ultimately Leela was responsible for what had happened. Finally, the marriage helped to restore the family’s reputation and relieved them of their unpredictable daughter. All of the family’s strategies were imperfectly, anxiously and tenuously carried out. What they illustrate though is the all-consuming endeavour to regain paruvu-pratishta-gowravam. That Leela’s family subjected their much-loved daughter to violence and threats of death show that paruvu-pratishta-gowravam is not taken lightly. What accounts for this reaction is Leela’s family’s high social position; their multifaceted face-saving operations must be seen in this context. If we accept that the higher a family’s social position, the more emphasis they place on paruvu-pratishtagowravam, then there is nothing especially out of the ordinary about Leela’s family’s reaction. It is in this context that we may understand why Srinu, the most educated and urbanised member of the family advocated the most severe penalty for her actions. Srinu was the true representative of my host family’s superior class status: the

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son of ex-sarpanch, Nagaiah , and a young man whose educational achievements not only surpassed any Madiga but any person in the village. I expected that he, out of everyone, would condemn these calls to kill Leela. On the contrary, he insisted that Leela should indeed die for what she had done. His personal attitudes may of course be idiosyncratic but they are not incongruous with his elevated class status. As the representative of his family’s advance, it follows that he felt most responsible for maintaining the family’s reputation. As a politicised young man, he also felt the greatest urge for Dalits (especially Madigas) to develop and appear respectable.

*** At the time of writing, Leela is settled in Lakkapodu. Her husband has turned out to be a kind-hearted man and together they have become devout Pentecostalists. Leela has been baptised and has removed the jewellery and adornments that she used to so enjoy wearing. She wears a yellow string tali (wedding necklace) and appears ‘simple’ as the good Pentecostal woman is supposed to. They go to church, pray regularly and speak enthusiastically about their newly found ‘visvasham’ (faith). She has naturally become the dominant partner in the marriage and they spend an unusual amount of time in Nampalli. Chinna never stopped pestering Leela though and it was decided that something should be done. Leela eventually told her husband all that had happened. The two families and the Madiga elders arranged for Leela to publicly slap Chinna and warned him not to come near her. Chinna is still unmarried and causing mischief but he has at last directed his attentions away from Leela.

6 Women’s Education, Marriage, Honour and the New Dalit Housewife

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hat does Leela’s story tell us about honour or broader social trends among Dalits? How does Leela’s situation differ from that of her mother or grandmother and what are the socio-economic and cultural conditions that are behind these changes? We can infer from life histories and genealogies going back three generations that life was in general harder for Dalits in Nampalli, and that in the 1960s and 1970s, the female educationdowry-marriage trajectory was hardly evident at all. Describing life in their youth, older Dalits report that they were materially much poorer, the living conditions in the palli were cramped and practices of Untouchability were widespread. They suffered hunger more frequently and it was more common for children to work than go to school. Illness was a major concern. With little or no access to essential medicines, both fertility and mortality rates were much higher than they were today. Women bore more and lost more children and could afford very little time off work to care for them. The state programmes on which Dalits rely now were not in operation and Dalit existence was characterised by the kind of debilitating dependency described earlier. Men and women’s work as servants and labourers was described as

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arduous and exploitative. There is little nostalgia for the past among Dalits. This picture is corroborated by Heyer’s (2000, 2010, 2011, 2012) studies of Dalits in rural Tamil Nadu. Her longitudinal data collected in 1981–82, 1996 and 2008–9 also points to similar kinds of changes, which, like Nampalli, were largely precipitated by opportunities for work outside agricultural labour. In 1981–82, women were working extremely hard for very little pay and with very little time off for pregnancy, childbirth and mothering. In contrast, by 1996, 22 per cent of Dalit women described themselves as ‘housewives’, ‘staying at home’ or ‘not working’, something unthinkable in 1981–82. Heyer remarks, ‘This option was discussed in positive terms, too. Women with young children spoke proudly of being able to look after the children properly until they went to school. Others spoke of not having the double burden of work. A number of Dalit men said that they liked their wives staying at home too, ‘to cook proper meals’’ (Heyer 2014: 221). Similarly, she reports a decline in fertility and mortality rates1 and improved government services and programmes. By 2008–9, she states that the numbers of Dalit women ‘staying at home’, ‘not working’ and/or being ‘housewives’ had increased again to 35 per cent: Dalit women were benefiting from somewhat higher incomes, better living conditions, and fewer children too. It was a major achievement that child labour had virtually disappeared. The next generation of girls were getting a much better start than their mothers had had’ (Heyer (2014: 230): 4).

In both Heyer’s study villages and in Nampalli, it is the proximity of the city and associated new employment opportunities that have brought about this change. New forms of (mostly male) work in the rapidly industrialising economy of Tiruppur (in Heyer’s study) and in Vijayawada and other local towns (in this case) are resulting in the rise of the Dalit housewife. From Heyer’s account and the life histories and genealogies from Nampalli, one can hardly deny that Dalit women are in a better position in the early 2000s than in the 1980s. But are there wider 1 The majority of Dalit couples in the sample had 3–6 surviving children (with a mode of 4) in 1981–82, and 1–5 (with a mode of 3) in 1996.

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consequences of women withdrawing from paid work to become housewives? In Chapter Four, I examined women’s work in its broader social context. I argued that when women give up work they escape shame and degradation but they also forfeit women-centred marriage and family arrangements, personal freedoms and a level of autonomy in the household and community. In this chapter, I suggest we also need to look at the effects of those things that enable Dalit women to become housewives in the first place: ‘prestige’ marriage (Kapadia 1995) and education above all. For this, I turn back to Leela and the conversations that followed her elopement. The drama of Leela’s elopement was a constant source of gossip and speculation. What surprised me was how frequently Leela’s education featured in these discussions and the connection villagers made between education and the transgressions of young women like her. Dalits questioned whether Leela had been educated too much, whether she had been given too much freedom, whether it was right to send her to boarding school. This led to conversations about the role of education in the community more generally and the fate of women in well-off families such as hers. Their discussions allow us to reflect on the connection between education, marriage and honour, and evaluate upward mobility in Dalit families. We recall from the information on female education in Chapter Two that more Dalit girls than ever are being educated. But we know relatively little about how their education is used and conceived of by Dalits. Development discourses and scholarly literature link female education to women’s development, empowerment and participation (Nambissan 1996, Athreya and Chunkath 2000, Seenarine 2004, Sen 2000) but ethnographic research leads us to interrogate these assumptions.2 Indeed, contrary to the above, the material here suggests that Dalits see female education as a route to a good marriage more than a route to employment or equality. While Dalits do not see education as a means to ‘empower’ their daughters, they do hope that with a sizeable dowry it will facilitate marriage into the ranks of the Dalit middle classes, where their daughter may escape the grind of labour and occupy her time as a mother and housewife, in the same way as Heyer’s informants. Female education is being used by Dalit families as a means to marry up. 2 See Bénéï (2008), Jeffery and Basu (1996), Jeffrey (1992), Jeffery and Jeffery (1998), Levinson et al. (1996), Swaminathan (2002).

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This is precisely what was intended for Leela: she would marry her cross-cousin and join her aunt and uncle’s family in their large house in a new housing colony near the city whereupon her time would be spent cooking, cleaning and bringing up children, supported by her husband’s salary. Education, therefore, is not helping girls themselves into employment but it is helping them join the Dalit middle classes nevertheless. What we are witnessing in Nampalli is then the rise of the Dalit housewife, a phenomenon now occurring in pockets of rural India where Dalit men have similarly found a way out of agricultural wage labour into jobs which remunerate them well enough to withdraw their wives from work.3 But as an educated wife she must have virtues befitting her status: her responsibility for maintaining the family honour increases, her movement outside the house is curtailed, her language, dress and manners are now expected to express modesty. Education for girls is viewed as a double-edged sword. While it has the potential to enhance a girl’s value as a bride, it also lengthens the time a mature girl remains unmarried and hence is thought to increase the possibility of pre-marital affairs. So while parents hope education will secure a girl an employed husband, they also fear that it may lead to her spoiling her reputation. For some, this is a considerable gamble. The direct and indirect costs of educating daughters is substantial even for better-off Dalits and the risk of love marriage, pregnancies and elopements due to a prolonged education is thought to be high. On the one hand, girls’ education holds the promise of an upward marriage, but on the other hand it holds the fear of a ‘spoiled bride’. Among the small minority of upwardly mobile Dalits, girls’ education is approached with caution. Of course, education beyond primary level is only really considered in better-off families like Leela’s. These are Nampalli’s ‘aristocracy of labour’ (Parry 1999: 112), who represent approximately ten per cent of rural Dalits in this area who can afford to withdraw their daughters from work and invest in their education in emulation of the more affluent Dalit middle classes. For most, advanced secondary education for girls is still a rarity. In Chapter Four, I described how Dalit women derive a certain amount of self-esteem from their productivity and yet their economic 3 For more on the (predominantly urban) Dalit middle class, see Pai (2014), Still (2014), Thorat (2002), Thorat and Newman (2010).

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capacity lowers the status of the caste as a whole. This leads to ambivalence among women as values transform. Secluded women are now beginning to make an appearance in their own communities and working Dalit women do not quite know how to react to them. On the one hand, they mock them. Sitting at the teashop one afternoon, Madiga women laughed about the situation of a newlyarrived, degree-educated, housebound Madiga bride. One woman nodded towards her house and joked, ‘What does she do in there all day? Just like the uru women, simply eating and sleeping, eating and sleeping!’ But they also recognise it as a superior way of life: they do not have to ‘work hard in the hot sun’ and ‘rely on their hands to survive’, the two constant refrains the working Dalit women use to describe their lives. Ultimately, when Dalits have the chance, they reproduce the practices they once derided. Labouring Dalits value work and make fun of upper-caste gender norms. But once they are able to, they dispense with this mockery, and do exactly the same thing. Education as a means to good husband rather than a good job is a familiar phenomenon among the middle-class upper castes (Jeffery and Jeffery 1996: 157, Drèze and Sen 2002). In the 1970s, M.N. Srinivas called colleges ‘respectable waiting rooms’ for unmarried women from good families (cited in Fuller and Narasimhan 2008: 740). Ethnography from upper-caste communities shows how families attempt to reconcile the demand for seclusion with women’s education, mostly favouring the latter (Mukhopadhyay and Seymour 1994: 12, Bagwe 1995: 189, Bennet 2002: 235, Seymour 1999: 179–203, Sweeney and Naish 2001). Although recent work on globalisation has shown that the idea of education purely as prestige has become outdated among the urban middle classes where women now work in a variety of professional settings (Donner 2006, Fuller and Narasimhan 2007), in rural areas, it is still the educated upper-caste women who are generally the most economically unproductive. This is partly due to a lack of suitable employment for women in these areas. As we know, work is ranked according to its associated prestige or shame. If women had access to employment which was relatively well paid, safe, within easy reach of their homes, not too physically arduous, did not expose them to sexual risk from men, and allowed them to look after the household and children, then it is likely that they would prefer these kinds of jobs to housewifery. Just because staying at home is preferable to agricultural labour does not

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mean it is preferable to all kinds of work. Here again, the meaning of work is crucial (Heyer 2014; Robb 1993). But in the absence of such opportunities, hypergamous marriages to educated ‘outsiders’ (baitivallu) are occurring with more frequency. This is not only for upward mobility; it is also due to the (limited) influence of the medical profession who advise against cross-cousin marriage. Physical abnormalities in the wider caste are used as evidence of the ‘bad blood’ that results in kin marriage. Nevertheless, there are several factors at play in parents’ marriage choices for their children; the fear of ‘defective’ offspring is only one of them. Although there is a visible trend for outsider, ‘prestige marriages’ (Kapadia 1995), among Nampalli Dalits it is not as obvious as one might expect. The fact that just under half of all Madiga marriages, even those newly contracted, are between actual or classificatory cross-cousins shows that many Dalits still favourably evaluate crosscousin marriage despite pervasive influences against it. The difference today is that the desire for cross-cousin marriage is set against the desire for a marriage ‘upwards’. The demands of both class standing and kin obligations must be met. This means that finding suitable cross-cousins is increasingly difficult, as the educational and economic levels of the potential spouses need to be matched. In light of this, we can see why Leela’s proposed marriage to her father’s sister’s son was such as excellent match, simultaneously fulfilling the desires of the family and upward mobility. We can observe the appraisal of these two priorities in other examples, too: Raju, a teenage Madiga labourer, had for years hoped to marry his cross-cousin, but the girl’s mother was prevaricating in the hope of finding her well-qualified daughter a groom with better prospects. Similarly, Raju’s degree-educated friend, Anil, had fallen in love with his father’s sister’s daughter in a neighbouring village. Although Anil’s parents knew that she would get on well with the family and make a good wife for him, they also realised that they would forego a better match and a higher dowry if they agreed to the union. Leela’s distant cousin, Sunderamma, was married to her mother’s brother’s son during fieldwork. From the marriage negotiations it was clear that the boy’s family would not have chosen her had she not had some education to match his. While the desire for cross-cousin marriage exists, it is weighed up against the demands of kinship obligations, personal suitability and upward mobility.

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The slight but significant variations of wealth and education mean that parents’ chief concern is to marry into families of greater status. Faced with the choice of a poor cross-cousin or a rich outsider, parents will certainly opt for the latter if they can afford the dowry. The result is that as socio-economic differences grow, the desire for prestige marriages takes precedence over the claims of the crosscousin (Gough 1993, Kapadia 1995). In all these negotiations, the girls’ education is treated as an important factor in choice of marriage partner. Although aspirations for girls are on the whole limited (as one Madiga father said, ‘If they can learn to read and write, it is enough’), it would be overstating the case to say that education is solely to enhance a daughter’s value as a bride. The huge leap in female literacy rates described in Chapter Two show that parents want their daughters to be literate, and women make considerable efforts to learn to read and write themselves. Some years previously, Madiga women took advantage of evening classes run by representatives of DWCRA, during which they learnt basic literacy and numerical skills. The small village churches and Pentecostal prayer groups also require members to buy and bring along a Telugu Bible, regardless of whether or not they can read it. During these services, sections of the Bible are narrated, sometimes haltingly, by members of the group. Women also read the Bible alone or with family members at night in their houses. In the Sunday service, literate girls are asked to read out Bible stories, which are broadcast from the loudspeaker on top of the church. Parents of these girls feel proud to hear them reading out loud. For many of the girls themselves, reading the Bible is the only time they use their literacy skills. The expectation of literacy in order to participate more fully in worship clearly has an impact on attitudes towards education among women. Illiterate women also feel embarrassed at having to ask strangers to read them the names of destinations on the front of buses when they travel, and they report being at a disadvantage in the market place where they cannot read signs. All of these experiences point to the importance of literacy to Dalit women. However, the value of post-primary education finds its place in the marriage market, as illustrated by Leela’s case and in the following examples. Apart from my hosts, Babu Rao’s family also boasted a well-educated female member. Babu Rao was a class IV government employee in the Railways Department and one of the first Madiga

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men to study in the village school, educated up to eighth class. He lived in a plastered and painted cement house with an ornamental balustrade on the roof, a walled-in courtyard and a private water source. Babu Rao’s eldest son, Srinivas, had completed a two-year vocational training course in an Industrial Training Institute in the neighbouring district. After two unsuccessful apprenticeships in a nearby town he was temporarily working in his mother’s grocery shop. During fieldwork, Srinivas got married with a rumoured one lakh dowry. Srinivas’ value as a groom was enhanced by his father’s government job and the possibility that he might follow in his footsteps. His new wife, Vijaya, was from a small town and she held an Arts degree from one of the local colleges. After her arrival in Nampalli, Vijaya was barely seen. To the consternation of the women labourers, she occupied herself with domestic work and rarely went out of the house. In the Mala palli, there were several aspiring middle-class families with educated daughters and daughters-in-law. Among the older generation, Aisha was one of the most educated. She was the Muslim wife of a Mala, communist Ambedkarite called Rajarao whom she had met at university. Rajarao also had a government job as a postal assistant. As a mother of six, Aisha had not worked outside the house since marriage but she hoped her eldest daughter, who achieved top results in her tenth class exams, would become a teacher. Missamma’s mother had a government job as an ayah of Nampalli’s kindergarten school (anganwadi). With her mother’s financial support, Missamma obtained a B.Com. degree in 2003 from an all-girls college in the city. Having passed in May, she took a data processing job in Hyderabad in a small Information Technology company. She stayed with relatives who lived in the state capital but quit and came home to Nampalli after two months because she said the hours were not good. Later it transpired that she experienced harassment. Since then she had stayed at home, waiting for her parents to find her a suitable marriage match. The only educated girl in the Dalit community with aspirations for salaried employment was Sujatha, a Mala girl who was studying for an engineering degree at a college in the city. Sujatha was sent to Nampalli by her parents to support her recently widowed sister, Tulsi, and her four daughters. Although the college was only a short commute away from Nampalli, Sujatha found it difficult to study

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in a two-roomed house with erratic electricity, four malnourished children and an anxious sister to look after. Sujatha had a brother, but because of his ‘bad habits’, her parents had decided to invest in their one unmarried daughter instead. Sujatha herself was practical and determined. Having seen the difficulties her sister faced, she did not want to get married. She wanted to be independent, ‘to stand on her own two legs’ as she put it. Sujatha hoped to become an engineer or work in the IT industry. But Sujatha was an exception to the rule, and even in her case it remains to be seen whether her aspirations materialise. After all, the most highly educated married Dalit women in Nampalli are housewives, and their unmarried sisters-in-law are likely to follow suit. Escaping ‘the hot sun’, instead they are employed in ‘status production work’ (Papanek 1979). Drawing on the model of the educated middle-class wife and mother, they become important symbols of family respectability. One of the key aspects of the life of the housewife is of course the house itself. It should be remembered that it is only relatively recently that Dalits have replaced their palm-branch thatched huts with concrete houses. These houses are largely built with subsidies from central government’s Indira Awas Yojana project, a housing scheme for Below Poverty Line families.4 Now, only the poorest families in the palli live in huts. Although they are originally identical and allotted on the basis of family size, people aspire to modify and improve them. Plastering, painting, decorating, adding stone floors, doors and window frames and ultimately a second storey are the principal ways in which Dalit families spend any surplus income. As most families cannot afford this, their concrete homes remain unadorned. But the better-off have homes and courtyards similar to those in the uru. Some of these houses have latrines provided by a government sanitation programme. A collection of stock consumer goods have also become common: a ceiling fan, one or more cots, blankets, bedding, plastic chairs, kitchen equipment, calendars on the wall, posters of film stars perhaps, a cabinet, storage boxes and a centrally positioned television, radio and/or stereo. 4 The AP government states that between 2005 and 2007, 279,000 houses were built in the state under this scheme and they intend to complete 600,000 houses by the end of 2009.

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These houses help to produce the housewife.There would be little prestige attached to a housewife who still lived in a hut. Rather, the status that comes from having a non-working wife is partly derived from the house itself and her ability to look after it. A well-kept house full of coveted consumer good reflects well on the man who has earned it and the woman who keeps it. Unlike the ignominious huts, these houses are seen as desirable residences, which enable the occupants to lead a clean, educated, ‘civilised’ existence. The irony of this situation is that in practice, education does not necessarily produce girls who are better wives, mothers and homemakers, let alone good daughters-in-law, sisters-in-law or family members. Some Dalits are sceptical about girls educated beyond tenth class and none would accept a girl who had studied to a higher level than their son. A girl who has studied to Intermediate level would be eighteen at the time of marriage and a degreequalified girl would be in her early twenties. They suspect that such an aged bride would have difficulties adjusting to a new household and she may be arrogant and proud. Many Dalits believe that educated brides are demanding, expensive to accommodate and may be patronising towards other women in the family. They may require expensive products or equipment to undertake domestic tasks and their modern ways of washing, sweeping, preparing food and cooking may cause conflict. Moreover, they are no use in times of financial trouble as they cannot drop everything and work in the fields. It is also expected that they will want to live in the city where there are more modern facilities, leading them to drive their husbands away from the family. Grooms may also be unenthusiastic about educated brides, fearing that they may be less subservient (cf. Parry 2004). This concern is not unfounded and in some families class divisions seriously affect norms of sociality. One man described how his parents had been insulted by their nephew’s wife on a visit to their house in the suburbs. This educated Madiga housewife had been contemptuous of her husband’s rural relatives from Nampalli. She saw how they were dressed, suspected that they had come to borrow money and reluctantly served them tea. The couple felt so ashamed that they never visited again. But if educated girls fulfil a general aspiration for ‘civilisation’, then the fact that they can be troublesome family members

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is beside the point. As Lakshmi, a female labourer, explains, ‘Suppose we do not allow the girl to study, when she goes to her mother-in-law’s house she will have to do hard labour. Say we instead allow her to be educated, because of that education, she gets some status (viluva); she will look clean and neat and her parents will get a good name (peru vastundi)’. Educated women’s value in bringing status and dowry outweighs the everyday difficulties they cause in the running of the household and matters of commensality. Of course, education can only act as a means to social mobility if the girl has a dowry to match: parents expect a dowry to compensate for the cost of their son’s education. If his future wife will reap the rewards of his education then she is expected to pay for it (Kapadia 1995: 252, Harriss-White and Nillesen 2004: 333). Poorer Dalits are only too aware of this and when asked why they had discontinued their daughters’ education most said that since they could not afford the dowry there was no point in educating her any further. This became most obvious to me during a discussion between Anjamma (Leela’s cousin) and her husband. The couple lived in a small house with three children and had constant financial problems. Anjamma’s brother, had offered to pay Rs 5,000 a year for their clever eldest daughter to go to a private secondary school. The couple considered the offer but eventually rejected it on the grounds that she would be too educated to marry an ordinary labourer. They could only afford a dowry of Rs 20,000 ‘and what educated groom would accept that!’ Anjamma said. If the girl is an ‘Inter-pass’ but with a small dowry it looks as though the family has lived beyond their means, they explained, and this would make them look foolish to the groom’s family. Even in the unlikely event of their daughter securing a job her earnings would go to her conjugal family. So they decided to educate her up to tenth class and arrange her marriage after that. They proposed to use the money offered to educate their younger son instead. Here we see how dowry is shaping decisions about girls’ upbringing and education. In tandem with heightened levels of education, there have been a series of hikes in the amount of dowry paid in each generation. While the dowries of women married in the 1960s and 1970s were nothing more than a token gesture, towards the late 1980s

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and 1990s, they had risen to several hundred rupees. Today, (depending on the employment circumstances and property or land in family) a male agricultural labourer in his twenties in Nampalli can expect a dowry of about Rs 30–40,000 while an employee or an educated man with prospects for a job can expect over Rs 100,000. This is inevitably accompanied by a devaluation of women. When parents know that a daughter will mean a loss of thousands of rupees, it is no surprise that couples start to hope for sons. And those who have daughters start to be pitied. This was the case of my neighbours, Elamma and Katrin, the wives of two brothers. Katrin had two adored daughters but she had fallen out with Elamma whom she resented looking down on her because she had had two daughters. Elamma herself has two sons, a situation which automatically gave Elamma more financial security. It is likely then that the Dalit celebration of the birth of females and their lack of preference for boys (described in Chapter Four) will disappear as dowry plays an increasingly important role. When dowry increases, so do concerns about virginity, and when this happens prohibitions on pre-marital sex become stricter and marriage becomes a weightier affair (Goody 1973: 25). As marriages in the palli are formalised through the state, an official, legal divorce (vidarkulu) can only be arranged through legal procedures and is much more difficult to attain. Partly due to its legalisation and formalisation, marriage in Nampalli as elsewhere has become more rather than less stable (Parry 2001, 2004). The expense and irreversibility of marriage (as opposed to the fairly easy dissolution of marriage in the past (odili pettadam)) combined with high rates of dowry mean that for many upwardly mobile Dalit parents, pre-marital affairs have become much more of a concern. They are anxious that daughters should not undermine any educational advantage by ‘going beyond their limits’. Parents like Anjamma believe that the risk of a scandal can outweigh the benefits of education. The ‘outsider’ groom learns about a girl’s reputation by enquiring among neighbours when he visits for ‘marriage looks’. A bad reputation may make his family demand extra dowry in compensation or put him off completely. A girl who is ‘not good’ may have to settle for a groom with comparable character flaws, a gambler or a drinker perhaps. Having seen what

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had happened to Leela, Anjamma feared jeopardising their own daughter’s chances. If they could only offer a ‘spoiled’ bride and not much dowry, her chances for a good marriage were slight. Instead they logically chose to limit her schooling and pre-empt another elopement catastrophe. Illicit relationships are imagined to be rife in mixed schools and colleges and indeed male-female friendships occupies a central place in ‘college culture’ (Osella and Osella 1998). In classrooms, students can establish relationships without the supervision of their kin or superiors. In Telugu film, educational establishments are often the setting for cinematic love stories and ‘romance’ (see also Dwyer 2000).5 So much so, that the longer a girl stays in education, the more doubtful potential grooms will be of her virginity. This is not only because there is more opportunity at college but also due to the ‘fast’ culture and ideas of romantic love that circulate there. This is corroborated by the fact that the two most well known cases of inter-caste marriage in Nampalli are between couples who met at college. To villagers, this proved that college is where ‘romance’ occurs just as the films depict. Leela’s elopement is also illustrative of this point. One day I was called over by the teashop owner’s wife and her friends on the main bazaar of the Mala palli. She enquired about Leela’s health and raised the subject of the elopement. To her, it was no wonder Leela had eloped; she had continued schooling after puberty, she had been sent on the bus to the secondary school in a neighbouring village and then sent away to a boarding school. ‘That is what happens when you educate our girls too much!’ she proclaimed. They were not the only ones who put this transgression down to excessive schooling. Two young Madiga wives speculated that that was how the affair had started. In their opinion, the family was to blame for the elopement because they had fearlessly sent her away to study and not kept her ‘near to them’. In other words, Leela’s elopement confirmed the fear that education spoils brides. Education is a risky strategy, for some too risky to be deemed worthwhile. As Nagamma said, ‘When we send our girls off to school, they could be doing anything, we won’t know. Of course, some study carefully. But others may fall in love 5 Of films viewed during fieldwork, examples include ‘Shankar Dada MBBS’, ‘Mass’, ‘Shiva’.

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with someone or other and that’s why most people are frightened to send them to study, even though some girls are studying well and conscientiously ... They fear that their prestige will be hotly (manta kaluputarini) deflated.’ Similarly, Ragaiah, a Dalit labourer explained, R: Now society has developed people are sending girls to school outside the village. But they [parents] don’t know what they [the girls] are doing there. So sometimes they will send them off and then take them back again. If they get a suspicion [about their daughter] they come and get them out of the school and they won’t send them again. The school staff will tell us and then we go and get them. After that we might send them to a school near home, otherwise not at all. CS: Up to what level do you think girls should study? R: Up to tenth class because that is the time girls get married so we stop them then. Then it is the time for their maturity ceremony (pushparvati), so we won’t let them go after that. CS: What about sending them to university? R: Abbo! Fear! She might do something wrong. What wrong things (tappu) might she be doing? What is going on? Where might she be? We think all of that and we are frightened! In our caste, when a girl reaches sixteen or seventeen, we would be suspicious if she were studying. Why are they not getting her married off? Why are they keeping her like that? It will be difficult to get a girl like that married off because there will be a lot of suspicion [about her].

One might expect Dalit girls to potentially benefit the most from upward mobility. Ideologically free from the strictures of uppercaste patriarchy, Dalit girls could be in a good position to convert their education into salaried employment. This does not seem to be the case, however. This is partly because, as Ragaiah pointed out, education is synonymous with ‘civilisation’ (manchitanam) and ‘development’ (abirudhi). ‘Educated’ seems to be a catch-all adjective to describe those who dressed neatly, spoke well and acted morally (cf. Ciotti 2006, Jeffery, Jeffery and Jeffrey 2008a). In Nampalli, notions of civilisation and development are concurrent with a new kind of sexual morality for women. If middle-class mores demand a daughter’s education, they also demand that her opportunities for amorous encounters are limited. For women, education and honour go hand in hand.

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Evidence from Nampalli shows that girls’ education and marriage patterns can only be understood in reference to Dalit notions of paruvu-pratishta-gowravam.While education for employment is as yet unheard of among Dalit women, education as a means to marriage is a now a well-recognised step in the pursuit of respectability, class standing and self-improvement for those few Dalit families who can afford the associated dowry. But as all those who gossiped about Leela reminded me, education for girls is a risky business. On the one hand it can enhance a bride’s value but on the other hand it gives scope for the loss of paruvu-pratishta-gowravam. These developments help us evaluate what the rise of the Dalit housewife means for Dalit women overall.While Kapadia (1995) and Berreman (1993) believe that such changes have eroded traditional equality between the sexes, women themselves view the situation rather differently. Dalit women’s labour may mean that they are regarded as a useful asset rather than a financial burden and it may give them some level of value and influence. But the life of a female labourer is hard. Becoming a housewife represents a genuine advance. Like Heyer’s informants, Dalits in Nampalli see women’s seclusion as progress. The diabetic, weak and secluded upper-caste women they once mocked, they end up emulating. This embrace of the life of a housewife need not be cast off as a case of ‘mystification’ or as women colluding in their own subordination. On the contrary, they are making a logical assessment of limited alternatives within a particular economic and social framework.6 Dalit women themselves believe that they are better off; for them (and for the moment), sedentarisation represents progress. This reminds us to look at the values that underpin Dalit women’s active participation in the pursuit of paruvu-pratishta-gowravam. However, we should be cautious about celebrating the rise of the Dalit housewife too avidly. For in the long term, as Kapadia (1995) and Berreman (1993) both argue, those features of Dalit life that were good for women are steadily eroded. As such, it is difficult to conclude that either situation is unequivocally better. What Dalit housewives attain in terms of a more comfortable life, they lose in 6 Patricia Jeffery (2000) also makes this argument in reference to a very different group of women: purdah-restricted Muslim pirzada women in Delhi. The pirzada women are content with their life of confortable seclusion; they find a personal logic in it and believe that it to be part of the privilege of high social standing.

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terms of freedom of dress, speech, movement, conjugal rights and marriage choice. They escape exploitation, exhaustion and the shame of ‘work in the fields’ but they also give up those freedoms derived from economic productivity that gave them relative gender parity with men. This may be regained when these housewives re-enter the workforce in more highly remunerated, ‘respectable’ jobs but until then, they exchange old constraints for new ones.

7 Alcohol and Violence ‘Adulterer, tramp or thief, a husband is a husband’

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n the last two chapters I considered the slightly better-off Dalit families and their efforts to increase the honour of their families. In this chapter we turn to the trials of ordinary agricultural labourers who constitute the majority. I examine the two issues at the heart of gender conflict in the Dalit community: alcoholism, violence. I include ethnography on these issues partly because they are such all-consuming concerns that no book about Dalit women would be complete without them but also because they shed light on our central theme of honour and shame. In this chapter I want to show three things: first, the importance of the control of female sexuality for Dalit men; second, that men in poorer households use violence in response to ‘failed masculinity’ because they cannot afford to control their wives through seclusion and third, how violent conflict over alcoholism and infidelity are in fact closely linked to changing socio-economic circumstances. Dalits’ continuing structural disempowerment alongside their aspirations for self-betterment help us understand drinking and violence in relation to the broader socio-economic context and a wider set of values which undergirds palli life. I have not analysed Dalit women’s response in terms of ‘resistance’ because labouring Dalit women are so strong and independent that to point out their resistance would be anodyne.

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What I draw attention to instead is a discourse of fate and female suffering that helps women to manage hardship. The title of this chapter is typical of this, even if women don’t actually adhere to the imperative of forbearance in practice: ‘Adulterer, tramp or thief, a husband is a husband’. Although there are indications that the incidence of domestic violence is high in India, we know relatively little about it.1 Domestic violence and marital rape have been recognised by Indian law since 1983 but most violence in the home goes unreported (Agnes 1992). Not only is there little awareness that there is legislation against it, even where there is, proving violence beyond ‘reasonable doubt’ presents a major obstacle. Family and community structures render it difficult, if not impossible, for women to report abusive husbands or in-laws—the very people on whom they are most dependent (Agnes 1992: 25). Recourse to justice is even more unlikely among uneducated, poor Dalit women. The sheer scale of the phenomenon (40% of women in one study (INCLEN 2000)) shows that across the castes and classes, domestic violence is seen as a common aspect of marriage for many women (ICRW 2002: 3). How might we understand this problem among Dalits in particular? Studies among different but comparable disadvantaged groups elsewhere have shown that conditions of structural inequality play a major role. Among African Americans in the US, for example, un- and under-employment, low levels of education, social marginalisation, welfare dependency, political disenfranchisement and historically entrenched patterns of racism and exclusion result in frustration among black men, which is displaced onto their partners (Hampton, Oliver and Magarian 2003: 539). Prevented by institutional barriers from fulfilling masculine identities through legitimised avenues such as provision for the family, employment and economic independence, they adopt alternative definitions of manhood (ibid.). Black men (like many Dalits) are without the material means to implement male superiority and often rely on women’s earnings. This results in ‘compensatory adaptations’ whereby black men display ‘toughness’ and manliness through the exploitation of women or through male aggression (Hampton, Oliver and Magarian 2003: 541). 1 A survey of over 10,000 Indian women commissioned by the International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW) reported that 40 per cent of respondents had experienced at least one form of domestic violence during their married life (INCLEN 2000).

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This kind of analysis helpfully links what are often seen as intimate patterns of behaviour with the wider context. In India too, studies by Anandhi and Jeyaranjan (2002) and Kumar, Gupta and Abraham (2002) link domestic violence to notions of masculinity and the gendered implications of changing economic conditions. Like the study cited above, domestic violence seems to be common when men are unable to perform the masculine roles of ‘provider’, ‘protector’ and ‘procreator’ (Kumar, Gupta and Abraham 2002: 15). Anandhi and Jeyaranjan’s (2002) study in Tamil Nadu also shows that there is an important class and caste dimension to local conceptions of masculinity, too. Like Nampalli, the proximity of a large city (Chennai) to their study village has resulted in the breakdown of upper-caste male domination in the old agricultural system and a rise in status among Dalits. But unlike Nampalli, it is Dalit women who are employed in the industrial sector, not Dalit men. The authors report not only rising domestic violence among the upper castes in response to waning upper-caste male power, they also report rising violence perpetrated by Dalit men against Dalit women. Dalit women’s work in industry has eroded Dalit men’s ‘provider’ role and in response, Dalit male youth attempt to reassert their domination in other ways: by taking their mothers’ and sisters’ factory-work earnings to fund consumption habits, by controlling and surveying women’s movements, and by beating them if they suspect them of misdemeanour. The authors argue that Dalit men’s violent domination over their own female kin is both a ‘coping mechanism’ in the face of their own lack of material resources as well as the means by which they might gain further material resources (2002: 26). The situation is slightly different in Nampalli: the minority of Dalits who have secured employment outside agriculture are men, not women. Women and men, as I said, largely still work as agricultural labourers with a minority of employees and semi-skilled workers among them. Unemployment is low in both pallis and therefore we can assume men are generally able to fulfil the masculine roles of ‘provider’, ‘protector’ and ‘procreator’ (Kumar, Gupta and Abraham 2002: 15). There are educated, unemployed Dalit young men in the village (like the aggressive youth that Anandhi and Jeyaranjan (2002) describe) but they are by no means the only men who are violent. Local notions of masculinity are certainly crucial to understanding violence. But I suggest that poverty, honour and

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shame are also key features of the violence occurring in Dalit homes. We also need to understand why fears and suspicions of women’s infidelity have become such a prominent feature of palli life and the role of alcohol in connection with violence. I explore these issues by looking at cases of violence in the palli, particularly the case of Vani and Ram, and by drawing on field notes, observations and in-depth interviews with Dalit men and women. In Chapter Two, I discussed the link between poverty and shame, suggesting that Dalits’ historical humiliation has in large part to do with material deprivation and concomitant dependency on the upper castes as well as the perceived ‘loose character’ of Dalit women. Although the situation has improved for some, the shame of poverty persists for many whose wage from labour barely brings them above subsistence level. It is among these families that this cluster of problems (alcohol, violence, suspicions of infidelity) is common and for whom a sense of ‘failed masculinity’ is acute. But I’ve also suggested that as Dalits’ status improves, attention seems to be focussed on the respectability of women.These factors help to explain violence among both the upwardly mobile and the impoverished. Although paruvu-pratishta-gowravam is attained in a number of different ways (described earlier), it amounts to little unless the women of a household are ‘good’ (manchi-ga). Indeed, sexuality is so central to prestige that the question ‘what is paruvu?’ is taken as an invitation to talk about the conduct of women. ‘If a person is good, then they will get paruvu and pratishta,’ my female neighbour explained. ‘If they don’t have any bad habits and they are a good person, going along without making mistakes then their prestige will grow.’ When I asked her to be more explicit, she laughed and replied, If you do not have attraction towards other men (mogavallu buddhi lakonda), if you conduct yourself without having those kinds of relationships (sambandalu), if you are good regardless of whether your husband drinks or not, then prestige will come to you. If you live according to your conscience in a civilised way (buddhi-ga, manchi tanam-ga), if you conduct yourself correctly according to the right standards [she uses the English words standard-ga, correct-ga], just working and looking after the children, then no one can point at you and accuse you of anything.

That a woman is telling me this indicates that women and men to a certain extent subscribe to the same idea of prestige.

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Both sexes tend to agree that paruvu-pratishta-gowravam is in part accumulated through the continual fidelity and siggu (modesty) of a family’s women. They assert their superiority over others by emphasizing their own women’s virtue and denigrating others’ through insults. Claims about women’s sexuality are integral to improved status. To this end, a man must be vigilant and ensure the subordination of his female kin. He is expected to punish acts of defiance and prevent any sexual misdemeanours. If he does not discipline an unruly wife, it is thought that she will quickly gain the upper hand. For as long as he is able to maintain control of the women of his house and prevent the advances of potential encroachers, a man proves his masculinity to other men and is respected. If his wife is unfaithful, however, then he will be seen as less strong-willed than her. He becomes weaker than a woman: shamed and emasculated. It should be no surprise then that the most common form of violence is due to men’s suspicions about their wives. As one male Madiga informant put it, ‘This is what 90% of the arguments are all about!’ Anju’s case illustrates this. Anju, a labourer in her mid-thirties, was married one year after her maturity ceremony when she was about twelve years old to her mother’s younger brother for a dowry of Rs 200. She moved to his village soon after the wedding. Both families were poor and landless. At the age of fifteen or so, Anju had her first daughter. She had another daughter who died in infancy and a son who survived. Her eldest daughter is now twenty years old, married with two children. Her son is eighteen, unmarried and lives with her. Anju’s husband is a heavy drinker and during their marriage he regularly beat her. From the start, Anju’s husband was a suspicious and controlling character. Anju jokes that although she is not especially beautiful, her husband thinks of her as a ‘five-star hotel heroine’. Anju has a special liking for saris and ornaments but her husband would forbid her to go out looking too decorated. He would berate her for applying talcum powder, stickers, kohl around the eyes and paying too much attention to her appearance. He had a quick temper and would beat her at the slightest provocation. Any man loitering near the house would be enough to incite him. At night, he would return home drunk, start an argument and beat her ‘over small, small things’, sometimes for no reason at all. As his drinking increased, their household sank into poverty. Anju became

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resentful. Her household was in a wretched condition and she blamed her husband for wasting money. After five years of persistent abuse, Anju was unable to tolerate him any longer. She took her children and moved back to her parents’ already cramped four-roomed house in Nampalli. Anju joined other women labourers and began saving her own and her children’s wages. With these, she bought a buffalo and sold it when it was pregnant for Rs 30,000. Now Anju has her own house on three cents of land in her name and a gold chain. She and her daughter saved for a dowry and with this modest amount Anju was able to get her daughter married. Anju’s husband’s brothers came to call her back to her conjugal home several months after her daughter’s wedding. At their request, she stayed there for twenty days. But the violence was worse than ever. Her husband was angry about her taking the children and brazenly making a life for herself. He angrily accused her of infidelity. One night, she heard that her husband had become enraged and was on his way home to beat her. (Word has it that he suspected an affair). Fearful of what he might do to her, Anju armed herself with an axe. When he entered the house, she struck his head. People rushed to see what had happened and took him to the hospital. Anju stayed in the house and cleaned up the blood with buckets of water, she says. Her husband received seven stitches to his head and recovered in hospital over several weeks. After this incident, she returned to Nampalli and never went back to her husband’s village. Both of her children stayed with her and the son warned his father not to come to Nampalli until he had stopped drinking. After a year, Anju’s husband came to see her again. At first, things were fine but then the beating resumed and he left. Nowadays he comes to stay infrequently. His affairs with other women are well known but he does everything within his means to prevent Anju from having another relationship. But Anju herself is not interested in seeking another husband anyway and as she does not wish to re-marry, she sees no point in seeking a divorce. If nothing else, her husband is her very own manamana (mother’s brother); a divorce would aggrieve her mother and sour relations within the family even further. Moreover, although he rarely gives her money now, there would be no hope of any support after a divorce, either for her or their children. Since the children are adult anyway she feels that it would be more trouble than it is worth.

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Anju expresses both resignation (‘It is my karma! What can I do?’) and regret about her husband, saying that marriage has only brought her misery. She says it was her husband’s jealousy that caused him to beat her. Since she had barely passed maturity when she married him, it is unlikely that this behaviour can be understood simply as punishment for infidelities. Rather, his aggression shows his desire to assert authority over her from the start. Unlike the situation of many upper-caste women, Anju was able to escape, take refuge in her parents’ house and crucially, sustain herself and her children through wage labour. Although Anju’s retaliation with an axe is extreme, there are features of her case which are fairly typical. The two most obvious ones are men’s suspicions about their wives’ fidelity and alcohol. This does not mean violence is simply a response to women’s ‘mistakes’. Often, it is men’s suspicions about their wives’ affairs that are the cause of violence. But if men blame wanton women, women blame alcoholic men. Indeed, alcohol is a major source of conflict within and outside the Dalit palli. Not all of the Dalit labouring men in Nampalli drink heavily but most do, and some regularly so. Drinking largely takes place in the Dalit-run drinking hut on the edge of the Mala palli, towards the centre of the village. This hut is an arena of illicit (inter-caste) male activity, off limits even to the western anthropologist. The preferred drink is whiskey nicknamed ‘90’s’ sold in 180ml glass bottles at a rate of Rs 50 each. The amount the men drink of course depends on habit, his mood and how much cash he has (drinking tends to increase when the men are paid) but it is not unusual for men to spend their entire daily wage on a night’s drinking. Some men drink during the day, on holidays and days of rest and even with their workmates during unsupervised contract labour. One of the principal reasons men give for drinking is the relief it provides after a day’s hard labour. An elderly labourer explained, ‘I go to the fields and then I cut wood so by the time the sun sets my whole body is aching. That’s why men go to the drink shop and have a drink. And that’s how we are unable to save up.’ The strain on the bodies of agricultural labourers should not be underestimated; many men rely on alcohol to reduce physical discomfort. Some men also have underlying health problems, which they cannot afford to treat. In these cases, alcohol serves as pain relief. Men also drink for ‘enjoyment’ (sarada) and the stimulating effect which loosens inhibitions and numbs the senses. This is most obvious at Dalit funerals when drinking to the point of extreme

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inebriation is mandatory for the male relatives of the deceased. The drinking that takes place at funeral is of a different order to daily drinking and is undertaken for different purposes (to take away the smell of the body, to enable them to bury the corpse, to make them dance, sing, blow fire crackers and appear invulnerable to ghosts) (Clark-Déces 2005). But the numbing of pain, loss of control and the pure enjoyment that comes from drinking is evident in everyday life as well. Drinking is an all-or-nothing affair, the purpose of which is drunkenness. Dalit men tend to be divided into drinkers and nondrinkers; few if any men drink lightly and occasionally. Among the drinkers, some are seen to have an addiction (vesanam) whereas others are simply habituated (allavartu). However heavily their fathers drink, young men will generally not drink in front of them as it is seen as disrespectful. Instead they drink surreptitiously with their friends outside the village. One of my neighbours, a teenage labourer, was becoming initiated to drinking towards the end of my fieldwork period in 2005. Twice he returned home and vomited outside the house. Apart from a few half-hearted reprimands from his mother, not a great deal was said about these two incidents. As a young adult and the highest wage earner in the family, his mother was not in a position to scold him and his father was unconcerned since he drank daily himself. By the time I returned in 2009, the boy was a heavy drinker and boasted how much he could consume in an evening. Every week, he and his friend would set off to a drinking shop outside Nampalli on his newly acquired motorcycle. This was accepted as a normal, even expected part of his transition into working Dalit manhood. In the village, drinking is seen as one of the major causes of Dalit ‘backwardness’ and in the palli itself there is a well-formulated critique of alcohol and violence.2 This is voiced by younger, educated 2 Dalit awareness of Kamma prejudice against ‘alcoholic Dalits’ also has an influence against alcohol consumption. They know that the uruvallu deliberately use Dalit alcohol consumption to defend casteist attitudes. They see alcoholism as the main cause of Dalit poverty thereby framing Dalits as the ‘undeserving poor’ and overlooking the role they play in institutionalising alcoholism (Madiga drummers are given alcohol for any services they perform, Dalit voters are bribed with alcohol, Dalit funeral attendants are offered alcohol for their role in upper-caste funerals and Dalit workers are occasionally rewarded with alcohol or gifts of money for ‘mandu dunnapotu’ (booze and buffalo meat)). This is not a logical view since upper-caste men also drink to excess.

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Dalit men who have a strong sense of Dalit reform who are influenced by Christian morality which advocates a total repudiation of ‘uncivilised’ ‘bad habits’ (allavartulu) (drinking, smoking, wasting money and extra-marital relations). Educated, politicised Christian youth are respected in the community and many (even those who drink) believe that their views represent the correct path for the community as a whole. But not all educated young men share this moral position. The most conspicuous section of male Dalit youth in the village display little interest in improving the lot of Dalits. These men see the principal products of education as youthful ‘style’ and fashionable clothes (cf. Anandhi et. al. 2002); they hang around the village behaving in a provocative manner, displaying contempt for traditional authority figures and engaging in ‘bad habits’. But unlike older Dalits who drink surreptitiously, these young men drink ‘cool drinks’ and whisky publicly in the streets and buy branded cigarettes from the Komati shop, conforming with the consumption patterns associated with a new Dalit masculinity, described elsewhere (Anandhi et. al. 2002, Jeffery, Jeffery and Jeffrey 2004a, 2004b, 2005, Rogers 2006). An educated unemployed Dalit youth explained in a group interview, ‘Alcohol is hot, it makes your veins rise up in your skin. Alcohol is like ‘electric current power’ [in English]’. One might interpret this as the young man laying claim to this particular kind of masculinity by boasting to his peers (and the female foreigner) about his familiarity with alcohol and his sexual experience (i.e. the reference to veins). There is no causal link between drinking and wife beating: some teetotal men beat their wives while some drinkers never beat their wives at all. But two factors increase the likelihood of violence after drinking. First, men say that the physical effect of alcohol makes them ‘hotter’, ‘fired up’ and belligerent and second, the sight of a drunken husband often prompts wives to angrily confront their spouses for wasting scarce household resources. This tends to infuriate men who see this as an affront to their authority and evidence of a quarrelsome wife who questions how he spends his money. Alcohol and spending habits are women’s principal complaints. In my neighbour’s house, a group of married women discussed the issue. Bina blamed men for Dalits’ lack of development. Some families become backward because husbands will take the wife’s gold and pawn it for the sake of drink. Others go and spend

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all their money on the cinema. Take Latha’s husband, he always goes to the cinema, spending Rs 50 on a good seat and comes home drunk. Then take Kirthi’s husband, he doesn’t drink and he brings a few vegetables on his way back home. Some men will not think about saving, they won’t put anything aside. If it’s in their pocket they have to spend it, they can’t hide it away. How will they develop if they do that?

‘Men will take the earrings from their wife’s ears and rip the tali from her neck just to get a drink’ added Vijaya, ‘They’re mad for drinking, they make their children starve, they hit their wife and waste their money. Why don’t you get them to close the shops? We will die because of alcohol.’ Some women become so desperate that they impose sanctions by refusing to give their husbands food when they return drunk. Others, however, believe that refusing to serve rice only makes matters worse. A wife should wait for her husband to get home before eating herself and if he comes home drunk, she should serve him rice in silence. If she eats before him, refuses to feed him or scolds him, it is her mistake and she can expect to be beaten. For almost everyone though, some forms of violence are deemed quite normal. For both men and women, retributive beatings are seen as acceptable and necessary to ensure the proper functioning of family and community life. One group of unmarried male youth explained that it is the responsibility of husbands to make sure that the wife does not neglect her duties around the house or become lazy. David, an unmarried eighteen-year-old Madiga factory worker explained: David: If I order her to do something and she doesn’t do it then I have the right to beat her. Say I ask her to cook some rice and she doesn’t do it then I’ll beat her. If she does not work then I’d beat her. After getting married, men have the right to beat their wives.Whenever you feel like beating her then it is ok, you have the right to beat her. For example, if she is not preparing the children for school in time, then the husband may beat her. If I come back home from work hungry, in need of a bath and with a lot of stress and annoyance and I find her sleeping and not preparing food or my bath then I will beat her. CS: Say if you come home drunk and she doesn’t feed you, is it her fault? David: It is the man’s fault for coming home drunk. It is not wrong that she didn’t serve him rice. But most people think that she must give him food and then he’ll sleep.

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CS: What should be done about drinking issue? David: Wife, children and husband should think about what they should do. Even if the man drinks, if he is giving her money then why is she not serving him rice? If she gives him rice and serves him, he will want to give up drinking himself.

In another group conversation, men agreed that pointlessly beating one’s wife is wrong but a man still has a right (hukku) to beat her ‘365 days a year’ if he likes. Here is an extract from our discussion: CS: In what circumstances will you beat your wife? Peter: If she makes a mistake. CS: What kind of mistake? Peter: Oh ho! You’re really asking a deep question now! [He laughs because ‘mistake’ implicitly refers to sexual impropriety]. Kortayya: If I ask her why she hasn’t done any work and she continues to refuse to work without giving an explanation then I will scold her. Ramu: A man must beat his wife whenever there is a need so that she is frightened of him.

Ideally, Dalit men think that women should have a fearful respect for their husbands. Since this is rare in practice, they must use a firm hand to keep women in check. If a woman is not beaten for ‘making mistakes’ then she will eventually dominate her husband. When his honour is threatened, he must prove his manhood through action in order to maintain control. Men’s fears of being the weaker partner in a marriage are not unfounded. In a community where women work, earn and organise the household and finances, the possibility of women dominating their husbands is a real one. Indeed, this was situation of one of my neighbours. His wife was an ebullient character who began an extra-marital affair. When the man found out he beat her severely, as he is expected to. Upset and injured, the wife went back to her parents’ house in her native village. He visited her there and tried to persuade her to come home, as is customary. But unlike most women, she refused: she had decided that she would not return unless her husband allowed her to continue her relationship. Most men would not agree to this but he was seemingly prepared to do anything to get her back. She returned and most days the lover’s bicycle could be seen parked not particularly discreetly outside her house during

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working hours. While the couple’s lack of children was a significant element in this, the unusual dominance of the wife meant that she was able to negotiate an extraordinary arrangement. This household was nevertheless seen as a transgressive household; the husband had lost his honour and suffered emasculation: he had been dominated by a woman and cuckolded by another man. Men must prevent this kind of situation at all costs and hence Ramu’s attitude to beating is pre-emptive: it is necessary to maintain ‘fear’ in order to prevent the woman becoming dominant. Neither drinking nor wife beating is admired and a man’s reputation (peru) is affected if he does either in excess. Here the moral element of paruvu-pratishta-gowravam is clearly evident. Although throughout I have linked poverty and shame and wealth and honour, there is more to it than this. A man must be moral, too. Kalyani explains, Just because you are rich does not mean you have prestige. A person may have lots of money, a car, ‘security’ [body guards] but he may have no common sense and he may make a lot of mistakes. A person who does not have any money or anything to eat can still have selfdiscipline (kramasikshana). If he speaks well and has good habits and manners then people will say, ‘He is a good person’. Even poor people can have status (viluva). Say you go to a rich person’s house and they come to the door and ask how they can help, that is one way. But say instead you go to his house and he is sitting on a chair with his leg on his knee and he does not get up and says from over his shoulder, ‘What do you want?’ then we will not respect this man. If you are not proud (garvam) then people will say that you are a good person.

Clearly, it is not simply wealth that produces honour. An honourable man must also have moral rectitude. He should not go about openly having affairs, wasting money, gambling, drinking and making a fool of himself. He should not use foul language or unnecessarily start fights. Although siggu is thought to be an archetypal feminine characteristic, the expression, ‘have you no shame?’ (‘neeku siggu leda?’) is directed at men, too. It can be used light-heartedly to poke fun or to reprimand men who had made serious moral mistakes. What matters is the manner in which men drink and use violence. A man who drinks, speaks out of turn in an uncontrolled manner, makes a fool of himself, loses control of his body and senses, gets

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into unnecessary fights is seen as a disreputable man unable to manage himself. Taken too far, an addiction to alcohol can destroy prestige. An example of this is a man who had managed to gain state employment but lost his job after twenty-three years of service due to complaints about drunkenness at work. His son spoke dolefully about his father’s misfortune remarking, ‘If he had saved that money [the amount he spent on alcohol] he would have been able to buy land by now. But because of my father’s drinking and the suspension, I never studied, we became backward and now we will stay like this.’ In this case (and in Ram’s case described below), addiction to alcohol undermined his masculine status as provider and led to poverty and a loss of paruvu-pratishta-gowravam. Drinking, then, can be seen as a test of masculinity: if a man is able to tolerate heavy drinking and yet keep ‘within his boundaries’, alcohol can enhance his reputation. It shows that he has the upper hand in his relationship with his wife (as most try to prevent their husbands drinking) and he has confidence in his reputation at home. On the other hand, a man who loses control, ‘crosses his boundaries’, allows alcohol to undermine his ability to provide for his family quickly loses respect. It is thought that alcohol will reveal weaker men who can’t compete, an idea evident in the saying, ‘alcohol is a blow to small brains’ (mandu china medadaki debba). The poorer men are likely to be condemned hardest by their wives because the cost of their habit is highest. In turn they are likely to feel the affront to their masculinity most acutely and respond most aggressively. The drinking hut can be seen as a male-only domain which provides enjoyment, release and escape from physical pain (or emotional shame), and yet at the same time acts as a sphere in which masculinity is put to the test. The risks are serious (addiction, poverty, shame) but for the man who is successful, the gains are substantial. Some of the poorest men who could least afford to drink had some of the worst problems. One example was Petru. Everyone enjoyed Petru’s nightly drunken clowning yet it was obvious that he had driven his family into destitution. Petru and his wife had three children and they lived in a tumbledown shack. His eldest daughter looked after her younger siblings and did housework instead of going to school. His wife worked unceasingly in the fields in order to sustain the household. Petru earned a decent if unpredictable wage (up to Rs 300 per day) selling farm produce in local towns but he spent a large

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part of his earnings on drinking. The couple was constantly anxious about their youngest child who had had health problems since birth and they had incurred large debts due to medical expenses. The family’s ragged appearance, the dilapidation of their hut, their lack of education had brought a burden of shame (chinnatanam), which caused Petru to drink more, he explained. For Petru, alcohol was an escape from shame and the source of it.

*** Rather than simply showing men’s physical power over women, the cases here serve to highlight men’s weakness and vulnerability to shame, especially in poor families. When drinking and violence become signs of a loss of ‘limits’, they are no longer attributes of a celebrated Dalit masculinity. When coupled with poverty, they become signs of ignominy, indignity and failure. This is most obvious in the case of Ram, a now deceased father of two, described below by his mother, Vani. As a boy, Ram was not interested in going to school and he never learnt to read or write. As he entered his teens, he refused to work in the fields and rarely helped with domestic chores. Vani decided to arrange Ram’s marriage to her brother’s daughter, Sailaja, a quiet and hard-working girl, also illiterate. Soon after their marriage, Vani’s husband died unexpectedly. Ram started drinking when his father was in hospital and continued more heavily after his death. Ram infrequently worked in the fields and would use Vani and Sailaja’s wages for drink. Six years after his father’s death, Ram and Sailaja’s first child was born. Two years later Sailaja gave birth to another daughter. Their two daughters were aged five and three in 2009. Ram’s drunkenness was frequently followed by violence but some of his actions were the source of comedy as well. For example, at Christmas time, the children performed a nativity play on a rickety stage in the Madiga palli. As six Madiga girls dressed as angels sang a Christian song in front of the audience, Ram, blind drunk, reeled into the audience, removed his vest, and began to unwrap his lungi in front of them. Just in time, some of the men grabbed him, covered him up and marched him back to his house. Everyone fell about laughing and the story was the source of hilarity for months afterwards, accompanied by the refrain, ‘That man has no shame!’

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When I returned to the village in April 2009, I was told that Ram had died. He had gone missing for three months in the winter and in December 2008, he was found by the police dead at the side of the road in the local town, Konduru. They put his picture in the paper and sent out an announcement for a missing person. The Madiga elders learned of it via the sarpanch and Ram’s family identified the body and brought him back to Nampalli for the funeral. Vani describes Ram in the following interview: Vani: After his dad died Ram would be all right for four days in the month then for twenty-six days he would drink. CS: How did that make you feel? Vani: I am his mother. I gave birth to him so I have to bear that punishment. What should I do? CS: What about his wife? Vani: What is she to do? She is my brother’s daughter, isn’t she? He used to hit me and he used to hit his wife so she would go back to her mother’s house in Vopalli or her mother’s sister’s house. He would not go and fetch her. Instead it was me who would go and ask her to come back and convince her to come and live with us again. He would not think, ‘I have beaten my wife, where is she? I should go and get her.’ No! ... It was me who went for her. After two or three months, he would ask ‘Where is my wife?’ and he would ask me to go and get her. If Sailaja’s father was prepared to send her back to Nampalli then he would, otherwise she’d stay there. CS: Did your brother ever ask Ram why he was beating her? Vani: Once my brother even beat Ram in his village. Just to scare him, he took a knife to Ram and threatened him. But he was also a drinker so they were like partners in crime (todi dongalu). One day Ram beat Sailaja badly. She went back to her mother’s place and stayed there for a long time. After a while, Ram asked me to come with him to go and get her back ... Sailaja’s father was not able to speak to any of us; to Ram, his friend or me. We were not allowed into the house. I returned to Nampalli but the two men spent the night in a hut outside the house. Sailaja’s father ignored our request and refused to send her back again. This happened so many times we got fed up with the situation. Oh I faced so many problems! So many times he hit her; so many times she left; so many times I went to fetch her. This is my karma. Without [my efforts] the two of them would not be able to form a household. Because of me, they were just able to have a family and

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two children together [ ... ] Ram got drunk, harassed her, abused her and beat her so many times I could hardly bear it. [ ... ] It was not only Sailaja facing problems. It was difficult for me too.When we were really not getting on, I spent two or three months in my husband’s elder sister’s house next door. Throughout the day I worked hard, I came back, made a fire and cooked curry and rice. One day I cooked and waited for Ram to return. He didn’t come back so because I was hungry, I ate. When eventually he returned and found me eating, he kicked the plate out of my hands. I was about to put the food in my mouth but he kicked my hand away. He was angry that his wife had left him again but he took it out on me. I would say to him, ‘Why are you drinking? You have a wife, you have children, you should be happy. How many people are living without their fathers? You are not giving me any money but I am still cooking you egg and meat curries. Drink if you like! Come back, eat and go to sleep but stop beating your wife and me. Why do you have this problem?’ [ ... ] I would feed him because he is my son. I never neglected him despite all these difficulties. God knows why we had to suffer this punishment. I don’t know. God gave this punishment to him also [ ... ] I said to Sailaja a number of times, ‘Don’t run away when he beats you. Think to yourself, this is my father’s sister’s house and stay with me. We can send a message to your father and let him come. But don’t leave the house.’ But she would leave and take the children as soon as he beat her. Now there is there is mud in Ram’s mouth [he is dead], but in our mouths there is rice. We must not lie about him: it is a mistake to think that he did not care for his children, he did. Sometimes he would give money to his eldest daughter and tell her to buy some snacks. But he sold so many of Sailaja’s marriage things: the buckets, the water pots, the saucepans. He kept the gas hob but he sold the cylinder. He had no idea how much it really cost, he just sold it to the first person who offered, simply to get the money to drink. After his death, I built this canopy in the front of the house. I put stone flooring inside the house, bought a TV and doors for the house. We had none of this previously. My daughter’s husband arranged all of this for us. We are planning to build an extra room and put flooring in. Now Sailaja and I are together in the house, she is going out to work in the fields and I am looking after the children. This is now our life. We are both fine. She listens to what I say and she shows me respect so we are getting on well. If I neglect her, she will find it very difficult because the children are very young [ ... ] If we have money we eat otherwise we go to sleep hungry. I won’t ask anyone for anyone for help. I lost my husband, I lost my son but I have never

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asked anyone for a single rupee. I never even asked anyone to give me any rice. If I earn Rs 50, I save Rs 25 and use the rest to eat. If I make pickle, I will use it or [if I don’t] I’ll mix rice with water and eat it; no one will know.

Ram’s case is idiosyncratic in some ways. He was an unusually quiet and brooding man and I knew of no other son who beat his mother. But the vicious cycle in which he was caught is familiar to many poor families: lack of or under-employment, expenditure on alcohol, further impoverishment, the experience of shame in the drinking hut, a desire to drink to escape shame, ill health and inability to work. As Vani said, it was ‘because of my boy our prestige disappeared’. Masculinity and honour is compromised further when those roles perceived to be male are taken over by women. In Ram’s case, not only was Vani working, earning, managing the finances, looking after and improving the house; she went as far as taking over the performance of the husband’s role in order to keep his marriage intact. It was Vani not Ram who went back to Sailaja’s village to coax her back to Nampalli. Ram’s inability to perform these roles added to his degradation. His excessive violence can be seen as an attempt to compensate for his loss of dominance in these key areas. In this sense Ram’s violent episodes fit with Kumar, Gupta and Abraham’s notion of ‘non-performance or failed masculinity’ (2002: 15) and his concomitant exclusion from sources of Dalit male honour. How do women respond to these problems? While the tough socialisation of both sexes serves to normalise occasionally unjust and physically harsh treatment from childhood onwards, there are particular cultural resources that enable women to deal with injustices to which they alone are exposed. Most notably, Dalit women draw on a general idea of women’s suffering (bhada) (Egnor 1980, Wadley 1980). Although the idea of the self-sacrificing woman is more often associated with the Brahminical castes, amongst Dalit women too there is a belief that suffering is an integral part of the experience of being female. The physical strain of consecutive pregnancies, childbirth, breastfeeding, child rearing and the emotional loss associated with motherhood is an obvious area of embodied womanly suffering. But there are other sufferings, too. Principal among these is the separation that they endure at marriage when they move away from their mother to a new home where hard work often becomes the defining feature of conjugal life. Here

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women’s suffering is couched in terms of endurance, compromise, adjustment, the necessity of tolerating unfair treatment from a variety of authority figures, the obligation to bear hardship without complaint or resistance (from fetching water to satisfying sexual demands), the burden of unremitting domestic work and agricultural labour. These perceived sufferings are coupled with the difficulties of wifehood, especially when they find themselves married to an alcoholic, violent or adulterous man. Vani’s comments ‘What can I do?’, ‘This is my fate/ karma’, ‘God gave me this suffering’ are standard retorts. This discourse is encouraged by local Pentecostal churches that promote mass communal weeping in prayer (kanni eeti pradana) and invite individual women to publicly express trauma stories in church. Notably, it is women themselves who tend to perpetuate these ideas of female suffering (Egnor 1980: 27) and this may account for women’s resilience in the face of persistent, sometimes severe violence. But women are always implicated in male shame; when men fail, women are to blame. One man went as far as to say that that drinking is men’s way of coping with the shame of errant wives. As rumours circulate, a man may turn to drink through an inability to tolerate snide comments and jokes. He may defiantly attend the drinking hut or avoid the drinking hut altogether (as Leela’s father did). Women are thought to cause this response. Similarly, instead of sympathizing with Anju’s plight, many blamed her for the breakdown of her marriage. However difficult, Anju was expected to tolerate the situation.The longer she lived apart from her husband, the more vulnerable she was to unwanted male attention and accusations of promiscuity. Despite Anju’s husband’s extreme aggression, it was her actions (and assumed underlying moral laxity) that were seen to be at fault. Women are seen to have a higher moral responsibility than men. They are responsible not only for preventing their husband from straying but also for refusing men who approach them. This heavier moral duty accounts for their heavier culpability. Indeed, if a woman finds out that her husband is having an affair, she will confront his mistress rather than her husband. Bujji, a married labourer and mother, explained this: Men will always go after women. But say a woman had an affair with my husband I would say to her, ‘What happened to your buddhi

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(conscience)?’ If she has any kind of conscience then she will not make a mistake. If a man has a tendency to make mistakes then it is up to women to reject him. If once he proposed to a woman and she beat him, he will not come back again. So it is only if a woman is loose that he will return again.

However, women’s position is contradictory: they may appear to resign themselves to moral responsibility and suffering and yet on the other hand they forcefully take charge of circumstances. Women may turn their palms skywards and talk about fate and yet at the same time, they sharply condemn violence and attempt to shape, change, control, curb and influence men’s behaviour. Bina and Vijaya’s invective against drink, Mary’s refusal to serve her husband food (see below) and of course Anju’s attempted murder shows that they are hardly passive victims. On the contrary, Dalit women are vocal critics not just within the household but in the public sphere, too. At the state level, the Anti-Arrack movement which achieved a state-wide ban on alcohol showed how vigorously and effectively Dalit women can mobilise (Reddy and Patnaik 1993, Raju 1997: 2196). This discourse of suffering does not make women passively accept abusive treatment. But it may enable women to endure violence without necessarily internalising it. Indeed, where women are able to explain their experience in terms of an imagined universal female burden, ‘suffering’ may give a validating sense of conformity to a legitimate type of femininity. In this respect, Vani’s sentiment is typical: ‘Adulterer, tramp or thief, a husband is a husband’.3 However, while cultural ideals of femininity may help women to a certain extent, there are at least three other reasons why Dalit women are at an advantage over higher-caste women in the face of domestic violence. Firstly, as explained earlier, unlike in the uru, arguments in the Dalit palli often take place outside on the streets rather than privately inside the house. The following is a typical example: We woke to an argument between Mary and Manish. Mary was standing on the veranda, shouting at her drunken husband, rebuking him for spending his money on alcohol. She had refused to serve him rice, on strike until he stopped drinking. Reeling around the road outside his house, he swore at her and angrily demanded that she feed him. By this time, a crowd had gathered to watch. He grabbed her hair and there was a scuffle. Family members stepped in to separate 3

‘Gali vadu karni, duli vadu karni, donga vadu karni, barta e barthe’.

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them. Manish then staggered up the stairs to the roof. He teetered on the edge and threatened to jump. Men chased up the stairs to stop him jumping or falling. Mary was in tears with other family members standing nearby. Once the fight was over, everyone wandered back to their cots and went back to sleep (field notes, May 2004).

The public nature of conflict tends to work in women’s favour; it prevents violence escalating too far and it allows for intervention where necessary. Indeed, those who keep their arguments secret are viewed with suspicion. One of the most violent men in the community beat his wife inside their house. Neighbours were extremely disparaging about his brutality. In public, women can enlist the support of the community in order to prevent the excesses of a violent husband. Secondly and more significantly, Dalit women maintain close ties with their natal home. Although, as we have seen, cross-cousin marriage does not prevent violence, a girl’s position is strengthened if her ‘mother’s house’ is nearby and if her father-in-law is her mother’s brother (cf. Grover 2009). A woman’s typical response to domestic violence is to go back to her mother’s house; it is rare for parents not to accommodate them. The process of going to fetch a wife often entails facing her family, explaining what he has done, promising to treat her better and convincing her to return. Without persuasion there is a risk she will not return. In the case of crosscousins, the conjugal family feel a strong responsibility to maintain good relationships since conflict holds serious consequences for the wider network of kin. Unlike upper-caste women who tend to be married more distantly, a Dalit girls’ ability to escape, her right to return to her parents’ home, her parents’ ability to protect her and the requirement of the man to fetch her all afford a woman a significant amount of negotiating power within her marriage. Lastly, Dalit women’s habituation to work and ability to survive on their own income gives them leverage within an abusive relationship. Anju’s case is instructive: her parents offered her shelter but they may not have been able to look after her for long had she not had the ability to support herself and her children. A woman’s ability to survive ‘on her own two feet’ is crucial. However, we can anticipate that upward mobility will undermine these three advantages. The new emphasis on respectability requires women to curb ‘vulgar’ language, keep disputes quiet and inside the house. A housewife’s reputation hangs on modest speech and action

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and her disappearance from the public sphere; she can no longer argue in the street as the others do. Housewives also lack the sense of ownership over the streets that the working women have. More importantly, if the possibility of escape is a woman’s most important bargaining tool, then the trend towards ‘prestige marriages’ (Kapadia 1995) has grave consequences. The advantage of marrying geographically closely and having the right to return to the mother’s house are today as obvious as ever. Along with this, the shift towards male breadwinners and women housewives removes women’s other major point of leverage: their earning capacity. Dalit housewives may be envied for their comfortable lives but as dependents, it is much harder for them to escape violent marriages. Alcohol and violence must be understood in relation to improving socio-economic circumstances. When women become symbols of Dalit status, the pressure to control them increases. Dalits share the values of paruvu-pratishta-gowravam but only a few men can afford to withdraw women from work. This means that men must exert more physical effort to claim and maintain their standing. Dalit women can be powerful, competent, articulate adversaries, often more capable than their husbands in providing for and maintaining their households. Women’s proficiency may be the reason why men resort to sheer brute force to dominate them. Dalit men’s tenuous dominance also means they must go to greater lengths than men of other castes whose dominance in relation to their own women and lower-caste men is less in question. The more Dalits regard themselves as the social equals of the upper castes, the more we can expect class-conscious, honourseeking behavior, increasing male vigilance and physical suppression of dissent. Rising violence against women is a predictable result of Dalit men’s perceived and real advance in status, however small and uneven this may be. The upshot is an intensification of gender conflict as Dalit women bear the brunt of shifting values. But in poor households, too, the control of women is important. In households shamed by poverty, where the men’s masculinity is undermined, violence against women may be a response to their own failures. Violence in these circumstances may also be understood as an attempt by men, however futile, to achieve control and respect when other avenues (such as material provision) are blocked. It would be wrong to present this as a straightforward conflict between men and women. Women and men share the values of

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paruvu-pratishta-gowravam in many respects; they invoke them when discussing and evaluating their own or other people’s conduct and they draw on them to fashion their own aspirations and choices. On the whole, both sexes often subscribe to values, which in the long run are detrimental to women. Men could not impose them on their own. At the same time, women often quietly flout these very same standards. When they do so and are held to account, they find other ways to claim prestige, as Kalyani’s case in the next chapter illustrates. Women also criticise men and openly contest new forms of male dominance, even as ideas of ‘suffering’ help them tolerate hardship. They find ways to challenge patriarchal conventions, not least through the invocation of ‘women’s empowerment’, explored in the following chapter.

8 Kalyani: ‘Development’, ‘Civilisation’ and ‘Women’s Empowerment’

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his chapter is about Kalyani, an outspoken Madiga widow in her early thirties who wields much influence not only within the Dalit community but in the village as a whole. A commanding figure, she is the leader of the DWCRA savings and credit women’s groups in Nampalli. She is well known to everyone in the palli and the uru and an active organiser and spokesperson for women and Dalits in the local area. In many respects she is an exemplar of ‘women’s empowerment’. And yet despite this, she is seen as a disreputable woman to be excluded from the ‘moral community’ of her caste. Her story illustrates the disjuncture between the ideals of modern, empowered Dalit womanhood and the kind of femininity prescribed by the principles of paruvu-pratishta-gowravam. As someone who ‘crosses her limits’, her case illustrates the importance of boundaries in the constitution of honour. But she also shows how these boundaries are open to manipulation and subversion so that even women like her can find ways to claim honour and prestige. This chapter shows how women’s role in Dalits’ pursuit of ‘civilisation’ and ‘culture’ can be contested and how Dalits draw on conflicting gender models. I have argued so far that that what we are witnessing in Nampalli is just one instance of a wider rise in Dalit patriarchy: improvements for Dalits generally are detrimental for women’s

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equality in the long run. Conflict intensifies when Dalit women refuse to submit to the honour-related demands of their family members and when the freedoms originally held by Dalit women are curbed in the name of respectability. However, conflict also arises with the influence of competing discourses which directly contradict the imperatives of paruvu-pratishta-gowravam. Principal among these is that of ‘women’s empowerment’, well known to all the residents of the Dalit colonies through members of the ‘Self Help Groups’ (SHGs). Indeed, women’s empowerment has by now become a prominent discourse across all of Andhra Pradesh propagated not just through the DWCRA Self Help Groups but through a multitude of women’s micro-credit organisations found in villages across the state.1 To understand the penetration of these empowerment discourses, we need to know something of the manner in which they came into being, particularly the role of Chandra Babu Naidu’s Telegu Desam Party (TDP) government of the 1990s, a regime which more than any other attempted to fashion poor rural women into modernised, ‘neoliberal subjects’ through the spread of the orthodoxy of ‘women’s empowerment’. Naidu’s Andhra Pradesh is a good example of the role microcredit can play in advancing economic liberalisation (Weber 2002: 7). As noted earlier, Naidu took loans to liberalise and restructure the state economy and reduce the role of the public sector. Alongside privatisation, in 1997 he introduced populist welfare measures for the rural poor (Suri 2002: 40). Micro-credit and women figured centrally in Naidu’s vision. He courted female voters through pragmatic policies such as ‘Deepam’ (the provision of gas connections to all rural women) announced just before the 1999 elections and introduced schemes for new mothers and widows (ibid.). He also harnessed women’s capacities through 1 In Nampalli, all SHGs (Self Help Groups) are part of the government’s Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas (DWCRA) programme. SHGs are groups of women who contribute small amounts of monthly savings into a common fund from which they take turns to borrow. Micro-enterprise at the local level is stimulated by providing subsidies, loans and training to the women in SHGs to enable them to set up small businesses such as tailoring, rearing buffaloes, small shops etc. (Mooij 2002: 33–38). Once the group in question had demonstrated successful saving, lending and repayment, they can apply to banks for larger loans. See Corbridge et al. (2005: 275) for a more detailed description of the scheme.

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the institutionalisation of new forms of governance, which would operate through the DWCRA SHGs. Ironically, SHGs came into existence before Naidu’s leadership through an anti-state protest. Their origins were rooted in a lowcaste women’s grassroots campaign against alcohol, the Anti-Arrack movement. In the early 1990s, through a mass sabotage of local liquor outlets, women succeeded in achieving a statewide ban on the sale of alcohol in 1991–2 (Reddy and Patnaik 1993: 1059). Although the ban was soon repealed due to large losses of tax revenues (Rahman 2003), the campaign’s mobilisation of women led to the formation, spread and consolidation of women’s savings and credit groups in the aftermath (Edwards and Olsen 2006, Srinivasulu 2002: 64). At this stage, the groups had a strongly ideological character, argue Edwards and Olsen (2006). Naidu co-opted this grassroots mobilisation by encouraging women to channel their energies into government-led micro-credit schemes (Edwards and Olsen 2006). In the process, SHGs were deradicalised and de-politicised (Edward and Olsen 2006: 50). By the mid-1990s, SHGs began to play an enhanced role in governance. Naidu wished to be seen to champion the cause of ‘women’s empowerment’ and he created the post of ‘Commissioner of Self Employment and Women’s Empowerment’ to this end (Mooij 2002: 37). The period 1997 to 2004 saw a proliferation of Self Help Groups. By 2004 there were 475,646 SHGs established in Andhra Pradesh with a total of 6.54 million female members (Manor 2006: 24).2 By 2010, Andhra Pradesh contained 14 per cent of all of India’s seven million SHGs (Reddy 2012). The DWCRA SHGs were part of what Mooij (2002) calls the ‘targeted populism’ of Naidu’s regime, a populism which worked in tandem with liberalisation in that it envisioned development not as state-led but as brought about by the people themselves. Government rhetoric was imbued with the idea of ‘individuals taking responsibility’ for their own development through the formation of ‘user groups’ and committees, to be made accountable to relevant local officials (ibid.). 2 The actual operation of Self Help Groups is complex. Most SHGs are government DWCRA groups overseen by the district level Revenue Department but many function under the World Bank funded programme DPIP. Others are set up by local NGOs and private lending companies, making the true number of SHGs difficult to estimate. Ideologies, functions, interest rates and sanctions may differ radically from group to group.Women may also have simultaneous memberships in different micro-credit groups.

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This meant that SHGs were not just to enable access to credit; they were to serve a whole range of other functions too; it was through women SHG members that government schemes would reach the rural masses. Women leaders would not only raise awareness about state programmes, they would help to implement them and check their functioning. Along with other village-level state representatives, SHG members were to act as instruments of government. A survey conducted by Andhra Pradesh Mahila Abhivruddhi Society (APMAS) (2006a: 12) found that a third of their sample SHGs were involved in village development activities and improving community services (water supply, education, health care, village roads, tree planting and water harvesting, for example). In Andhra Pradesh, SHG leaders have been enlisted in programmes such as incentiveled sterilisation, immunisation, access to safe cooking fuels (LPG) under Deepam, health insurance, pensions for the elderly and house construction. Some of these schemes are only accessible as an SHG member. SHG members have also been recruited by government to organise relief for victims of floods and fires (APMAS 2006a). As such, SHG members double as envoys of development in rural areas. Co-operative, entrepreneurial, family-oriented and communityfocussed, women had been seemingly shaped into functionaries of a new kind of neo-liberal governance. This model of development and governance not only rests on certain assumptions about rural women; through its training it also helps to produce particular ideals of the female subject.The ideologies underpinning SHGs rely on a construction of rural women to which women are encouraged to conform. What kind of woman, then, is being fashioned under the aegis of the Self Help Group movement? Through their involvement in SHGs, women are expected to be transformed from the subjugated victims of patriarchy to empowered, modern citizens of the neo-liberal era. ‘Women’s empowerment’ is of course one of the major rationales for micro-credit (Cheston and Kuhn 2002, Fernando 1997, Hashemi, Schuler and Riley 1996, Jakimow and Kilby 2006: 2; Rahman 1986). In the discourses of the Indian government, NGOs, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) and other promoters and supporters of micro-credit, participation is thought to lead to greater decisionmaking capacity among women, greater access to and control over household finances, greater bargaining power, increased ability to

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interact with individuals outside one’s family and community, greater mobility and opportunity to enter the wider arenas of social life (banks, government offices, training centres, towns, cities). SHGs are believed to have psychological and moral benefits: members become more confident and may even pioneer campaigns against the ‘social evils’ of violence, bigamy, dowry, alcoholism and child marriage. Links have also been made between micro-credit and political participation and the pursuit of rights. However, as early as the mid-1990s, there was scepticism. Analysts were pointing out some of the failings of micro-credit schemes and subsequently serious critiques have been mounted (Goetz and Sen Gupta 1994; Jakimow and Kilby 2006; Hulme and Mosely 1996; Mooij 2002; Montgomery, Bhattacharya and Hulme 1996; Osmani 1991; Rogaly 1996; Weber 2002).3 By the mid-2000s, a different set of profit-making, instrumentalist micro-finance lending organisations had begun to take over the bank-linked government SHGs and were instead charging usurious rates, poaching government SHG members and using coercive methods of loan recovery (Reddy 2012, Shylendra 2006). Today, the heady optimism surrounding microfinance has been all but demolished by the serious malpractices of the profit-making micro-finance organisations in Andhra Pradesh, prompting broader questions about the appropriateness of private companies to engender the financial inclusion of the rural poor (Reddy 2012: 27, Shylendra 2006). This chapter is not about the pros and cons of micro-credit per se but rather one particular strand of the micro-credit critique that is most pertinent to Kalyani’s case, namely the manufacture of a particular idea of the developed Dalit woman. This is relevant even in view of the recent crisis of micro-finance because it plays a key part in how development and lending programmes are formulated in the first place and may be re-formulated in the future. Mary John (1996) argues that rural development and micro-credit schemes are endorsed and justified by national and international organisations through a specific model of poor Dalit women. In this model, she says, women are seen as economically productive and frugal. They are set in contrast to their spendthrift husbands, 3 See Reddy (2012) for a review of studies on the difference between for-profit and not-for-profit financial services.

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who squander their wages on their own consumption. Dalit men are constructed as the mirror image of their industrious wives: the ‘bad subjects of modernity’ versus the ‘good subjects’ (John 1996: 3076). The effect of this discourse is to render Dalit men unfit as citizens and to allow the state to abdicate their responsibilities to the poor by placing the burden of development onto individual women, she argues (ibid.). Drawing on John’s insights, Eva-Maria Hardtmann (2009) goes one step further to argue that in encouraging women to take charge of money matters, micro-credit schemes deny Dalit women the ability to be ‘feminine’ and Dalit men the ability to be ‘masculine’. Dalit women become the breadwinners while Dalit men are denigrated and deprived of their masculinity. In the discourses that legitimise microcredit, Hardtmann argues, Dalits are ‘prevented from constructing gender identities’ (2009: 225). I disagree with Hardtmann’s argument to the extent that it is rooted in normative assumptions about what is feminine and masculine. Micro-credit may encourage women to be economically productive but as most Dalit women are and always have been economically productive it is hardly preventing them from constructing gender identities that are any different from the current ones. Is she suggesting Dalit women can only be fulfilled in their gender identities if they adopt the male breadwinner-female housewife model? It is not clear. Even so, I dwell on Hardtmann’s argument because it usefully brings our attention to a discord between dominant cultural ideas of gender (women as housewives) and dominant neo-liberal, developmentalist ideas of gender (women as entrepreneurs), which brings us to the central theme of this chapter. As John (1996) and Hardtmann (2009) suggest, the vision of the developed Dalit woman in the eyes of state government and other global promoters of micro-credit is a woman who earns her own income, diligently puts aside savings each month, attends meetings, takes loans for business activities, seeks training to establish herself, manages her finances and assiduously repays her debts. She is a self-motivated entrepreneur who has the confidence to move freely outside the limits of her household and village and co-operate with government officials and those with influence. She is also a driver of development with an awareness of government schemes and the ability to access to them. She is self-maximising and business-

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minded yet committed to the needs of others. This contrasts with the vision of the developed and ‘civilised’ woman in the eyes of ordinary Dalits in Nampalli. Here, the ideal is someone who brings prestige, honour and respect. As Kalyani’s case demonstrates, this presents a fundamental conflict of values, a disjuncture between honour and empowerment. In Nampalli, this conflict is played out most obviously in the life events of Kalyani.

*** Kalyani grew up in the Madiga colony of a sprawling, peri-urban village near the highway called Nantal. Both her parents were agricultural labourers. Kalyani was the youngest of nine children: seven sisters and two brothers. None of the children were educated except for her elder brother and sister who, unusually for a Dalit girl of that generation, studied up to Intermediate level. Kalyani speaks fondly of her childhood. As the youngest child everyone had a great deal of affection for her. Kalyani herself attended primary school but dropped out barely literate. As a child, she helped with domestic chores and at the age of eleven began working alongside her sisters in the fields. Kalyani’s marriage was arranged the year after her maturity ceremony to man in Nampalli whose father had heard about Kalyani through relatives. The marriage was settled quickly. Babu, her new husband, was also an agricultural labourer. Babu had two elder siblings, and younger brother, Ratnam. Kalyani describes her arrival: When I first arrived here, we were all living together: mother, father, three brothers and us two wives. After two years of marriage, after my first son was born, my father-in-law died. He had a heart attack. He used to like me very much and he looked after me. When he was searching for brides, I was the first girl he selected for marriage looks. He liked me and thought I was beautiful; he alone decided I should marry his son. We lived as a joint family until my father-in-law died. The family broke apart after that because my mother-in-law was not a good woman. She was always scolding, swearing and abusing me. My husband saw how his mother was treating me and he said, ‘As long as we live together she will constantly scold you so let’s live in a separate house’. At that point we moved into in a small hut in front of the main house. But even then she kept scolding me and causing arguments. So again we decided to move further away. I got on well

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with my sister-in-law; it was just my mother-in-law that was the problem. My husband’s brothers always looked after me very well.

Over a period of six years, Kalyani had three sons. During this time, she and Babu were happy together. She says that he had ‘none of the bad habits’; he had studied a little and he spoke wisely about matters. By working in the fields, selling buffalo milk and renting an acre of land they saved enough money to build a subsidised cement house. Babu’s younger unmarried brother, Ratnam, came to stay while his own house was being built. When Kalyani and Babu’s youngest son was four years old, Babu died in a road accident. He, Kalyani’s sister and brother-in-law were travelling in an auto-rickshaw on the bypass when a lorry hit them. Her sister and brother-in-law were killed instantly and Babu was taken to hospital with serious injuries. Kalyani describes these events: I was in the house when my mother’s family from Nantal came to tell me what had happened. They did not inform me then that my sister and brother-in-law had died. It was only after one month that I learned about their deaths. At the time, I cried when my mother’s family did not come for my husband’s funeral. But then afterwards I found out that it was because my sister and brother-in-law had died, too. They did not want to tell me in case I could not bear it. They told me gradually instead [ ... ] Now I do not hold a ceremony for my husband’s death day; I prefer to celebrate my children’s birthdays instead.4

In the aftermath of this tragedy, Kalyani suffered from dizziness and headaches. She decided to stay in Nampalli with her children rather than to move back to Nantal and her neighbours helped to look after her. Eventually, when her sons were all attending school, women persuaded her to accompany them to work in the fields. For a few years she worked as a labourer alongside the other Dalit women. But she was unable to support her family and was struggling to survive. She says, When my husband died, I was facing many problems. I was only eating once a day. My mother-in-law and husbands’ brothers fed 4 The celebration of birthdays is very unusual in the Dalit colony colony where most people do not know their date of birth. This is not out of keeping for Kalyani who likes to be modern and unconventional.

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my children but they did not give me anything. If there was work, I would go and make sure my children were fed. If there was rice for me I would eat, otherwise I would go hungry.

At this point, Kalyani decided to take fate into her own hands. In 2002, she joined the women’s literacy night classes run by government’s DWCRA scheme. Having improved her literacy and numerical skills, she became the leader of one of the DWCRA savings and credit groups in the Madiga palli. She became friendly with the village panchayati secretary who helped her with basic accounting and she attended DWCRA training in the Mandal headquarters. Having kept the accounts scrupulously for individual groups, she was eventually appointed co-ordinator of all the groups in Nampalli and subsequently, the neighbouring village, too. This entailed visiting women in the upper-caste areas of the village, areas in which she had never before set foot. She successfully formed new groups and began to move freely around the local villages and towns. She held meetings, collected the savings, approved and distributed loans and kept all the accounts. She describes the impact of DWCRA: The DWCRA groups have brought a lot of development. Since the groups came women have become brave (dhariyam). Previously, women were very fearful, they did not want to come out of their house, any of them—Malas, Madigas, Chakilis, Kammas, Gouds. They didn’t know anything that was going on, they knew nothing of what was happening. Now they know how to get to the Mandal office, they know how to speak with higher status people, how to meet the bank manager, the MDO or the MRO officers [ ... ] For women, because of these funds they can take out loans and keep savings. Now women do not have to ask their husbands for loans. If they asked before, there would be some kind of argument... Now there is no depending on men. Suppose I am not a member of a group, my husband gets a loan from a money lender with high interest. The money loaned will double and cannot be repaid. The interest will accrue so that eventually he will offer the house papers for collateral. If instead the wife uses her savings from DWCRA, they will have none of these problems and they will have security. That’s why there is a huge benefit in belonging to these groups. You should also join!

The examples she uses are also used in DWCRA training camps and the DWCRA rhetoric is reproduced in many of Kalyani’s

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descriptions.5 This is not to undermine its veracity. On the contrary, it shows the extent to which Kalyani subscribes to these discourses of empowerment. One of the benefits of DWCRA that Kalyani highlights is the freedom of movement that women acquire. In fact, this applies much more to Kalyani herself than to ordinary SHG members. As the leader of the groups, she had to find her way around the local area, travel alone to unknown place and enter houses and offices new and unfamiliar to her. By fostering contacts with government officials in the district headquarters, Kalyani’s influence in the village grew substantially. Using her knowledge of the markets and an SHG loan, she opened her own grocery cum teashop in the Madiga palli in 2004. With some of the profits, she improved her house and bought a television. It seemed that Kalyani had become genuinely empowered by the possibilities made available through DWCRA. However, Kalyani’s greater confidence did not go unnoticed. Most obviously, it was her fashionable saris and enviable gold jewellery that caught her neighbours’ attention. The jewellery and saris were not ritual or wedding gifts.They were items she had bought for herself, as a widow. There are no strict sartorial or behavioural injunctions for Dalit widows but even so, Kalyani’s appearance was seen as a deliberate affront to her husband’s family. Far from displaying humility and shyness as a husband-less woman, Kalyani cocked a snook at these customs and dressed more extravagantly and flamboyantly than ever. ‘For whom is she making herself beautiful?’ village women would ask. Rumours spread about her exploits in the market town where she went weekly for supplies and on trips to the bank. Doubt was cast on the propriety of her connections to officials and police and hardly one of the men with whom she had professional contact was not suspected to be a lover. Women told me that she would take rooms in hotels in the local towns and stay the night with bureaucrats who approached her. The gossip was relentless; people could not imagine how else an ordinary Dalit woman could gain so much influence. To make matters worse, by this time Kalyani had vacated her marital home in the centre of the Madiga colony and was sleeping on a cot next to her grocery shop a few streets away on one of the 5 In 1999–2000, in my former work with a local NGO I attended several of these training camps.

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main thoroughfares of the Madiga palli on the uru-palli border. Kalyani said this was to protect the stock from theft since the wooden shack could not be locked adequately. But Kalyani’s mother-in-law and others saw this as evidence of prostitution. It was not only Kalyani’s own alleged promiscuity they objected to, she was blamed for other people’s infidelities, too. She facilitated the affair between Leela and Chinna by letting them use her house and was thought to purposefully sabotage the honour of others through collusion in affairs. It is impossible to verify these allegations and much of the gossip may be exaggerated or fabricated. What it shows, however, is the venom with which most Madiga men and women talked about her and the basis on which they saw fit to exclude her. There is one relationship, however, about which Kalyani herself made no secret: her affair with her husband’s younger brother, Ratnam. When Kalyani first came to Nampalli as a new bride, her younger brother-in-law, Ratnam, was barely adolescent. It is claimed that they started having an affair soon after he matured. This may well account for the conflict between Amma and Kalyani in those early years. By the time the family were searching for matches for Ratnam their relationship had been going on for some time. Ratnam married his sister’s daughter, Seshamma, a willowy, docile girl. Although Seshamma would soon learn about her husband’s affair she did not have the constitution to confront Kalyani. After Kalyani’s husband died, Kalyani and Ratnam made less of a secret of their relationship even though by this stage Seshamma had given birth to Ratnam’s son. Problems started when Kalyani became increasingly involved in DWCRA. Ratnam did not like the fact that she was receiving accounting lessons from the village secretary and he became suspicious of her professional relationships. It angered him to see her looking defiantly beautiful, breezing through the palli in her colourful saris and clinking bangles. Arguments between them started and he began to beat her. But as he became more violent, she became more resolute. Here is an extract from my field notes which describes one of their arguments. Ratnam, Seshamma and Amma started another argument with Kalyani this morning. They demanded that Kalyani stayed in Nampalli and did not keep coming back late at night from the nearby towns. They scolded her for not looking after her children properly and called her a prostitute. But Kalyani was unrepentant.

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‘If you want me to stay at home, why don’t you give me money so that I can live? If not, then how do you expect me to eat and feed my children?’ As the argument intensified, a few people gathered to watch. The women said that because of her, the family honour had ‘fallen into the road’. Seshamma began to scold her telling her to keep away from her family. Kalyani retorted, ‘You are nothing but a little girl, you don’t know anything. Look at your age and then look at my experience (anubhavam)! You are nothing in comparison to me!’ Kalyani then raised the issue of her affair with Ratnam. ‘When he tied that tali around your neck, didn’t you know about your husband and me? When you were a little girl, didn’t you realise that your husband was going around with me?’ Seshamma was upset and realising she was no match for Kalyani went indoors. Kalyani then turned to Ratnam and her elder brother-in-law. ‘If you find my behaviour disgusting then provide for me and I won’t go anywhere. But until then, I can sleep with a whore’s lover (lanjamogudu) in the middle of the road if I want to! It’s my choice. You can’t even pluck out one of my pubic hairs!’ At this point her elder brother-in-law grabbed hold of a piece of rubber and threatened to hit her. She opened her arms and walked towards him saying, ‘Hit me! Hit me! Then at least I will have some evidence against you that I can show the police.’ Onlookers persuaded him not to hit her and Kalyani strolled off triumphant.

The extract illustrates Kalyani’s fearlessness in the face of the aggression of her affinal kin. She defends herself by pointing to her husband’s family’s failure to provide for her. She claims to be willing to stay at home if her own and her children’s subsistence needs are fulfilled. She offers them control over her activity on the condition that they materially look after her. If they cannot care for her then she will make her own living in whatever way she sees fit. Kalyani effectively rebuts the claim that she is dishonouring the family by turning the tables on them: she argues that in fact the family’s shame lies at their doorstep, caused by their inability to provide for her. It is their failing that forces her to ‘roam’ (tirigutam). These kinds of arguments were typical of the situation in 2004. Around this time, through her DWCRA work, Kalyani got to know a young Mala widow named Tulsi whose acre of land had been appropriated by her brother-in-law. I was not able to check the details of the case with all the actors involved and hence the account is biased towards Kalyani and Tulsi. However, the basic facts illustrate

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Kalyani’s ability to mobilise village women and use her contacts to support a vulnerable widow. According to Kalyani and Tulsi, Tulsi’s husband had died from a heart attack when he was in his early thirties, leaving her with four young daughters. After her husband died, Tulsi’s younger sister who was studying in the nearby town came to live with her. The two sisters and four daughters lived in a small house in the Mala palli. Tulsi and her husband owned two acres of land in Nampalli but these two acres had been written in Tulsi’s husband’s brother, Ravi’s, name.Too occupied with childcare to work in the fields, Tulsi was struggling to find money for food. A number of times she approached Ravi to ask for the land but Ravi refused. One night Ravi came to the house and violently threatened her. Tulsi felt unable to report this to the Mala elders as they were men to whom Ravi was closely related. Instead she approached Kalyani who accompanied her to the police station to file a case. But the police did not come to investigate. Tulsi continued to ask Ravi about the land and he continued to threaten her. After the rice harvest, he failed to give Tulsi any share of the profit. When she returned to the police station, she was ignored. Tulsi claims that Ravi had sold half an acre of the land for bribe money to prevent an investigation. Kalyani galvanised active DWCRA members in both Dalit pallis. She staged a dharna (seated protest) outside the police station, demanding to see the Superintendent of Police (SP). After waiting the whole day, Kalyani met him, explained the case to him and accused the police of corruption. The case was passed to the Sub-Inspector (SI) who called Ravi and Tulsi in and apparently sympathised with Tulsi, asking how it was possible that the dead husband would give his land to his brother rather than his wife and four children. Ravi argued that Tulsi had neglected her husband when he was ill and had gone back to her natal home instead of looking after him. The Sub-Inspector opened an investigation and ordered Ravi to lease one of the fields to Tulsi and provide rice for her. When the case came to be investigated it was found that Tulsi’s husband borrowed money for medical expenses from Ravi and as security against the loan, he had put half an acre of land in Ravi’s name. Ravi had apparently manipulated the document so that two acres rather than half an acre were put in his name. But when the investigation was nearing its conclusion, the SI was transferred to

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another station. Ravi offered a substantial bribe to his replacement which successfully stalled the case. By this time it was summer and the maize harvest was in progress. Ravi had cut half of the maize on the disputed land and was preparing it for collection and sale. Around this time, a large village meeting was held, attended by the Mandal president, the Mandal Revenue Officer (MRO), the Mandal Development Officer (MDO) and other local dignitaries. In preparation for the meeting, Kalyani collected the signatures of 150 women to petition in support of Tulsi’s case. On receiving it, the Mandal president allegedly said to them, ‘If you are really brave, go and take the maize and sell it for yourself’. Taking this literally, Kalyani gathered a dozen Dalit women and instructed them to start harvesting the remaining maize. She told them to take a pouch of chilli powder and throw it in the eyes of anyone who tried to stop them. Kalyani and Tulsi arranged for labourers to bag and load the maize and a tractor to collect them. Ravi soon heard what was happening, confronted them in the field and threatened to take them to court. Undeterred, Kalyani ordered the work to continue until all the bags of maize were loaded. She reports that they sold all of it to a merchant for Rs 25,000, with which Tulsi paid the labourers. It was at this time that Kalyani sought support from the Madiga political organisation active the area, the Madiga Reservation Porata Samiti (MRPS). At a meeting in a nearby market town she approached one of the activists and presented him with a ‘memorandum’ about Tulsi’s case. Even though Tulsi was from the Mala caste, the MRPS leader pledged to help. An MRPS activist accompanied Tulsi and Kalyani to the police station in the major district town rather than the local station. With the support of the MRPS, they succeeded in getting Ravi arrested. Once released, Ravi seriously threatened Kalyani, Tulsi and her sister.The women report that he cut the electricity cables to the house and punctured a hole in her kitchen gas cylinder. Ravi was planning to sell the disputed land and had called the village accountant to measure it. Ravi also spoke to Kalyani’s elder brother-in-law and asked him to keep her under control. Kalyani claims that late at night, Ravi and a number of men came to her house and threatened to kill her unless she left Nampalli. She closed up her house and shop and took her sons to Nantal. It is not clear what happened after this. Kalyani reports that she handed over Tulsi’s case to Mala and Madiga SHG members who had shown support. Along with Tulsi’s

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family, they apparently pressed for the investigation to continue and the MRPS convinced the District Collector to write a letter in support of Tulsi. She says that eventually Ravi was ordered to transfer one acre to Tulsi. In describing the events, Kalyani speaks of women’s power (shakti) and strength (ballam). It was this experience that led her to participate more actively in local politics. Between 2005 and 2007, Kalyani joined the MRPS activists on their campaigns around the state, leaving her mother and sister to take care of her sons in Nantal. She helped organise the meetings, she got to know Madiga activists and politicians, she stayed in sympathisers’ houses along the campaign trail and she was introduced to the MRPS leader, Manda Krishna Madiga. She says that the MRPS asked her to become a district level women’s leader but she declined due to her childcare responsibilities. Kalyani’s involvement in DWCRA, Tulsi’s land dispute and in Madiga politics enraged Ratnam. As her brother-in-law, he felt that her behaviour was disrespectful to the memory of his brother and it was inappropriate for a widow and mother. As her lover, he was jealous and he could not cope with the shame of her waywardness. One evening when Kalyani had temporarily returned to Nampalli, Ratnam beat and injured her. As soon as she recovered she filed a case against him and convinced the local police to press charges. Ratnam was apparently detained in jail for two days. On his return, he beat her again, this time threatening to kill himself unless she obeyed him. Once again, Kalyani left Nampalli and went back to her mother’s house. She would return intermittently to fulfil her DWCRA responsibilities but she was afraid to stay in Nampalli while he was there. When I returned to Nampalli in March 2009 after a gap of four years, Kalyani had only just resettled. She had been able to return because earlier that year Ratnam had died. He had killed himself by drinking pesticide while Kalyani was staying in Nampalli. Sitting on Kalyani’s doorstep one afternoon, he asked a passing neighbour for some water. When she gave it he said something about drinking poison. The neighbour immediately became anxious, others sent for an auto rickshaw to take him to hospital but he died on the way. Ratnam’s widowed mother, Amma, is the person most angered and aggrieved by this turn of events. We recall that Amma has one daughter and three sons. Amma married her daughter to her own

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younger brother. Together they had three children, one of whom was Seshamma. Amma, as we know, arranged the marriage of Seshamma (the child of her daughter and her brother) to her son, Ratnam. That means Amma is not only Seshamma’s maternal grandmother (ammamma), she is also Seshamma’s father’s sister (atta) and Seshamma’s mother-in-law. Amma and Seshamma are then linked by three different forms of kinship: the intimacy of the maternal grandmother/ grand-daughter relationship, the symbolic significance of the paternal aunt/ niece relationship and the day-to-day practical closeness of the mother-in-law/ daughter-in-law relationship. Due to this triple connection, Amma’s relationship to Seshamma may also be seen as an extension of the relationship that she has for her own brother, her own daughter and her own son. In view of this, it is not surprising that Amma had such special affection for Seshamma and that she took so much responsibility for her welfare. Amma blames Kalyani for the death of two of her sons and for spoiling Seshamma’s life. She feels that Kalyani has unleashed destruction and shame on her family. Although they live only a few houses apart, day-to-day Amma can hardly bear to encounter her. Since both of us were in certain respects outsiders, Kalyani and I became friends early on in fieldwork but it was only towards the end that I recorded interviews with her. In view of her turbulent history, I wanted to find out Kalyani’s view of paruvu-pratishta-gowravam. She knows and articulates these values as well as the next person but her actions tell us that she does not take them very seriously. She goes wherever she pleases and disregards all the usual conventions. Kalyani still argues that she has prestige, however. She explains, If you talk with everyone well, if you mix with all the people, if you get along with them well without making any mistakes then you will get paruvu-pratishta-gowravam. Previously no one knew who I was. In the palli and the uru, no one even knew my name. I didn’t know anyone either. Now everyone knows my name and who I am. When I go to the panchayati office, the bank and the MRO, everyone knows my name. I can sit and talk with everyone. I work hard with honesty and sincerity; that is why I have prestige. When most people go to the uru they will not allow them to come inside their houses. But I am allowed to go inside and sit down. When I was doing labour in fields no one cared about me at all, I was nobody. Now if I go to their houses they give me a chair to sit on. They get a chair for me in the MRO office too. In the bank the same happens. They have a need for

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me. Nothing can happen without my signature. They immediately give me a chair or a cot to sit on and they offer me tea to drink. I do whatever they need me to do, and paruvu-pratishta-gowravam grows because of that ... If I go to one group and I don’t do their work properly and I ignore their requests, they will say that I am proud and they will not take me seriously.

It would be psychologically untenable for a defiantly independent woman such as Kalyani to accept that she is without prestige. And yet her reputation is so obviously tarnished that it would be impossible for her to draw upon the usual sources of feminine respectability. Instead of making reference to shyness, reputation or female limits, her claim to paruvu-pratishta-gowravam refers to her fulfilment of her DWCRA responsibilities and her ethic of sincere hard work. With the option of feminine respectability unavailable to her, she claims to have earned respect through leadership in professional life. The symbolic significance of being asked to sit on chairs in upper-caste houses and in government offices is a marker of this. What is interesting about Kalyani’s own claim to honour is that the standards she chooses to apply to herself are those usually reserved for men, not women. In this way, she creatively adapts values that would otherwise denigrate her. Kalyani has achieved an unusual level of independence through DWCRA. In many ways she is a model of women’s empowerment. Her self-transformation represents the sort of success story used in the government literature to advertise DWCRA. Her involvement with DWCRA not only offered an escape from destitute widowhood, it opened up new avenues of opportunity altogether. Negotiating the social barriers of caste and village, and surmounting the obstacles of illiteracy, she managed to establish and manage a number of groups. She fostered relationships with officials and found her way round towns that few Dalits visit. In entrepreneurial spirit, she took loans to open an enterprise in her own community to supplement her DWCRA salary. She gained knowledge about government schemes and helped others to access them. She courageously pursued the cause of a DWCRA member outside her own caste, even when it compromised her own safety. Had it not been for her childcare obligations, she may well have become a woman leader in the MRPS. Although she claims to be able to re-marry, she chooses to live independently. She displays all the characteristics of an ‘empowered’ and ‘developed’ rural Dalit woman: economically self-

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reliant, commercially-minded, enterprising, development-oriented, and independent. The problem for Kalyani was that her independence had not been de-sexualised. Elderly Dalit women are as independent as Kalyani but they are long past their childbearing age and they have no obligation to produce honour for their families. It was Kalyani’s youth, beauty and sexuality that rendered her brazen independence so objectionable; her unapologetic self-confidence had cost her respectability. She had friends and acquaintances but she was not bound by marriage or family and she was excluded by those who consider themselves too honourable to associate with her. She was rarely invited to household prayer meetings, ritual events or ceremonies organised in her neighbours’ houses. Mothers even kept their babies away from her in case they were affected by her negative influence. She spent her free time in the company of the men who frequented her teashop and women of equally ill-repute. Some believed her to have witch-like qualities. She was blamed for unexplained misfortunes in the palli: things going missing, breakages or the death of animals. One woman’s chickens died after a heated argument with Kalyani and Kalyani found herself accused of poisoning them. She was also seen as capable of causing ill health. During fieldwork, I started to suffer rather dramatic bouts of stomach pain (which turned out to be gall stones), which often occurred after having eaten fried snacks at Kalyani’s teashop. People suspected that I was suffering from Kalyani’s malign influence and rumours spread that she had poisoned me. Some suggested she had transmitted the evil eye whilst she watched me eat and they ordered me to stop visiting her. I continued to visit her but refused the snacks. She immediately noticed this but since she was used to this type of avoidance, she made a joke of it. This is typical of the way in which Kalyani is implicated in misfortune and ostracised on the basis of it. She was seen as a neglectful mother and people were quick to point out the ailments and illnesses her sons. People referred to her using the derogatory pronoun ‘it’ (‘dani’) and sometimes cruel nicknames. There were few people to help Kalyani in times of trouble; she had to rely on her own resources or return to her natal home instead. In the bitter divide between Amma and Kalyani, most people’s sympathies lie with Amma, believing Kalyani to be responsible for the death of both Babu and Ratnam. Kalyani is believed to be implicated in Ratnam’s suicide: as an older woman, she seduced him when he

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was barely adult, she encouraged his fixation with her, she was even suspected of recommending the choice of a docile wife for him. Towards the end of his life, her defiance drove him to distraction and this supposedly led him to commit suicide. It was Kalyani rather than Ratnam who was seen as responsible for ruining Seshamma’s life. The mere fact of her being seen as a ‘spoiled woman’ implicates Kalyani in her husband’s death too despite its accidental nature.What was especially notable about this situation was that other women ostracise her more than men. Women are instrumental in enforcing those values which ultimately restrict them. They play a critical role in shaping other women’s behaviour in accordance with paruvupratishta-gowravam and they can be the most ‘ruthless enforcers’ of conformity (Egnor 1980: 27). Kalyani herself was remarkably sanguine in the face of all this. She claimed not to care about other people’s views although she did resent her sons being teased about their mother’s reputation. She says, It is difficult for women. Say you are a man, and say you and I are talking.You are sitting there, I am sitting there and we are just talking. If this happens again and again immediately people will start asking questions. What is going on between Kalyani and that man? They are talking with each other, is there a connection between them? If you are fearful and you say, ‘Oh no! What will they think of me? I am talking with this person on my own’ and you are anxious about what people will say then you cannot carry on. But if you go about correctly and you don’t care about what people think, then no one will disturb you.

Kalyani’s unusual resilience allowed her to withstand hostility. But she was not immune to criticism or uninterested in acquiring respect or friendship. Since returning to Nampalli after Ratnam’s death, Kalyani had become acquainted with a pastor of an independent local church. The pastor had become known in the few villages in which he toured and spread his ministry. Kalyani decided to employ him to hold a service in her house every Sunday. She laid a tarpaulin for people to sit on and prepared the loud speakers to broadcast the sermon and hymns. The sermons contain advice about leading a morally upright life: the renunciation of drinking and womanising for men and counsel for leading a ‘simple’ life for women. While many Madigas attended and appreciated these services, other less

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charitable women were disparaging, pointing out that Kalyani had not yet given up wearing jewellery and fancy saris as Christian women are supposed to. But while Kalyani’s efforts were not universally recognised, they showed her desire for incorporation into the Madiga moral community.

*** Some may object that Kalyani is a one-off, that she is not typical of Dalit women or that there are upper-caste women who transgress in similar ways. What does Kalyani tell us about Dalit women in particular then? I accept that Kalyani is unique in many respects and that there are of course upper-caste women who ‘cross their limits’, too. However, I use Kalyani’s case because, like Leela’s, her story usefully illustrates the borders of moral acceptability. In stepping over the boundaries, we learn not just about her as an individual but the ideals and principles that she offends. Most notably, her case suggests that there is always a trade-off between independence and respectability for women like her. Is it true to say that the reputations of those women who have the most freedom and power are always the most doubted? Naila Kabeer (2001) addresses this question in her evaluation of the empowering potential of micro-credit in Bangladesh. Although her paper is not centrally concerned with honour, one section discusses this in relation to opportunities brought by micro-credit. She finds that among the poorest women, increased prosperity from loans led women to withdraw from work in the public domain under the normative pressures of honour (2001:70). Kabeer says, It has to be recognised that these [women’s own] values and priorities are likely to be shaped by the values and priorities of the wider community (Kabeer 1999). The paradox is that in many cases, this leads women to opt for some form of purdah if they can afford to, both to signal their social standing within the community and to differentiate themselves from those women who do not have this choice (2001: 70–71).

Kabeer reminds us that loans intended to be empowering can also be used by women themselves to reinforce and reproduce those very social institutions considered responsible for their disempowerment. That women themselves chose to use the loans to help them

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withdraw from the public sphere and to renounce those forms of work considered ‘dishonourable’ goes to show the potential for micro-credit to be a conservative force as much as a liberating one. Kalyani refused to make such negotiations. Her priorities appear consciously antithetical to the values of the wider community that Kabeer alludes to. Kalyani has used the opportunities provided by DWCRA to pursue her own individualistic ends and to contravene conventions prescribed for young widows. In closely conforming to the model of women’s empowerment celebrated by advocates of micro-credit she has alienated herself from the wider community in the opposite manner from Kabeer’s informants. Kalyani is the single most powerful, independent and affluent woman in the Madiga palli and yet by most people’s standards she lacks paruvu-pratishtagowravam. Villagers say of her, ‘She has no boundaries, she does not have to answer to anyone’ (‘Dani ki addhu apphu ledu, dani ki evoriki chepevallu leru’). She is an example of a woman without limits and the havoc a woman can wreak when unconstrained by a man. It is women like Kalyani that prevent Dalits from attaining the reputation they desire and present an obstacle to the achievement of ‘civilisation’. Many women do hold power and public office without ‘going beyond their limits’ but to do this, they must conform to certain provisos. In this regard, the public sphere is especially hostile to Dalit women and especially favourable to women who display more Brahminical attributes. Dalit women’s ‘loose’ image means they are especially prone to criticisms concerning their moral propriety. Commentators on the rise of Mayawati, for example, pay disproportionate attention to Mayawati’s personal life (Hardtmann 2009: 220–221). The excessive speculation about her unmarried status, the nature of her relationship with Kanchi Ram and her general moral conduct is testament to the heightened concern about the combination of sexual and political power of Dalit women. Although unmarried upper-caste women are subject to the same scrutiny, Dalit women are more vulnerable to accusations of ‘immorality’ because they are seen as intrinsically less ‘civilised’ than Brahminised women.6 Sexuality for women in the public sphere must be confined within marriage or neutralised. Those women who 6

Research on women in chauvinist Hindu right wing politics has shown how unmarried women use chastity, aestheticism and renunciation to legitimise and validate feminine political power (Banerjee 2003, Basu 1995, Sarkar 1991, 1995).

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appear to be powerful, unregulated and Dalit are the least acceptable of all. Whether a village woman like Kalyani or the most powerful Dalit woman in the country, the same principle applies. And yet, although Kalyani is the antithesis of a ‘civilised’ woman in the evaluations of both men and women in the Madiga colony, she is an exemplar of female empowerment in neo-liberal, developmental discourses. If development discourses require Dalit women to be independent entrepreneurs; local discourses of ‘culture’ and ‘civilisation’ require women to be controlled. In the former model, one cannot develop if women are not free to become entrepreneurs. In the latter, one cannot achieve paruvu-pratishta-gowravam unless women are restricted. Kalyani is a case in point. She is a near perfect model of development in the eyes of institutions such as the World Bank and yet she is the opposite of respectability according to the standards of Telugu honour. Most upwardly mobile communities at the lower end of the social scale are caught in this conundrum but none more so than Dalits such as those in Nampalli whose social position is transforming most radically. In this sense, the new sexual and behavioural conservatism that comes with upward mobility presents obvious challenges for those development programmes that are premised on ideas of the entrepreneurial woman.

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n 1955, Bernard Cohn wrote, The small changes that can be noted among the Camars, especially among Camars who have attained some education, are not changes in the direction of a Western influenced family but changes in the direction of a more orthodox ‘Hindu’ family. Camars are trying to tighten the authority of the father and place restrictions on the wife. While the Thakur wife is coming out of seclusion, the Camar wife is being put into seclusion. The Thakur model for the family appears to be influenced by the urban Western family, while the Camar model is based on the family of the Thakurs fifty years ago (1955: 67–68).

Is the material presented here a replica of what Cohn described over half a century ago? Can this be interpreted as simply a case of ‘sankritisation’ (Srinivas 1962), whereby the lower castes emulate high-caste norms in order to rise in status? At first glance, the parallels seem striking: Dalits are educating their daughters, arranging ‘prestige’ marriages, withdrawing their wives from work and aspiring towards a middle-class lifestyle in their work, consumption patterns and attitudes towards respectability. In the meantime, the urban middle classes are moving in a different direction: they are choosing their own spouses in love-cum-arranged, ‘companionate’ marriages, women are largely now expected to be both educated

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and professional and while they may not be westernising, they are certainly ‘global’ in their orientation and attitudes towards modernity (Donner 2008, Fuller and Narasimhan 2008, Gilbertson 2011, Radhakrishnan 2011). Are Dalits today emulating models which have already been cast off by those they are supposedly emulating? This relates to the much broader question of whether Dalits share the value system of the upper castes or whether instead they have a distinct sub-culture, a discussion that has dominated the anthropology of Dalits for several decades. This debate was sparked by Michael Moffatt (1979) who described how Tamil Dalits in a village he called Endavur replicate among themselves the very structures of caste inequality which degrade them. In replicating hierarchical structures (and practising Untouchability on other Dalit castes), Dalits reproduce their own caste system in miniature, he claimed. To Moffatt, this proved that Dalits have no separate subculture and that they too subscribe to the principles which place them among the lowest of the low. This structuralist, Dumontian theory contested the work of Gough (1960), Berremen (1963) and Mencher (1972) who had earlier argued that Dalits had an egalitarian, oppositional world view, distinct from that of the upper castes and one which challenged caste domination. Ideologically Dalits were no different from the upper castes, claimed Moffatt. The extract from Cohn above also suggests that Dalits follow in the higher castes’ footsteps albeit in a delayed fashion. In a more recent contribution to this debate, Manuela Ciotti (2010) argues that among Dalits in contemporary Varanasi, this is precisely what is happening. She argues that, ‘[A]spiring middle class Chamars took refuge in a passé symbolism of colonial make linked to the middle classes in north India and their experience of modernity in the nineteenth century. In short, in order to be modern in contemporary India, the Chamars appropriated the features of a past modernity’ (2010: 12). As such, Dalits are creating a ‘retromodernity’, she argues. Are Nampalli Dalits also copying an outdated model of the dominant caste, who were in turn copying the Brahmins, who were in turn copying the western colonial elites? Although Ciotti is right to historicise Dalit social mobility and to show the colonial genealogy of ideas like respectability, the danger is that in looking at the similarities to the past, we overlook the ways in which certain practices are new, contemporary, specific to Dalits and related to

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current processes of change and conflict. To argue that paruvupratishta-gowravam is a matter of Dalits copying the Victorian values of the colonial British via the Indian colonial elite would be, I think, to misconstrue the nature of Dalit identity formation in present day India. In Nampalli, I suggest that something rather different is happening. On the one hand, it is true (as Moffatt and Cohn say) that Dalits’ model of social mobility based on the organizing principle of paruvu-pratishta-gowravam shows that they subscribe to dominant social values, even when those values disfavour them. On the other hand, they are not only developing a radically oppositional culture which challenges high-caste entitlement, they are also changing (and ‘Dalitising’) the very nature paruvu-pratishta-gowravam as they use it. Let me clarify these two different and contradictory processes. Just as Moffatt finds a replication of purity and pollution, here, we find a replication of honour-related behavioural patterns and a close consensus with the values that underpin them. Dalits do this, I suggest, because dominant values are so naturalised that it is difficult to escape their terms. As Marx would have it, ‘the dominant ideology is the ideology of the dominant’ (Foucault 1980; Marx and Engels 1965 [1845]). Dalits have no choice but to use hegemonic idioms of value. To be recognised as improved people they must speak in terms that are understood by everyone around them, especially those who currently rank higher in the social order. This does not mean that there is no room for the subordinated to think in alternative ways or that the pursuit of paruvu-pratishta-gowravam precludes other value sets. But it does limit the tools Dalits can use to gain and express status. As a dominant set of values, Dalits cannot help but assimilate the principles of paruvu-pratishta-gowravam even when they resist and oppose other typically upper-caste values. Having said this, we must be cautious about reading similarity as consensus, as other scholars have prudently pointed out (Deliège 1999). Dalit values may look similar on the surface (indeed some of their practices may be identical) but a more holistic analysis shows that words, symbols and actions that look the same can in fact have very different meanings depending on context, time, place, circumstance and the manner in which they are employed (Sahlins 1985). Social change is rolling, on-going and resists capture in models. This constant mutation means there cannot be a wholesale emulation of values without the values themselves changing in

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the process (ibid.). Insofar as status is conferred by others, it is necessarily conformist. And yet it is never quite the same either due to mis-repetition or to a conscious transmutation. As Judith Butler puts it, ‘Repetitions of hegemonic forms of power [ ... ] fail to repeat loyally, and, in that failure, open possibilities for re-signifying the ‘terms of violation’ (1993: 124). This ‘re-signification’ results in a complex form of upward mobility in which resistance and compliance are mutually imbricated. In Nampalli, onto the dominant set of values that I’ve described, Dalits bring to bear their own experiences and desires, and their own fiercely oppositional politics, too. This changes the shape of the language as it is used and means that Dalits are both radical and conservative at the same time. As Deliège (1999) points out, when Dalits appear to share the values of the upper castes (and replicate patterns of inequality among themselves) it does not necessarily imply a complete consensus with the system as a whole. In some cases, Dalits’ weak structural position means that they are forced to submit to the dominant culture. In other cases, it is possible that resistance and consensus co-exist. Dalits may well try and gain status according to the rules of a game in which they are the weakest but they simultaneously subscribe to values which oppose it. In this sense, they are ‘both the victims and agents of the caste system, its defenders and its enemies’ (Deliège 1999: 69). Indeed, according to Deliège, this is the nature of Dalits’ intrinsically ambiguous and contradictory position in society. In Nampalli, Dalits both emulate and reject high-caste values; they want to be like the upper castes and yet utterly distinct from them, too. They are drawing on a set of values heavily associated with the upper castes whilst simultaneously fashioning themselves in determined contrast to the upper castes. To be recognised by others as equal (or better), Dalits have no alternative but to speak and act in the cultural lexicon of the dominant. They must act in ways that are culturally recognisable, meaningful and comprehensible across the castes. Improved status is meaningless if it occurs only within the community. At the same time, Dalits harbour a great deal of ill feeling about their former and continuing treatment as ‘Untouchable’. They resent the humiliations of the past: the sexual exploitation of Dalit women, the slave-like treatment of jeethams and domestic servants, institutionalised religious marginalisation, the ritualised ‘begging’ and drumming enforced during village festivals

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and funerals, the degradation of patron-client dependency, the insult of exclusion from the uru and village decision-making bodies. This fuels an oppositional culture among Dalits. In the light of such heightened antipathy and caste antagonism, it would be impossible to interpret Dalits’ current fixation with paruvu-pratishta-gowravam as a sign of comprehensive upper-caste emulation. Dalit political consciousness is too far advanced for them to see the upper castes as admirable models. On the contrary, caste antagonism in villages such as Nampalli is so strong that Dalits are carving out an identity which is deliberately antagonistic; the upper castes are people after all who have exploited them for generations. They may wish to be respected to the same degree and they may pursue wealth, education, land, property and political influence in the same manner but they do not wish to become like them. Above all, what’s new about this is the purposeful, widespread and politicised attempt to valorise Dalit ‘difference’: this is the ‘politics of culture’ that I refer to in Chapter Three. As Hardtmann (2009) suggests, the Dalit ‘counter public’ is no longer restricted to the private circles of Dalit activists; it is now part of a much wider public sphere. Dalits are actively constructing ‘culture’ with the express intent of reversing the stigma associated with characteristic aspects of Dalit life (what Butler (1993) would call the work of ‘re-signification’). This process is patchy: in constructing Dalit identity, some aspects of ‘culture’ are celebrated (the dappu drum, for example) whilst others are downplayed or effaced (such as black skin). Neither is the politicisation of culture uniformly accepted by all Dalits; there is still ambivalence surrounding many of the symbols chosen. But as Dalits gain cultural influence, there is now an intolerance of those who consent to their own subordination by accepting an upper-caste worldview. This is especially obvious in cases of elderly Dalit women like Viramma (Racine, Racine and Viramma 1995) and the grandmother of my own household, Nagamma, who are probably among the last Dalits to accept a lowly position in the traditional caste hierarchy (Racine and Racine 1998).1 What we find, then, are simultaneous pulls towards the ‘Dalitisation’ of identity (Ilaiah 1996) on the one hand and towards paruvu-pratishta-gowravam on the other. These two contradictory processes result in an amalgam, a kind of selective appropriation: 1

See also Still (2009: 17–20) for more on this.

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Dalits accept aspects of paruvu-pratishta-gowravam but they shape them to their own ends and according to their own past experience of oppression and their own desires for an autonomous future. Dalits consciously elaborate an oppositional culture whilst adopting parts of the complex of paruvu-pratishta-gowravam. In doing so, Malas and Madigas are ‘Dalit-ising’ honour. In breathing new life into old values, they make them both unique to them and yet recognizable to others. They are disassociating the holders of value from the actual values themselves. If the trajectory of social mobility is not, then, upper-caste, who if anyone are Dalits emulating? I suggest that it is the attributes of class not caste that Dalits are adopting. These attributes are of course monopolised by the upper castes who use their dominance to maintain the nexus between high-class and high-caste status (Fuller 1996, 2007; Upadhya 1988, 1997). But their monopoly is weakening and class status is being steadily claimed and obtained by the lower castes, too. We know that across India there is a now a substantial and growing Dalit middle class (Pai 2014) and even in places like Nampalli, class differences within Dalit kinship networks are obvious. Within Nampalli itself, I have described differing levels of education, income and property ownership among Dalits, which lead them to draw subtle social distinctions between themselves and their neighbours. These differences of class are extensive enough that poor, working-class Dalits in Nampalli aspire to become like affluent, middle-class Christian Dalits more than members of higher castes. Indeed, in many respects, Dalits do not look up to the Kammas and Brahmins at all; they ridicule Hindu rituals, upper-caste customs and the perceived Kamma, Komati and Brahmin characteristics of greed, cruelty, laziness and corruption. Paruvu-pratishta-gowravam is culturally so pervasive that it cannot be strictly associated with the upper castes any longer; it is starting to lose its character because the entire matter of upward social mobility has become more complex with the breakdown of caste. As anthropologists have shown, the processes of ‘ethnicisation’ and ‘substantialisation’ have rendered castes more akin to horizontallyordered, competing ethnic social groups rather than verticallyarranged rungs in a ladder of ritual purity and pollution.2 This means 2 See Fuller (1996:11–12) for a discussion of the transition of caste ‘from structure to substance’ (Dumont 1970: 226) and the ‘ethnicisation’ of caste (Barnett 1977).

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that while the resources for competition (paruvu-pratishta-gowravam, in this case) are still associated with the dominant castes, this is no longer unambiguously so. As the lower castes become more influential, they themselves begin to shape the very resources that define status. It is not only that typically high-caste values are being appropriated by Dalits; Dalit styles are now being taken on by others, too. Indeed, reports from elsewhere in India tell us that some forms of Dalit masculinity are now becoming fashionable, desirable and even culturally dominant; certain sections of Dalit youth are themselves becoming models for others to emulate (Anandhi et. al. 2000, 2002; Jeffrey 2010, Rogers 2008). As caste ‘ethnicises’ there is no obvious single model of upward mobility in caste terms. All of this renders the concept of sanskritisation highly problematic. If we understand sanskritisation to be the process by which the lower castes adopt practices of the higher castes in order to gain status (through vegetarianism, teetotalism, the worship of Brahminical gods, adoption of high-caste customs, rituals and ways of life), can we say that upward mobility in purely caste terms genuinely happens anymore? The terms of status have altered so much that for Dalits at least, it is class status that is paramount. Paruvu-pratishtagowravam may appear to be about caste emulation but in fact it is much more a matter of wealth, resources, education, consumption patterns and most obviously, gendered respectability. One might be forgiven for seeing this as sankritisation because it is still the higher castes that define what it is to be middle class. But, it is possible that Dalits are adopting middle-class characteristics in spite of their upper-caste character, not because of it. As Dalits emerge from what they call the ‘mad age’ (pichi kalam), the ‘age of ignorance’, they are developing, asserting and celebrating their own ‘counter public’ (Hardtmann 2008). But as with construction of any kind, the fashioning of Dalit culture is selective: it seizes on and exaggerates certain symbols whilst ignoring and denying others. Certain facets of Dalit life lend themselves as features of a confident Dalit identity while others must be effaced. One might think that gender equality would be one aspect that Dalits could celebrate. But this is one area of Dalit life which has been re-signified in the opposite direction. What I have tried to show in this book is that instead of celebrating Dalit egalitarianism,

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Dalits are seemingly embracing highly conservative norms of respectability. Here, Dalit men (and in many cases women, too) are intent on repudiating traditional egalitarianism and instituting the gendered norms of paruvu-pratishta-gowravam instead. There are three important reasons why this might be occurring. First, I have argued that this patch of conservatism in a terrain of otherwise radical re-signification can be explained in part by the historical abuse of Dalit women by upper-caste men. The routine sexual humiliation of Dalit women is something that evokes powerful indignation to which even the most liberal of activists are not immune. This is especially the case at a time of intense caste conflict and vigorous Dalit identity formation. The material in Chapter Four showed how the organisation of gender relations among Dalits is currently still qualitatively different from the other castes. Dalit women are socialised quite differently, principally as workers rather than wives.Their attitudes, behaviour, dress, sexuality and movement are distinctive. Female-centred gender norms, kinship relationships and marriage patterns all set Dalits apart from other castes. And yet Dalits now see these differences as shameful and backward and as part of the cause of their exclusion from society. Insofar as this is correct, we can predict that social mobility will be attended by changes in all these areas. Second, for as long as Dalits remain poor, honour is difficult for them to demonstrate. Honour depends on resources which allow men to display largesse, generosity and gain dependents. For poor Dalits these aspects of paruvu-pratishta-gowravam are inaccessible. Their poverty forces them into ignominy, even if they are morally upright in other ways. The most progressive, righteous and educated Dalit labourer is still just a labourer in the eyes of society. Therefore, Dalits have had to seek alternative arenas in which to achieve paruvupratishta-gowravam. The most obvious is that of gender relations. If they can make Dalit women respect-worthy: stop them from being raped and harassed by upper-caste men, prevent them from acting as domestic servants and take them out of work in the fields where they are vulnerable, then honour is attainable. The gendered element of paruvu-pratishta-gowravam becomes elevated in view of the dearth of other kinds of (material) resources to which Dalits have access. In light of Dalits’ scant wealth and negligible power, the gendered aspect of ‘honour’ is the one thing that can be accumulated. When

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there is little else within reach, paruvu-pratishta-gowravam assumes disproportionate importance. But there is more to it than this. The fact that women’s respectability is a core constituent of paruvu-pratishta-gowravam helps to explain why it is difficult for Dalits to ‘re-signify’ the freedom of Dalit women. Chapters Two and Eight showed how honour could be a flexible resource: if one lacks honour in one way, one might claim it in another (a poor person may claim moral rectitude; an immoral man may use his wealth to prove his munificence; a woman who ‘roams in the wind’ may use her professional credentials to claim standing). To a certain extent, honour is malleable. However, one aspect (women’s respectability) seems to be fundamental. This has to do with the role of women as key markers of group identity, I have suggested. Female chastity seems to be so important to a sense of ‘Telugu-ness’ and indeed ‘Indian-ness’ that however successful the politicised remodelling of ‘Dalit culture’, without the transformation of women, Dalits will see themselves and be seen as stuck in the ‘age of ignorance’. This is why as Dalits advance, we can anticipate that gender relations will become less egalitarian. Dalits are ‘Dalitising’ culture but leaving patriarchy intact.3 Part of the difficulty is that sexual equality is seen as peculiarly ‘un-Indian’, an idea which seems to have gained increasing rather than decreasing popularity since the advent of liberalisation in the last two decades. Increased exposure to global influences through the media, foreign goods and the multiple and complex changes wrought by globalisation have raised concerns about the cultural 3

This patriarchal tendency should not be seen as simply an early aspect of Dalit and low-caste politics which will disappear as the Dalit movement evolves in the future. On the contrary, on the issue of gender and sexuality, low-caste politics seemed to be far more radical in the earlier period than now. Anandhi (2005) and Hodges (2005) show that gender equality was championed by Jyothirao and Savitribai Phule, Ambedkar and Periyar. On the issue of honour, Periyar argued passionately against the control of women, calling for women’s freedom and the abolition of marriage in the 1920s. Thanks to Periyar, Tamil Nadu began to authorise inter-caste, secular, Self-Respect ‘love marriages’ and legally recognised the inheritance rights of their children (Anandhi 2005: 4876). Controversially, Periyar even accepted that women may desire men other than their husbands (ibid.). Hodges (2005) draws attention to the progressive conservatism of the DMK as it attempted to win popularity by disassociating itself from these Periyar’s ‘immoral’ visions of marriage and family. Hence this earlier radicalism seems to be muted today.

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homogenisation, identity, difference and the meaning of ‘Indianness’, especially among the urban middle classes (Appadurai 1990, 1996, Derné 2002). These concerns are aggravated by the alarmist rhetoric of the Hindu Right. In this context, Indian women are often defined in contrast to Western women and the perceived immorality and promiscuity of the West (Radhakrishnan 2011). To be genuinely ‘Indian’, Indian women must be unlike western women. This often manifests itself in the claim to female ‘virtue’ or ‘respectability’ (Gilbertson 2011).Women must carefully (sometimes painstakingly) balance aspects of middle-class modernity with chastity, traditionalism and respectability (ibid.). This idea helps to explain why honour has assumed the same if not more importance with the advent of globalisation. Amidst other far-reaching social changes, female modesty still tenaciously persists as one of the key differentiating characteristics of Indian society; the distinguishing mark of ‘Indian culture’ and the basis of Indian cultural superiority to the West (Chatterjee 1993). This also explains why feminism in India has struggled to rid itself of its image as foreign and anti-national (Das 1976: 129–45, John and Nair 1998: 6–9). The importance of maternal female chastity is as evident in regional Telugu sentiment as it is in Indian nationalist sentiment. In Andhra Pradesh, the Telugu talli (the Telugu mother) is considered the embodiment of the Telugu language and the symbol of the Telugu people.4 While the everyday word for mother is ‘amma’, the word talli combines the idea of mother and goddess. As with the Tamilttay, there is considerable slippage between the Telugu talli’s image as an idealised Andhra woman, a chaste maiden, a virgin mother and a goddess. Although there are some exceptions, the desexualisation of her femininity seems to be one feature common to most of the images and literature devoted to her (Mitchell 2009: 95). Indeed, Mitchell’s (2009) work shows how the Telugu talli has been incrementally ‘purified’ in the twentieth century portrayals of her. Similarly, in tracing the historical construction of the Tamil mother, Sumathi Ramaswamy finds that ‘eventually and hegemonically, it is the maternal image that came to dominate devotional imaginations, overwriting the divine and the erotic’ (1998: 121). 4 For more on the historical construction, personification and feminization of the ‘mother tongue’ in Andhra Pradesh, see Mitchell (2009).

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Far from being neutral or classless, the figures of the Tamilttay and Telugu talli are moulded by upper-caste, middle-class notions of appropriate femininity. Ramaswamy argues that, ‘ ... Tamilttay, like other exemplary female icons is far from cutting a feminist figure in her guise as a tame goddess, benevolent mother, and pure virgin ... she is very much a figment of the patriarchal imaginations of modernity in colonial and post-colonial India’ (1998: 80). Ramaswamy highlights the bourgeois overtones of the Tamilttay, ‘She is a domestic paragon, furnished with a modern education but still retaining a modicum of religiosity and presiding over her neat and disciplined home, and her by now largely nuclear family’ (1998: 99). Purged of the fierce, violent characteristics of folk mother goddesses, she is instead modelled on the ‘new’ mother: ‘disciplined but compassionate, educated but modest and feminine, and respectable and virtuous’ (ibid.). Most Telugu children first learn the significance of the Telugu talli in school. Every morning, state-school pupils sing Andhra’s regional anthem, ‘A garland of jasmine flowers for my Telugu mother’. The song is a tribute to the Telugu talli who lovingly bestows on her children the riches of Telugu language and heritage (Mitchell 2009: 72). The Telugu talli is depicted as strong, fair, modest, virtuous and pious. She has all the traits of fertile femininity: she wears a long sari that shows no part of her ankles, naval or chest; she has long neatly tied black hair, her hands may be painted with henna and she wears the vermilion mark of the Hindu wife; she is fair-skinned and beautiful but as a mother, she is de-eroticised. The Telugu talli inspires the protection of the Telugu people, who passionately guard her purity from defiling foreign influences such as English and Hindi. As Veronique Bénéï (2008) shows in the context of Maharashtra, it is through the veneration of the mother and the vernacular language (the mother tongue) in the classroom that an emotional connection with the state and regional identity is engendered. The symbol of the Telugu mother functions to bind all Telugu speakers into one community, such that the people of Andhra are the children of the Telugu talli. What is notable for our purposes here is the extent to which this idealised vision of maternal Telugu womanliness diverges from the image of the typical Dalit woman equally etched into the Telugu imagination.

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Insofar as the Indian nation and the Telugu state are shaped by class and caste, Dalit women can be only awkwardly included it, being as they are beyond prescribed boundaries of proper Hindu femininity (Gupta 2002: 252, Whitehead 1996: 207). If the integrity of the Telugu people rests on the purity of the Telugu mother, then dishonour to the mother is dishonour to her people.5 Citizenship and chastity are here mutually constituted. If women’s chastity is central to Telugu-ness, then the non-chaste woman becomes, in a sense, non-Telugu. She becomes an outsider, beyond the appropriate limits: distanced and alienated. Indeed the promiscuous Telugu woman is seen as comparable to a western woman: hers is only a partial citizenship (cf. Kannabiran 2002: 143–151). As outsiders, the parallels between western and Dalit women are striking. I was interested to find that upper- and lower-caste villagers explained my own presence in the Dalit colony (normally seen as the most undesirable area) by the fact that my culture is similar to that of the Dalits and hence I must have felt more comfortable there. Uruvallu could not think why I would want to live there otherwise. Indeed, there are similarities: the consumption of beef, the practice of Christianity and the custom of drinking alcohol. Like westerners, Dalits tend to live in nuclear rather than joint families and are perceived to be more individualistic. As far as women are concerned, Dalit and western women divorce and remarry more easily; widows face few restrictions, women have independent incomes which allow for more relaxed moral standards in terms of sexual choice and autonomy in marriage.6 But even scholarly work on Dalit women shies away from a discussion of Dalit women’s difference because points of difference are so often and so easily used as grounds for denigration. Conversations with the uruvallu illustrate how these differences are used to malign features of both cultures. The speech of westerners and Dalits is thought of as unrestrained and lacking 5 See Ramaswamy’s analysis of the role of mother’s milk and mother’s womb in engendering the Tamil community and the importance of the threat of violation, rape and dishonour in inspiring male protection (1998: 100–106). 6 Dalits tend to harbour less hostility towards the British as their principal concern has always been with ‘Brahminical colonialism’ rather than British or western imperialism (Yesudasan 2011: 622). There is, however, a strident Dalit critique of western capitalist domination.

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refinement.7 The two cultures are seen as ‘basic’: simple dress, simple jewellery, simple food and simple rituals, with all the derogatory connotations that ‘simplicity’ carries. Stereotypes of westerners and Dalits depict them as ill-mannered, improperly dressed, dissolute, degenerate, lacking in ‘culture’ and ignorant of the right way of doing things. During one conversation, for example, a Kamma farmer explained to me that the reason for the moral corruption among both ‘Britishers’ and SCs was their common ‘culture’ (samskruti). His tirade against indecent clothing and ‘bad habits’ culminated in the example of women drinking alcohol in church and eating the body of Christ in the communion service. It was a somewhat strange example. But to him, that women drink alcohol in a sacred building showed how low Dalits and westerners had stooped. Perpetuating a well-worn theme, he used women as proof of the degradation of both western and Dalit culture. Dalit women’s outsider status vis à vis other Indian women is typical of Dalit ‘ambiguity’ discussed above (Deliège 1999). Dalit women are fundamentally ambiguous: they are both inside and outside the system, not men but not ‘proper’ women either. If modesty is a key attribute of Indian femininity, Dalit women’s ‘immodesty’ renders them only problematically female. If a fullyfledged woman is principally a mother and wife, then the working Dalit woman who mixes with men and spends most of her time in the fields possesses only a compromised womanly identity. Dalit women, like western women, are thought to be unable to keep within their limits due to ignorance about social boundaries, lack of physical self-control or deliberate transgression. They are seen as immoral, wanton and promiscuous. As such, the usual female prerogatives of male protection, devotion and glorification do not apply to them. It follows that if Dalits are to be respected, then women must first be made worthy of respect. The stereotype of the wild, disorderly sexualised Dalit woman with her untamed hair, dishevelled sari, vulgar language and boisterous sensibility must be moulded into the image of the domesticated, docile Telugu talli. For a group of people seeking not only integration but a leading role in society, Dalits’ claim 7 As Kancha Ilaiah says, ‘For a Dalit-Bahujan who learns English and adopts western culture, there are many things in it that are common with his/her own ‘condemned culture’ back home’ (2004: 157).

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to citizenship must be rooted in a gendered morality that is consistent with the dominant model, even when in other respects Dalits are radically deviating. ‘Telugu-ness’ and indeed ‘Indian-ness’ appear to be contingent on conformity to a class-based, caste-inflected and gendered idea of ‘culture’. I have argued that the aspiration for ‘civilisation’ and ‘culture’ requires Dalits to obliterate some of the distinguishing features of Dalit womanhood. But what does ‘civilisation’ and ‘culture’ actually mean in this context? The word I have translated as civilisation is ‘nagari katha’. Ask anyone in Nampalli the meaning of ‘civilisation’ or ‘culture’ and it is likely they will talk about dressing well, speaking properly, becoming educated, gaining awareness, and repudiating ‘bad habits’. It is set in contrast to a perceived ‘backward’ Untouchable past. Kalyani explains, In the old days, they used to wear loin cloths, you know, wrapped up like this. [She does a crude impression]. Women went around without blouses and never used pins. Then it was the age of ignorance (modhu tanam). They were all ignorant and illiterate. There was little intelligence/ awareness then (tellavi tetalu).

Kalyani draws a direct parallel between clothing and awareness (tellavi tetalu), with the loin cloth symbolising the worst form of backwardness. Others also emphasise the importance of knowledge awareness and education in bringing about ‘civilisation’, as discussed in Chapter Six.8 For men, education is also linked to autonomy in work. As one informant commented, ‘Once we were marginalised by the upper castes. Now we have learnt how to do things, our prestige has grown’. She explains, Previously we had not studied. That is why we were working in their fields and in their houses. Now we have studied so civilisation has grown (nagari katha perigindi). If we have not studied, we have no knowledge; whatever the Kammas say we listen to and follow. Now we have studied so we can decide for ourselves what to do. Previously we used to wash their dishes, sweep their houses, fetch water, collect fodder and perform all their tasks. If a Kamma asks us to do that now, we say, ‘No! We won’t do it; we have our own 8 See also Raheja and Gold (1991: 191–3) and Parry (1999) for more on education, literacy and middle-class morality.

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work to attend to’. Because we have studied and know about things, we can open a business or sell handicrafts. We are making a living according to our intelligence (tellavi tetalu). Before there was no knowledge; we used to eat broken rice grains. But now we have gained awareness so we are not depending on them. Whatever we want to do, we can do it. In this way we shall develop more. It is because of our hard work that they have become rich. But now we are not working for them, we are working for ourselves, so now we can become rich.

Education is perceived to allow men (less so, women) to break free from the parochial confines of the village and confidently interaction with strangers (Jeffery et. al. 2002: 14). Gangadarao, a Madiga labourer, explains, As a labourer, I don’t know anything about the world. I don’t even know how to get to Hyderabad. I have to ask the people next to me at the bus stand which bus to get on. But say you have studied, you can go anywhere! You can do anything! You can talk with anyone. Your general knowledge increases. The respect they give an educated person they do not give to a labourer.

This autonomy is juxtaposed with the figure that Kalyani described: the cumbersome, comic inflexible, inadaptable Dalit labourer whose ignorance, awkwardness and inarticulacy excludes him from the modern, ‘civilised’ world. Dalits today wish to consign this figure to the past. Key to the achievement of ‘civilisation’ is mariyada (respect/ politeness), discussed in Chapter Two. Mariyada is associated with education but is also displayed in manners and customs. The respectable housewife will show mariyada by greeting guests politely, inviting them in, asking when they arrived, providing a chair or a cot asking them to sit down and giving them some refreshment. Ganesh, a Dalit labourer and a local representative of the MRPS, explains, ‘Suppose a guest comes and we offer a chair to them and give them a glass of water; that is culture (samskruti) [ ... ] If we give respect to others, this is culture (samskruti), this is civilisation (nagari katha).’ As a ‘civilised’ wife, she must also show respect by making sure she performs her roles. This means waking at dawn, completing all the household chores, bathing and dressing in clean clothes, offering prayers, making food for the family, getting the children ready for

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school and in the evening, preparing baths, providing a clean towel and lungi for her husband, preparing his cot, serving him food, washing his hands and plate and letting him sleep. A household in which a woman and her husband fulfil their respective obligations is a calm and well-ordered one. Civilisation is a matter of knowing one’s duties and in executing them, expressing mariyada. In Chapter Three, we saw how Leela’s family’s denigrated Venkatesh’s family on the basis of their ignorance of mariyada and lack of civilisation. The display of mariyada as a manifestation of a particular notion of educated morality is a crucial component of what Dalits mean by ‘civilisation’ and ‘culture’. Giving and receiving respect is Telugu culture, as Ganesh told me. But as Leela’s case in Chapter Three illustrated, notions of ‘civilisation’ are concurrent with a new kind of gendered morality, which seeks to make women not only givers of mariyada but also its recipients. As Ganesh says, ‘In India, we show respect (mariyada) to women. Women are not shown respect in every country but here in India we place more importance on giving high respect to women.’ Purged of typically ‘Dalit’ characteristics women must be reshaped in accordance with the idealised conservative, motherly femininity of the Telugu talli eulogised each morning by state-school children across Andhra Pradesh. For Dalits, the desire for respect, ‘civilisation’ and ‘culture’ has acquired a particular urgency. But it should be noted that while these ideals of civilisation expressed through mariyada are flourishing among Dalits, they stop short at the upper castes. As Kalyani’s quote above shows, Dalits’ self-improvement obviates the need for the extreme forms of mariyada and deference traditionally bestowed on the upper castes. If once the low castes gave mariyada and received subordination in return, now mariyada is expected back. So while Dalits expect mariyada from each other (particularly men from women), they also now expect it from the upper castes. In other words, while the caste hierarchy is under attack (they refuse to show respect to the upper castes), the gender hierarchy is reinstated (men demand mariyada from women). Patriarchy appears to be ‘Dalitising’. But it is not only women’s behaviour that is under scrutiny. Chapter Seven showed the principal ways in which men cause shame through drinking and domestic violence. Men too ‘cross their limits’ when they are seen to be physically out of control and

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beyond their moral boundaries. And yet, both women and men tend to blame women for this: if a woman is ‘good’ (manchi-ga), she brings happiness and harmony to her home, and her husband will have no need to drink, they say. Violence against wives is often considered necessary to maintain the order of the household. As part of normalised male sociality in the palli, certain kinds of drinking and violence enhance masculine prowess. While the norms of paravu-pratishta-gowravam are dominant, villagers are also open to competing influences, some of which militate against notions of respect. In relation to conjugal respect in particular, ideas of love, romance and companionate marriage are especially relevant. This is by far the most common theme in the films and serials, which Dalits watch daily on television, and there are certainly signs that young women and men are changing their expectations of marriage in accordance. One such sign was shown to me by Leela soon after she married. It took the form of an album which contained photographs of her and her new husband lovingly posing together in an orchard in a classic ‘filmy’ style, with one picture of her in a teenage girls’ skirt smiling coyly to the camera as she stretched out in the branches of a fruit tree. The photographs expressed something important about the couple’s attitude towards their marriage: that it should be a relationship characterised by love and romance not simply an exchange of respect and spousal duties. These influences and indeed related discourses of ‘modernity’ are counteracting ideas of paravu-pratishta-gowravam and may do so more in the future. This is especially so as new standards of status are being negotiated among the urban middle classes. It remains to be seen if and how the gendered concerns now apparently so characteristic of the urban middle classes (equality, companionship, sexual license and so on) (Donner 2008, Fuller and Narasimhan 2008, Gilbertson 2011, Radhakrishnan 2011, Twamley 2010) interact with the concerns of Dalits in villages such as Nampalli. Moreover, in Chapter Eight I outlined how development programmes may also mitigate Dalit patriarchy. The model of women’s empowerment advocated by DWCRA is the most obvious example. Women members may subscribe to this model to varying degrees; some may participate without sharing its principles, others like Kalyani may draw on the discourses of empowerment so

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extensively that they alienate themselves from those around them. Kalyani is still subject to judgements according to the standards of paravu-pratishta-gowravam but we saw how she was able to disregard honour-related social mores by claiming prestige through an imaginative distortion of its rules. Competing sets of values provide the means for individuals to challenge, resist and undermine the imperatives of honour. The existence of these ‘counter discourses’ means that if economic circumstances changed, Dalit women would be able to justify taking employment if it were deemed ‘suitable’. If easily accessible, well-paid jobs with decent working conditions and hours became available, it is likely that the housewife trend would reverse and women would again take up employment. This is not to say the developments described here can be understood in purely economic terms; Dalits make decisions based on factors that are both economic and cultural. If employment opportunities emerged, Dalits in Nampalli would in all likelihood manipulate paravu-pratishtagowravam to justify their actions. ‘Housewification’ among Dalits is as much a response to local economic conditions as it is to the demands of paravu-pratishta-gowravam. Compared to the extreme exploitation and subordination suffered by most female Dalit labourers, should we be worrying about a few Dalit women who become middle class? Possibly not, especially when they themselves consider it a better life. Indeed, Chapter Five showed that the Dalit housewife no longer suffers the exhaustion and vulnerability of agricultural labour and she has more time to care for her children, husband and household. But there is a cost to a more comfortable life, especially in terms of autonomy. This is reflected at the aggregate level by data sets that suggest that Dalit women are now both poor and lacking in autonomy (Deshpande 2011: 136–139). Deshpande argues that the earlier ‘trade-off between material well-being and autonomy and mobility’ (2011: 108) has now vanished. In Deshpande’s view, Dalit women are now worse off across the board in that they now have neither wealth nor freedom. Using National Family Health Survey (NFHS) and National Sample Survey (NSS) data, she shows how SC women seem to have lost the comparative advantage in terms of freedom of movement, access to money, decisions about healthcare, cooking and purchasing. They also suffer more domestic violence than upper-

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caste women (or are at least more open in admitting it). This leads Deshpande to conclude that while Dalit women still remain just as materially disadvantaged compared to upper-caste women, they do not enjoy greater equality to compensate for it (2011: 139). The material from Nampalli broadly corroborates this view. But the problem with arguing on the basis of aggregate data is that one cannot capture situations of transition; en masse, it is impossible to differentiate between households at different points on an upward socio-economic trajectory. Therefore although as a general statement we can agree that now Dalit women are affected by both poverty and patriarchy, it is too much of a leap to say that the trade-off has vanished altogether. Evidence from Nampalli leads me to suggest that women are in fact negotiating this ‘trade-off’ all the time. With upward mobility, women are moving from one set of constraints to another: they are better off in some ways, worse in others. The material presented here attempts to give an ethnographic picture of how this is happening. But the wider, long-term effects of the Dalitisation of patriarchy should not be glossed over.The studies mentioned in the Introduction show that India’s skewed sex ratio is already spreading to those who previously showed little preference for sons, a trend we can expect to continue. Although paruvu-pratishta-gowravam currently appears to be the dominant resource for claiming status, there is debate over how much women themselves subscribe to honour (Goddard 1987, Wikan 1984). The ethnography presented here suggests a relatively close match between Dalit men and women’s views. Competition between Dalit men is played out through the control of women while competition between Dalit women is played out through claims to their own respectability. Much of the time, men and women seem to be working within the same moral economy (cf. Mayblin 2010). Men and women are changing the very meaning of what it is to be Dalit. They hope that to be Dalit is no longer to be constituted by subordination (Mosse 1994: 74, 1999: 68); it is to be different but yet identifiably honourable, prestigious and respectable. The extent to which Dalit women pay the price for this new identity is the real question.

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Index

Affirmative action, 32, 35, 37, 39 agricultural Labour, see also Labour, Dalit women, 7, 8, 9, 34, 38, 45, 54, 55, 56, 92, 95–103, 122, 191 wages, 37, 44, 52, 92, 95–103 agriculture, 33 crops 52 for 25 Land ownership (Dalit), 58, 121, 196; (Kamma0 33, 34, 35, 44, 45 Land reform 35, 36, 37 Sharecropping 55fn 29 tenancy 35, 37, 38 alcohol/ism, 50, 119, 186, 217, 222 and violence 162–83, 221 Andhra Pradesh, 18, 29, 54, 71, 96, 99, 185, 215 coastal 4, 33–36, 44 Telangana 14, 33, 35 Ambedkar, B.R., 39, 41, 69fn 5, 74, 78, 88, 214fn 3 APMAS (Andhra Preadesh Mahila Abhivruddhi Society) 187

autonomy, (of) Dalits 31, 52, 211, 220 (of) women, 8, 9, 11, 89, 91, 92fn 1, 105, 147, 217, 223 in work, 54–56 Beck, Brenda 68, 71, 78 BPL (Below Poverty Line) 62, 154 Berreman, Gerald, 5, 160, 207 black, –ness 66, 68 (politicization of) 69–72, (social construction of) 75–8 skin colour 69, 75, 76, 77, 102, 210 Brahmin, 28, 33, 34, 45, 58, 67, 71, 73, 89, 178, 207 anti, 90 bride, educated 155 price 104 buffalo, 66, 78–83 consumption of 67–72, 81–82 politicisation of symbol 71 Butler, Judith, 209

254

Index

caste, 68 backward, 169, 170 and colour, 68, 69, 75–78 conflict, 15, 16, 29, 33, 35, 37, 41, 43, 51, 116, 209, 210 commensality, 40, 42, 47, 48, 78, 156 contestation, 30 divisions, 46, 47 dominant, 4, 10, 15, 29, 30, 34, 37, 41, 42, 44, 52, 58, 61, 66, 70, 75, 81, 86, 101, 116, 207 endogamy, 12, 40, 69, 107 ethnicisation of, 10, 211, 212 and food, 67, 68 hierarchy, 4, 6, 9, 10, 32, 46, 62, 65, 66, 68, 71, 78, 83, 208, 210 identity 11, 12, 14, 33, 41, 42, 43, 69, 82, 87, 210, 212 non-Brahmin, see Kamma, Reddy, Dalit, 7, 34 occupation (kulavruthi) 43–4, 45, 52, 68, 83 panchayat, 46 politicisation of, 33, 35, 36, 49, 67 pollution, 10fn 9, 30, 31, 47, 47fn 20, 65, 66, 67, 68, 207 pride, 49, 71, 73, 75, 88, 123 racial theories of, 69fn 5 relations in Nanpalli, 17, 18, 38, 40–43, 43–51 and status, 31, 49, 51, 65, 67, 80, 81, 91, 123, 149, 207, 211, 212 substance in relation 10, 66, 67, 68, 83, 93 substantialisation, of 211 and temperature, 68 territory, 31, 41, 47, 48, 51 Chamar (caste), 41, 206, 207 Chakilli (caste), 43, 145 Chakravarty, Uma 12

Chiranjeevi 35 Christianity, 50, 82, 88, 217 festivals 49, 50, 51 Lutheran 40 and morality 170 Pentecostal 127–8, 145, 152, 179 Roman Catholic 40, 50 Songs 50, 175 Chundur (village) 38, 39 Ciotti, Manuela 207 civilisation, Dalit conceptions of, 4, 92, 155, 159, 184, 190, 204, 205, 219, 220 class, 38 and caste, 10, 47, 57, 144–5, 211 middle class 114, 148, 153, 206, 211, 212 Cohn, Bernard, 159, 206 conjugal, home, 92, 100, 104, 109, 116, 122, 141, 167, 193 relations, 105, 166, 171, 178–9 culture, 4 Dalit conceptions of 4, 10, 70, 94, 184, 190, 205, 210, 211, 212, 214, 219 Dalit, 2, 36, 41, 78 activism, 51, 66, 70, 72, 77, 87, 197, 210 bahujan 89 conflict (with upper castes), 4, 10, 15, 18, 29, 37, 48, 51, 71, 114, 209, 210; (between Dalits), 4, 35, 40, 41, 72, 88 culture, 10, 12, 70, 72, 90 degradation, 69, 99 discrimation against, 38, 209 education, 32, 36–7, 41, 44, 58–62, 98, 116, 121 family, 62, 118, 136, 193–4, 206, 214fn 3, 217 identity, 11, 12, 14, 33, 41, 42, 43, 64, 66, 75, 78, 210, 212

Index kinship, 46, 57, 108 ideas of morality, 72 language, 46, 69, 100, 173, 209, 218 literature, 215 marriage, 40, 48, 53, 137–44, 146–61 middle class 11, 149, 211 movement 33 naming, 41, 73, 75, 107 patriarchy, 17, 18, 90, 183, 184, 187, 206, 214, 221, 222 politics, 36–43, 60, 62, 69, 74, 114, 209 stereotypes 189–90, 218 socialisation 108, 111 stigma, 66, 88 strategies of mobility, see gender, 117, 118, 209, 212, 224 symbols, 41, 71, 73, 78, 85, 86, 87, 112, 154, 210, 212, 216 wedding rituals, 140, 141, 142 Dalitisation, 11, 18, 72fn 12, 88, 89, 90, 207, 210, 214 Dalitism, 73, 221 Dalit women representations, 89, 187, 188 in Indian politics 89, 180, 186, 187, 198 in nationalist discourse 13, 215, 217 in upper-caste discourse 13, 116, 165, 204, 217, 218 Dalit women, see also, women, 73, 75, 91–117, 168, 181 agency, 187–8, 192 clothing, 100–101, 112, 193, 203, 218, 219 education, 7, 59, 118, 192 employment, 56, 95–96, 147, 223 inter-caste mobilisation 13, 42, 192, 196 moral responsibility 12, 135, 149, 179, 180, 202, 222

255

socialisation 108 subjectivity, 17 and suffering 163–183, 167, 168, 176, 178 and western women, 102, 215, 217, 218 wages 97–8, 147 work 42, 85, 92, 95–103, 146, 179, 191 dappu (Madiga drum), 50, 73–4, 79, 83, 169, 210 Deliège, Robert, 5, 54, 66, 72, 81, 105, 128fn 4, 132, 209, 218 Deshpande, Ashwini, 5, 8fn 7, 17, 96, 223 development and governance, 187, programmes in Andhra Pradesh 154, 184, 186, 188–9, 192, 205, 222 DMS (Dalit Maha Sabha), 39, 40 divorce, 92, 105, 157, 217 domestic violence, 16fn, 13, 167, 170, 176, 180–83, 223 domination, 173 male, 14, 92, 93, 164, 166, 172, 183 upper-caste, 14, 34, 39, 46, 69, 93, 114, 207, 211 dowry, 6, 86, 156–8 brideprice vensus, 104, 139 education and, 151, 156 dishti (see evil eye) Dravidian, movement, 69fn 5 kinship, 106, 107, 108 education, 34 Dalits, see marriage, Dalit women, 58–62, 219 (within Nampalli) 44 and honour 123, 148, 152 women’s 59, 60, 118, 146, 147, 149, 152, 158–9, 190 elopement, 24, 124–5, 137, 158 employment, 55

256

Index

government, 55, 174 non-farm, 57, 147, 164 empowerment (of women), 18, 183, 189, 190 evil eye, 130, 131, 132, 134, 201 femininity, 93, 133, 180, 184, 189, 216, 218, 221 and food 80, 94 and freedom of movement 89, 94, 95, 149, 185, 193, 214, 223 and Hindu mythology 93 and nationalism 217 and western women 217, 218 fertility, 107, 147 Fuller, Christopher, 1fn 1, 10fn 9, 50fn 22, 70fn 5, 127fn 1, 132, 133 134, 150, 206, 211fn 2 Frykenburg, Robert 33, 34 gender, and caste 54, 96 equality (among Dalits) 7, 90, 185, 212, 214 expectations, 189, 220–21 and misfortune 84, 135 and national identity 13 relations (among Dalits), 3, 5, 7, 9, 25, 91, 189, 213, 214 (upper caste) 150, 168, 180–83 stereotypes 189, 218 subjectivity 17 and upward mobility 5, 6, 8, 26, 63, 91, 118, 148, 151, 181, 205, 209, 212, 224 Goud, 45, 99, 192 Guntur (district), 33–6, 37 Guru, Gopal, 16, 43, 92 Harriss-White, Barbara, 6, 98, 156 Hardtmann, Eva- Maria, 204, 210 Heyer, Judith, 7, 11, 96, 117, 147 honour, see respect reputation, shame, 68, 194

acquisition of, 93–94, 184, 190 in Dalit politics 14fn 10, 61, 114, 211, 213 in Mediterranean 3 and morality 11, 72, 159 –prestige–respect 4, 51, 120 Housewife 51, 182, 189 Dalit rise of, 8, 9, 11, 57, 96, 117, 147, 149, 222 Dalit attitudes towards, 119 Hyderabad 36 Ilaiah, Kancha, 71, 72, 89, 210, 218 Jagjivan Ram, Babu, 41, 41fn 16 Jeetham (bonded labour), 52–4, 99, 209 Jeffery, Patricia, 44fn 18, 60, 91fn 1, 148, 150, 159, 170, 220 Kabeer, Naila, 91fn 1, 203, 204 Kamma (caste), rise of 2, 29, 33–6, 44, 51, 57, 73, 81, 86, 121, 169 women, 101–2, 115 Kannabiran, Kalpana, 6, 14, 15, 111 Kapadia, Karin, 7, 8, 11, 96, 106, 117, 147, 151, 156 Karamchedu (village) 39 kingship 28 kinship, 92, 151, 199 socialisation into kinship patterns 108, 111, 116 Dravidian 106, 107, 108 practical 138 Komati (caste) Kumar, Meira, 41 labour, 51–96 agricultural, 7, 8, 38, 45, 54, 95–103, 122, 191 bonded, 14, 34, 51 contract, 95–6 domestic service 95–103, 115

Index

257

eldesty, 97, 99 feminisation of, 9, 96 jeetham service, 52–4, 99, 209 and socialisation 111 strike 52 relations 38 and shame 14, 111–16, 148, 150 wages, 37, 44, 52, 92, 95–103 land ownership 33, 34, 44, 45, 58, 121

modernity, 6, 207, 215, 222 Moffatt, Michael 207, 208 Mosse, David, 27, 50fn 22, 63

Madiga (caste), 2, 18, 36, 39, 40, 43, 49, 50, 57, 73, 78, 107, 115 Madiga Dandora, 39 Madiga, Dandu Veeraiah, 39, 73 Madiga, Krishna, 39, 73, 198 Madiga Reservation Porata Samiti (MRPS) 39, 40, 72, 73, 197 Mala (caste), 36, 39, 40–43, 49, 50, 57, 73, 78, 89, 115, 153, 197 Mala Mahanadu, 40 marriage, 7, 53, 92, 109, 119, 190 companionate, 206, 222 cross-cousin, 106, 107, 108, 119, 151, 181 and female education, 146–61, 206 and honour, 137 hypergamously, 137, 151 inter-caste, 158 kondamarpulu, 120 love, 105 looks, 138, 143, 157, 190 maket, 152 re-(marriage) 105, 167 masculinity 16, 174, 182, 189, 212, 221 Mariyada (politeness, respect) 29–31, 47, 51, 53, 67, 92, 139, 220, 221 Mayawati, 41, 204 micro-credit, 56, 185, 186, 187, 188, 203 Mines, Diane, 29 Mitchell, Lisa, 215

palli, 25, 40, 42, 62, 81, 83–87, 92 pallivallu 83 symbol of 65, 69, 112 Panchayat, 37fn 12, 46 paruvu-pratishta-gowravam, 3, 9, 11, 12, 18, 27–8, 32, 51, 63, 89, 92, 119, 120, 132, 137, 144, 166, 185, 208, 213 patriarchy, 5 Brahminical 12, 16 (among) Dalits 5, 11, 16, 224 spread of 16 patronage, 99, 121, 210 Periyar (see Ramaswamy Naicker, E.V.) Phule, Jotirao 39, 69fn 5, 74, 214fn 3 politics, of culture, 10, 18, 27, 33, 63, 65–90, 210 possession, 125–7, 135 poverty, 20, 45, 55, 63, 85, 116, 165, 166, 173, 223 pregnancy, 109, 120, 137, 141 prestige, 3, 5, 24, 127, 147, 165, 83, 199, 206, 219 prostitution, 116, 125, 194

Naidu, Chandra Babu, 36, 40, 83, 185, 186 Nampalli, 1, 3, 15, 33–6, 40–43, 43–51, 67, 75, 79, 91, 93, 115, 121, 159 natal home, 109, 110, 140, 181, 201

Rama Rao, Nandamuri Taraka, 35 Ramaswamy Naicker, E.V. (Periyar) 69, n5, 74, 214fn 3 rape, of Dalit women, 14, 38, 113, 116, 163, 209 Reddy (caste), 29, 33, 34, 38, 73 reputation, 144

258

Index

of Dalits(men) 174; (women) 113, 127, 136, 157, 200, 202 reservation, 39 sub-division of, 39, 40, 41 respect, 3, 29, 51, 92, 101, 120, 172, 213 respectability, 4, 16, 33, 42, 145, 165, 185, 209, 213, 218 sanskritsation, 5, 9, 63, 206, 212 sex ratio, 7 sexuality, 89–90, 165 female, 92, 103, (control of) 3, 12, 63, 162, 166, 193–4, 201 and fertility, 92, 110 sexual relations, cross-cousin 108, 119 extra-marital 113, 115, 120, 172, 194 pre-marital 157 inter-caste 113, 114, 115 shame (siggu), 22, 30–61, 63, 68, 93–5, 116, 120 and boundaries, 92, 93–4, 174, 184, 218 among men, 112, 173, 175, 179, 221–22 among women, 92, 94–5, 111– 16, 199 SHG (Self-Help Group), 185, 186 social mobility, 107, 143, 158, 207, 211 sorcery, 131, 132, 133 state programmes, see Development, 146 status, 65, 66, 143 subordination (chinnatanam), 4, 27, 31, 32, 33, 47, 51, 53, 54, 68, 78, 93, 114, 127, 133, 166, 210, 221

suicide, 36, 129–30, 198 Tamilattay, 215, 216 TDP (Telugu Desam Party), 29fn 2, 35, 36, 40, 186 Telugu, 46, 95, 205, 216 citizenship 217 language 113 talli, 142, 145, 215, 216, 218, 221 Untouchable/ity, 3, 4, 18, 39, 42, 48, 66, 67, 70, 72, 78, 80, 146, 207, 219 shame of 27, 32 uru, 20, 31, 45, 49, 79, 83–7, 121, 150, 154, 180 uruvallu, 31, 51, 78, 81, 86, 217 Vijayawada, 56, 57, 147 violence (see domestic violence), 24, 128–9, 163, 176, 194, 222 Wadley, Susan, 25, 30, 60, 93, 110, 178 westernisation, 9, 12, 206 western culture 218 women(s) see Dalit women economic contribution, 91, 98, 105, 111, 163, 217 empowerment of, 46, 148, 184, 185, 186, 200, 222 elderly, 97, 99 and kinship, 103–111 pollution and 93 representations of, 12, 13, 93, 210 work, 7, 92, 95–103, 146 widow, restrictions 193, 204, 217 status of Dalit, 105, 198, 200 widowing ritual 110–11