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Solidarity Trip to Another World (6 of 6)
23.Jan.04 Transnational Feminisms – Nagpur and Aurangbad, India.
Domestic issues: learning how to navigate the gender dynamics of India. Our GGJ trip is 5 women, 3 men – and we have to do an internal debrief to tackle the gender hierarchy that plays out in our discussions and meetings. If we are going to show that women are indeed leaders in our community struggles, organizations and families, we need to get our voices heard here. Thankfully the men in our group recognize their male privilege and are conscious enough to “step back”. It’s easy for a man of color to jump at the opportunity to speak up in settings where no white men are, but the women in the group are not about to let the men take up all the space.
A day after our internal conversation, we are all blessed with a warm gathering of women workers and leaders at Vilas’ home. Vilas’ wife is a strong community leader, Sujata, who together with the other women of the village organized a micro-banking system for the women to fight economic injustice. It is refreshing and reassuring to see all these women speaking up and out around the conditions they face as women in a world threatened by globalization. This gathering also shows us how important woman-centered, women-led collectivities are, because, in almost all other cases where men are around, the women are forced to “take their lead”.
24.Jan.04 Jai Bhim! -- Aurangbad, India
A huge issue brought to the WSF table for the first time this year is Casteism. It sounds like a familiar story – as people of color in the United States, we know all too well how also intersecting systems of oppression (race, class, gender, nation, etc.) are institutionalized, and what an immense challenge it is to tear them down. India has a long history of caste oppression -- the Dalit are made out to be so subhuman that they are completely excluded from the 4-tiered caste system (hence the other derogatory term, “outcaste”.)
It is a system that one is born into, with laws rigorously dictated through Hindu religious texts. Those born as “Untouchables” are locked into a predetermined life of oppression. The Dalit were long denied everything from rights to worship, access to water, education, proper housing and civil rights. They have claimed the term Dalit as a political name, meaning “broken, oppressed, downtrodden”. Rather than being simply “born”, or predestined as a lower class, Dalit identifies a power structure – Caste – that systematically and deliberately oppresses them.
Although 85% of India belongs to the lower castes, the upper 3 castes (which make up 15% of the population) take up most of the resources. Dalits (or Untouchables) were forbidden to come in contact with the upper castes and were said to bring bad luck. One example of the discrimination Dalits faced was that they were not allowed to draw water from public wells.
24.Jan.04 “We are the children of the open skyand of the black earth.” - local song asserting the firmest conviction that we must not divide people amongst caste or religion.
Hindus greet each other with Namaskar, many of the folks we meet in Nagpur and Aurangabad whole-heartedly greet us instead with Jai Bhim, Jai Bhim! These beautiful and hardworking people are among a generation of Dalit who abandoned Hinduism – and its caste system – for Buddhism. Under the leadership of Dr. Babasahed Ambedkar – who people we meet refer to as the so-called Martin Luther King Jr. of the Dalits -- entire Dalit communities created a space for empowerment, education, and pride through this religious conversion.
The story told to us by the people we meet about this advocate for equal rights for the Dalits was that he had educated himself at a young age by listening by the windows of a school. After his studies abroad, he came back to India and started organizing Dalits. Asking them questions such as: Why couldn’t Dalits get basic rights to water? Eventually, he lost faith in the Hindu system and converted to Buddhism, bringing along thousands of other Dalits.
Today, while many Dalit are still condemned to work with sewages and slaughterhouses, Ambedkar’s legacy is a driving force for Dalit liberation. There are many schools and several colleges established to provide Dalits access to education, and the tools to change the world they live in. In India, 65% of Dalits are illiterate (majority women), but the Maharashtra state where Dr. Ambedkar did a lot of his work boasts the highest literacy rate of Dalits in the country.
