Gendering Caste and Casteing Gender: A Study of Social Sickness in Uma Chakravarti’s Gendering Caste: Through a Feminist Lens

Abstract

Gendering Caste: Through feminist a lens (2018) is a feminist critique of Indian caste system written by Uma Chakravarti, who is an Indian historian and teacher. She is known to the readers as the founding mother of Women’s Movement in India and a feminist scholar in the subcontinent. The article aims to deal with the feminist experiments of gendering caste and casting gender with reference to marginalised Dalits, against the backdrop of Brahminical hegemony, patriarchism and their practice of untouchability. While analysing the infamous social practices, it traces the genealogy and history of harassment and discrimination of Dalits in this brahmin-oriented society, where gender and caste are often linked together in everyday life – in order to target the helpless Dalits and vulnerable women. It also focuses on the feminist’s observations on Hindu social practices, which target gender discrimination in general and the practice of caste/untouchability in particular- in ancient, pre -during- post-colonial India. Understanding the deep-rooted caste and its mysterious divide between the high caste brahmins and the low caste Dalits, has been a recurring and nagging theme in Humanities as well as Social Sciences. It records how the caste system has taken a socio-cultural construction promoting brahmins to the heights of honour/celebrity by giving approval to their fallacious practices on the one hand and pushing Dalits into the depths of degradation by branding them as untouchables, especially focusing on how women are used, misused, abused and seduced in this evil caste system on the other hand.