Dalit Women

Honour and Patriarchy in South India

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 Dalit Women
Honour and Patriarchy
in South India

Clarinda Still

Routledge
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Taylor & Francis Group

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 Contents

Acknowledgements vii

1. Introduction 1
2. Contextualising Dalit ‘Shame’ 27
3. Dalit Women and the Politics of Culture 65
4. Dalit Women’s Everyday Life, Work, 91
Kinship and Shame
5. Honour and Shame in the Madiga palli: 118
Leela’s Elopement, Possession and Marriage
6. Women’s Education, Marriage, Honour and 146
the New Dalit Housewife
7. Alcohol, Violence and Women’s ‘Suffering’: 162
‘Adulterer, tramp or thief, a husband is
a husband’
8. Kalyani: ‘Development’, ‘Civilisation’ and 184
‘Women’s Empowerment’
9. ‘Culture’, ‘Civilisation’ and Citizenship 206

Biblography 225
Index 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
viii 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 ix

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).
2 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-pratishta-
gowravam 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
4 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 non-
Dalits 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, Searle-
Chatterjee 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.
6 Dalit Women

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).
8 Dalit Women

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.
10 Dalit Women

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.
12 Dalit Women

This process is driven by values and beliefs enabled by new socio-

economic 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 paruvu-
pratishta-gowravam. Drawing on these, some women and men
resist its compulsions. Nevertheless, I suggest that paruvu-pratishta-
gowravam 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.
14 Dalit Women

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).
16 Dalit Women

‘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.
18 Dalit Women

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 four-
roomed 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.
20 Dalit Women

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 over-
crowding 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 21

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.
22 Dalit Women

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 23

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
24 Dalit Women

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
26 Dalit Women

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-pratishta-
gowravam, 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
28 Dalit Women

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 respect-
worthiness 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 pre-
colonial 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.
 Contextualising Dalit ‘Shame’ 29

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).
30 Dalit Women

is, practically speaking, a potential effect of all transactions—indeed

all social actions (2005: 81).

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
 Contextualising Dalit ‘Shame’ 31

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 higher-
caste 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’, ‘fear-
devotion’, 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
32 Dalit Women

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
 Contextualising Dalit ‘Shame’ 33

asserting a distinct Dalit identity. This leads me to suggest that a

Dalit ‘politics of culture’ exists hand in hand with paruvu-pratishta-
gowravam. 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
34 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 non-
Brahmin 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).
 Contextualising Dalit ‘Shame’ 35

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 Kamma-
Reddy 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).
36 Dalit Women

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)
 Contextualising Dalit ‘Shame’ 37

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.
12
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.
38 Dalit Women

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.
 Contextualising Dalit ‘Shame’ 39

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 better-

14
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).
40 Dalit Women

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.
 Contextualising Dalit ‘Shame’ 41

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.
42 Dalit Women

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 Anti-
Arrack 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).
 Contextualising Dalit ‘Shame’ 43

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 Traditional Principal House- Approx Religion State
Occupation Occupation holds Population Category
1 Kamma Cultivators Owner- 118 520 Hindu, —
(Sudra) cultivators Christian
2 Mala Village servants, Agricultural 75 338 Christian SC
(Dalit) Funeral attendants labourers
3 Madiga Leather workers, Agricultural 44 198 Christian SC
(Dalit) Shoemakers, labourers
Drummers
4 Goud Toddy Tappers Agricultural 21 84 Christian, OBC
(Sudra) labourers Hindu
5 Brahmin Priests, Accountants Owner- 10 35 Hindu —
(karanam) cultivator,
6 Chakali Washermen Washermen, 9 36 Hindu OBC
(Sudra) Tradesmen,
Agricultural
labourers
7 Komati Merchants, Traders, Traders, Money 5 17 Hindu —
(Vaishya) Money lenders,
lenders, Shop keepers
44 Dalit Women

Caste Traditional Principal House- Approx Religion State

Occupation Occupation holds Population Category
8 Muslims — Tailors 5 19 Muslim OBC
9 Mangali Barbers Barbers 2 9 Hindu OBC
(Sudra)
10 Kummara Potters Salesmen, 2 7 Christian OBC
(Sudra) cook,
Agricultural
labourers
11 Naidu Cultivators Owner- 1 4 Hindu —
(Sudra) cultivators
12 Lambadi Itinerant traders Agricultural 1 9 Hindu ST
(Tribe) labourers

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 income-
generating 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.
 Contextualising Dalit ‘Shame’ 45

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
46 Dalit Women

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
 Contextualising Dalit ‘Shame’ 47

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.
48 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
 Contextualising Dalit ‘Shame’ 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 upper-
caste 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.
50 Dalit Women

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.
 Contextualising Dalit ‘Shame’ 51

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-honour-
respect. 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).
52 Dalit Women

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.
 Contextualising Dalit ‘Shame’ 53

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).
54 Dalit Women

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.
28
According to my own household survey undertaken in May 2004.
 Contextualising Dalit ‘Shame’ 55

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’.
56 Dalit Women

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
 Contextualising Dalit ‘Shame’ 57

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.
58 Dalit Women

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.
 Contextualising Dalit ‘Shame’ 59

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, twenty-
two 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.
60 Dalit Women

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
 Contextualising Dalit ‘Shame’ 61

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
62 Dalit Women

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
 Contextualising Dalit ‘Shame’ 63

been kept right at the bottom of the moral economy of paruvu-

pratishta-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.
64 Dalit Women

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

U 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
66 Dalit Women

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.
 Dalit Women and the Politics of Culture 67

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).
3
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).
68 Dalit Women

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
 Dalit Women and the Politics of Culture 69

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.
5
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
70 Dalit Women

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, beef-
eating 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.
 Dalit Women and the Politics of Culture 71

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.
72 Dalit Women

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 ‘Dalit-
Bahujan’ 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).
 Dalit Women and the Politics of Culture 73

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.
74 Dalit Women

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.
 Dalit Women and the Politics of Culture 75

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.
76 Dalit Women

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.
 Dalit Women and the Politics of Culture 77

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 socio-
economic 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 colour-
related 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.
78 Dalit Women

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.
 Dalit Women and the Politics of Culture 79

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
80 Dalit Women

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, gira-
gira]. 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.
 Dalit Women and the Politics of Culture 81

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 dominant-
caste 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).
82 Dalit Women

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 meat-
eating 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
 Dalit Women and the Politics of Culture 83

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,
84 Dalit Women

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
 Dalit Women and the Politics of Culture 85

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
86 Dalit Women

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’.
 Dalit Women and the Politics of Culture 87

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 pre-
existing 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
88 Dalit Women

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
 Dalit Women and the Politics of Culture 89

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:
90 Dalit Women

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

O 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
92 Dalit Women

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.
 Dalit Women’s Everyday Life, Work, Kinship and Shame 93

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 upper-
caste 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.
94 Dalit Women

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.
 Dalit Women’s Everyday Life, Work, Kinship and Shame 95

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 class-
inflected. 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.
96 Dalit Women

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.).
 Dalit Women’s Everyday Life, Work, Kinship and Shame 97

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
98 Dalit Women

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 un-
or 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
 Dalit Women’s Everyday Life, Work, Kinship and Shame 99

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.
100 Dalit Women

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
 Dalit Women’s Everyday Life, Work, Kinship and Shame 101

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.
102 Dalit Women

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 mid-
forties, 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
 Dalit Women’s Everyday Life, Work, Kinship and Shame 103

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
104 Dalit Women

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
 Dalit Women’s Everyday Life, Work, Kinship and Shame 105

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:
106 Dalit Women

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)
 Dalit Women’s Everyday Life, Work, Kinship and Shame 107

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 cross-
cousins 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.
108 Dalit Women

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.
 Dalit Women’s Everyday Life, Work, Kinship and Shame 109

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
110 Dalit Women

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
 Dalit Women’s Everyday Life, Work, Kinship and Shame 111

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, ‘good-
for-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.
112 Dalit Women

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.
 Dalit Women’s Everyday Life, Work, Kinship and Shame 113

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 extra-
marital relationships is fairly high. Most of these affairs occur
between women and men within the same community but extra-
caste 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
114 Dalit Women

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
 Dalit Women’s Everyday Life, Work, Kinship and Shame 115

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
116 Dalit Women

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.
 Dalit Women’s Everyday Life, Work, Kinship and Shame 117

Principal among them is the fact that women are giving up labour
in those households in which men have gained secure enough non-
farm 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

L 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
 Honour and Shame in the Madiga palli 119

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.
120 Dalit Women

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
 Honour and Shame in the Madiga palli 121

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.
122 Dalit Women

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
 Honour and Shame in the Madiga palli 123

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 sister-
in-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.
124 Dalit Women

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.
 Honour and Shame in the Madiga palli 125

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
126 Dalit Women

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.
 Honour and Shame in the Madiga palli 127

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-in-
law, 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’ (manchi-
ga). 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).
128 Dalit Women

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 panic-
stricken. 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
 Honour and Shame in the Madiga palli 129

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
130 Dalit Women

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
 Honour and Shame in the Madiga palli 131

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.
132 Dalit Women

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 paruvu-
pratishta-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.
 Honour and Shame in the Madiga palli 133

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
134 Dalit Women

make them fall in love with them are common. The family suspected
that Chinna had learned how to do chattabadi or employed a teacher-
magician (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
 Honour and Shame in the Madiga palli 135

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).
136 Dalit Women

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.
 Honour and Shame in the Madiga palli 137

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
138 Dalit Women

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.
 Honour and Shame in the Madiga palli 139

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
140 Dalit Women

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
 Honour and Shame in the Madiga palli 141

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 ‘photo-
shoot’, 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.
142 Dalit Women

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
 Honour and Shame in the Madiga palli 143

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 barely-
concealed 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.
144 Dalit Women

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-pratishta-
gowravam, 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
 Honour and Shame in the Madiga palli 145

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

W 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 education-
dowry-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
 Women’s Education, Marriage, Honour 147

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.
148 Dalit Women

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).
 Women’s Education, Marriage, Honour 149

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).
150 Dalit Women

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 newly-
arrived, 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
 Women’s Education, Marriage, Honour 151

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 cross-
cousin 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.
152 Dalit Women

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 cross-
cousin (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
 Women’s Education, Marriage, Honour 153

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
154 Dalit Women

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.
 Women’s Education, Marriage, Honour 155

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 degree-
qualified 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
156 Dalit Women

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
 Women’s Education, Marriage, Honour 157

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
158 Dalit Women

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’.
 Women’s Education, Marriage, Honour 159

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 upper-
caste 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.
160 Dalit Women

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.
 Women’s Education, Marriage, Honour 161

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’

I 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.
 Alcohol and Violence 163

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).
164 Dalit Women

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
 Alcohol and Violence 165

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.
166 Dalit Women

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
 Alcohol and Violence 167

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.
168 Dalit Women

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
 Alcohol and Violence 169

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 non-
drinkers; 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.
170 Dalit Women

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
 Alcohol and Violence 171

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.
172 Dalit Women

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
 Alcohol and Violence 173

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 self-
discipline (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
174 Dalit Women

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
 Alcohol and Violence 175

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!’
176 Dalit Women

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
 Alcohol and Violence 177

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
178 Dalit Women

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
 Alcohol and Violence 179

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
180 Dalit Women

(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’.
 Alcohol and Violence 181

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 cross-
cousins, 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
182 Dalit Women

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, honour-
seeking 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
 Alcohol and Violence 183

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’

T 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
 Kalyani 185

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, ‘neo-
liberal subjects’ through the spread of the orthodoxy of ‘women’s
empowerment’.
Naidu’s Andhra Pradesh is a good example of the role micro-
credit 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.
186 Dalit Women

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 low-
caste 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 de-
radicalised 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.
 Kalyani 187

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 incentive-
led 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 community-
focussed, 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 decision-
making capacity among women, greater access to and control over
household finances, greater bargaining power, increased ability to
188 Dalit Women

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 micro-
finance 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.
 Kalyani 189

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 micro-
credit, 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-
190 Dalit Women

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
 Kalyani 191

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.
192 Dalit Women

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
 Kalyani 193

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.
194 Dalit Women

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.
 Kalyani 195

‘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
196 Dalit Women

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
 Kalyani 197

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
198 Dalit Women

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
 Kalyani 199

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 grand-
mother (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
200 Dalit Women

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-
 Kalyani 201

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
202 Dalit Women

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 paruvu-
pratishta-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
 Kalyani 203

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
204 Dalit Women

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-pratishta-
gowravam. 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).
 Kalyani 205

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.
 9
‘Culture’, ‘Civilisation’
and Citizenship

I 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
 ‘Culture’, ‘Civilisation’ and Citizenship 207

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 sub-
culture 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 ‘retro-
modernity’, 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
208 Dalit Women

current processes of change and conflict. To argue that paruvu-

pratishta-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
 ‘Culture’, ‘Civilisation’ and Citizenship 209

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
210 Dalit Women

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.
 ‘Culture’, ‘Civilisation’ and Citizenship 211

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 horizontally-
ordered, competing ethnic social groups rather than vertically-
arranged 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).
212 Dalit Women

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-pratishta-
gowravam 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,
 ‘Culture’, ‘Civilisation’ and Citizenship 213

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 paruvu-
pratishta-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
214 Dalit Women

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.
 ‘Culture’, ‘Civilisation’ and Citizenship 215

homogenisation, identity, difference and the meaning of ‘Indian-

ness’, 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 de-
sexualisation 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).
216 Dalit Women

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.
 ‘Culture’, ‘Civilisation’ and Citizenship 217

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.
218 Dalit Women

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 fully-
fledged 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).
 ‘Culture’, ‘Civilisation’ and Citizenship 219

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.
220 Dalit Women

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
 ‘Culture’, ‘Civilisation’ and Citizenship 221

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
222 Dalit Women

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
 ‘Culture’, ‘Civilisation’ and Citizenship 223

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-pratishta-
gowravam 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-
224 Dalit Women

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 autonomy,

agricultural Labour, see also (of) Dalits 31, 52, 211, 220
Labour, Dalit women, 7, 8, (of) women, 8, 9, 11, 89, 91, 92fn
9, 34, 38, 45, 54, 55, 56, 92, 1, 105, 147, 217, 223
95–103, 122, 191 in work, 54–56
wages, 37, 44, 52, 92, 95–103
agriculture, 33 Beck, Brenda 68, 71, 78
crops 52 for 25 BPL (Below Poverty Line) 62, 154
Land ownership (Dalit), 58, 121, Berreman, Gerald, 5, 160, 207
196; (Kamma0 33, 34, 35, 44, black,
45 –ness 66, 68 (politicization of)
Land reform 35, 36, 37 69–72, (social construction
Sharecropping 55fn 29 of) 75–8
tenancy 35, 37, 38 skin colour 69, 75, 76, 77, 102, 210
alcohol/ism, 50, 119, 186, 217, 222 Brahmin, 28, 33, 34, 45, 58, 67, 71,
and violence 162–83, 221 73, 89, 178, 207
Andhra Pradesh, 18, 29, 54, 71, 96, anti, 90
99, 185, 215 bride,
coastal 4, 33–36, 44 educated 155
Telangana 14, 33, 35 price 104
Ambedkar, B.R., 39, 41, 69fn 5, 74, buffalo, 66, 78–83
78, 88, 214fn 3 consumption of 67–72, 81–82
APMAS (Andhra Preadesh Mahila politicisation of symbol 71
Abhivruddhi Society) 187 Butler, Judith, 209
254 Index

caste, 68 Chiranjeevi 35
backward, 169, 170 Christianity, 50, 82, 88, 217
and colour, 68, 69, 75–78 festivals 49, 50, 51
conflict, 15, 16, 29, 33, 35, 37, Lutheran 40
41, 43, 51, 116, 209, 210 and morality 170
commensality, 40, 42, 47, 48, 78, Pentecostal 127–8, 145, 152, 179
156 Roman Catholic 40, 50
contestation, 30 Songs 50, 175
divisions, 46, 47 Chundur (village) 38, 39
dominant, 4, 10, 15, 29, 30, 34, Ciotti, Manuela 207
37, 41, 42, 44, 52, 58, 61, 66, civilisation, Dalit conceptions of, 4,
70, 75, 81, 86, 101, 116, 207 92, 155, 159, 184, 190, 204, 205,
endogamy, 12, 40, 69, 107 219, 220
ethnicisation of, 10, 211, 212 class, 38
and food, 67, 68 and caste, 10, 47, 57, 144–5, 211
hierarchy, 4, 6, 9, 10, 32, 46, 62, middle class 114, 148, 153, 206,
65, 66, 68, 71, 78, 83, 208, 211, 212
210 Cohn, Bernard, 159, 206
identity 11, 12, 14, 33, 41, 42, 43, conjugal,
69, 82, 87, 210, 212 home, 92, 100, 104, 109, 116,
non-Brahmin, see Kamma, 122, 141, 167, 193
Reddy, Dalit, 7, 34 relations, 105, 166, 171, 178–9
occupation (kulavruthi) 43–4, 45, culture, 4
52, 68, 83 Dalit conceptions of 4, 10, 70, 94,
panchayat, 46 184, 190, 205, 210, 211, 212,
politicisation of, 33, 35, 36, 49, 214, 219
67
pollution, 10fn 9, 30, 31, 47, 47fn Dalit, 2, 36, 41, 78
20, 65, 66, 67, 68, 207 activism, 51, 66, 70, 72, 77, 87,
pride, 49, 71, 73, 75, 88, 123 197, 210
racial theories of, 69fn 5 bahujan 89
relations in Nanpalli, 17, 18, 38, conflict (with upper castes), 4, 10,
40–43, 43–51 15, 18, 29, 37, 48, 51, 71, 114,
and status, 31, 49, 51, 65, 67, 80, 209, 210; (between Dalits), 4,
81, 91, 123, 149, 207, 211, 35, 40, 41, 72, 88
212 culture, 10, 12, 70, 72, 90
substance in relation 10, 66, 67, degradation, 69, 99
68, 83, 93 discrimation against, 38, 209
substantialisation, of 211 education, 32, 36–7, 41, 44,
and temperature, 68 58–62, 98, 116, 121
territory, 31, 41, 47, 48, 51 family, 62, 118, 136, 193–4, 206,
Chamar (caste), 41, 206, 207 214fn 3, 217
Chakilli (caste), 43, 145 identity, 11, 12, 14, 33, 41, 42,
Chakravarty, Uma 12 43, 64, 66, 75, 78, 210, 212
 Index 255

kinship, 46, 57, 108 socialisation 108

ideas of morality, 72 subjectivity, 17
language, 46, 69, 100, 173, 209, and suffering 163–183, 167, 168,
218 176, 178
literature, 215 and western women, 102, 215,
marriage, 40, 48, 53, 137–44, 217, 218
146–61 wages 97–8, 147
middle class 11, 149, 211 work 42, 85, 92, 95–103, 146,
movement 33 179, 191
naming, 41, 73, 75, 107 dappu (Madiga drum), 50, 73–4, 79,
patriarchy, 17, 18, 90, 183, 184, 83, 169, 210
187, 206, 214, 221, 222 Deliège, Robert, 5, 54, 66, 72, 81,
politics, 36–43, 60, 62, 69, 74, 105, 128fn 4, 132, 209, 218
114, 209 Deshpande, Ashwini, 5, 8fn 7, 17,
stereotypes 189–90, 218 96, 223
socialisation 108, 111 development and governance, 187,
stigma, 66, 88 programmes in Andhra Pradesh
strategies of mobility, see gender, 154, 184, 186, 188–9, 192,
117, 118, 209, 212, 224 205, 222
symbols, 41, 71, 73, 78, 85, 86, DMS (Dalit Maha Sabha), 39, 40
87, 112, 154, 210, 212, 216 divorce, 92, 105, 157, 217
wedding rituals, 140, 141, 142 domestic violence, 16fn, 13, 167,
Dalitisation, 11, 18, 72fn 12, 88, 89, 170, 176, 180–83, 223
90, 207, 210, 214 domination, 173
Dalitism, 73, 221 male, 14, 92, 93, 164, 166, 172,
Dalit women representations, 89, 183
187, 188 upper-caste, 14, 34, 39, 46, 69,
in Indian politics 89, 180, 186, 93, 114, 207, 211
187, 198 dowry, 6, 86, 156–8
in nationalist discourse 13, 215, brideprice vensus, 104, 139
217 education and, 151, 156
in upper-caste discourse 13, 116, dishti (see evil eye)
165, 204, 217, 218 Dravidian, movement, 69fn 5
Dalit women, see also, women, 73, kinship, 106, 107, 108
75, 91–117, 168, 181
agency, 187–8, 192 education, 34
clothing, 100–101, 112, 193, 203, Dalits, see marriage, Dalit women,
218, 219 58–62, 219
education, 7, 59, 118, 192 (within Nampalli) 44
employment, 56, 95–96, 147, 223 and honour 123, 148, 152
inter-caste mobilisation 13, 42, women’s 59, 60, 118, 146, 147,
192, 196 149, 152, 158–9, 190
moral responsibility 12, 135, 149, elopement, 24, 124–5, 137, 158
179, 180, 202, 222 employment, 55
256 Index

government, 55, 174 acquisition of, 93–94, 184, 190

non-farm, 57, 147, 164 in Dalit politics 14fn 10, 61, 114,
empowerment (of women), 18, 183, 211, 213
189, 190 in Mediterranean 3
evil eye, 130, 131, 132, 134, 201 and morality 11, 72, 159
–prestige–respect 4, 51, 120
femininity, 93, 133, 180, 184, 189, Housewife 51, 182, 189
216, 218, 221 Dalit rise of, 8, 9, 11, 57, 96, 117,
and food 80, 94 147, 149, 222
and freedom of movement 89, 94, Dalit attitudes towards, 119
95, 149, 185, 193, 214, 223 Hyderabad 36
and Hindu mythology 93
and nationalism 217 Ilaiah, Kancha, 71, 72, 89, 210, 218
and western women 217, 218
fertility, 107, 147 Jagjivan Ram, Babu, 41, 41fn 16
Fuller, Christopher, 1fn 1, 10fn 9, Jeetham (bonded labour), 52–4,
50fn 22, 70fn 5, 127fn 1, 132, 133 99, 209
134, 150, 206, 211fn 2 Jeffery, Patricia, 44fn 18, 60, 91fn 1,
Frykenburg, Robert 33, 34 148, 150, 159, 170, 220

gender, Kabeer, Naila, 91fn 1, 203, 204

and caste 54, 96 Kamma (caste),
equality (among Dalits) 7, 90, rise of 2, 29, 33–6, 44, 51, 57, 73,
185, 212, 214 81, 86, 121, 169
expectations, 189, 220–21 women, 101–2, 115
and misfortune 84, 135 Kannabiran, Kalpana, 6, 14, 15, 111
and national identity 13 Kapadia, Karin, 7, 8, 11, 96, 106,
relations (among Dalits), 3, 5, 7, 117, 147, 151, 156
9, 25, 91, 189, 213, 214 Karamchedu (village) 39
(upper caste) 150, 168, 180–83 kingship 28
stereotypes 189, 218 kinship, 92, 151, 199
subjectivity 17 socialisation into kinship patterns
and upward mobility 5, 6, 8, 26, 108, 111, 116
63, 91, 118, 148, 151, 181, Dravidian 106, 107, 108
205, 209, 212, 224 practical 138
Goud, 45, 99, 192 Komati (caste)
Guntur (district), 33–6, 37 Kumar, Meira, 41
Guru, Gopal, 16, 43, 92
labour, 51–96
Harriss-White, Barbara, 6, 98, 156 agricultural, 7, 8, 38, 45, 54,
Hardtmann, Eva- Maria, 204, 210 95–103, 122, 191
Heyer, Judith, 7, 11, 96, 117, 147 bonded, 14, 34, 51
honour, see respect reputation, contract, 95–6
shame, 68, 194 domestic service 95–103, 115
 Index 257

eldesty, 97, 99 modernity, 6, 207, 215, 222

feminisation of, 9, 96 Moffatt, Michael 207, 208
jeetham service, 52–4, 99, 209 Mosse, David, 27, 50fn 22, 63
and socialisation 111
strike 52 Naidu, Chandra Babu, 36, 40, 83,
relations 38 185, 186
and shame 14, 111–16, 148, 150 Nampalli, 1, 3, 15, 33–6, 40–43,
wages, 37, 44, 52, 92, 95–103 43–51, 67, 75, 79, 91, 93, 115,
land ownership 33, 34, 44, 45, 58, 121, 159
121 natal home, 109, 110, 140, 181, 201

Madiga (caste), 2, 18, 36, 39, 40, palli, 25, 40, 42, 62, 81, 83–87, 92
43, 49, 50, 57, 73, 78, 107, 115 pallivallu 83
Madiga Dandora, 39 symbol of 65, 69, 112
Madiga, Dandu Veeraiah, 39, 73 Panchayat, 37fn 12, 46
Madiga, Krishna, 39, 73, 198 paruvu-pratishta-gowravam, 3, 9,
Madiga Reservation Porata Samiti 11, 12, 18, 27–8, 32, 51, 63, 89,
(MRPS) 39, 40, 72, 73, 197 92, 119, 120, 132, 137, 144, 166,
Mala (caste), 36, 39, 40–43, 49, 50, 185, 208, 213
57, 73, 78, 89, 115, 153, 197 patriarchy, 5
Mala Mahanadu, 40 Brahminical 12, 16
marriage, 7, 53, 92, 109, 119, 190 (among) Dalits 5, 11, 16, 224
companionate, 206, 222 spread of 16
cross-cousin, 106, 107, 108, 119, patronage, 99, 121, 210
151, 181 Periyar (see Ramaswamy Naicker,
and female education, 146–61, E.V.)
206 Phule, Jotirao 39, 69fn 5, 74, 214fn 3
and honour, 137 politics, of culture, 10, 18, 27, 33,
hypergamously, 137, 151 63, 65–90, 210
inter-caste, 158 possession, 125–7, 135
kondamarpulu, 120 poverty, 20, 45, 55, 63, 85, 116, 165,
love, 105 166, 173, 223
looks, 138, 143, 157, 190 pregnancy, 109, 120, 137, 141
maket, 152 prestige, 3, 5, 24, 127, 147, 165, 83,
re-(marriage) 105, 167 199, 206, 219
masculinity 16, 174, 182, 189, 212, prostitution, 116, 125, 194
221
Mariyada (politeness, respect) 29–31, Rama Rao, Nandamuri Taraka, 35
47, 51, 53, 67, 92, 139, 220, 221 Ramaswamy Naicker, E.V. (Periyar)
Mayawati, 41, 204 69, n5, 74, 214fn 3
micro-credit, 56, 185, 186, 187, rape, of Dalit women, 14, 38, 113,
188, 203 116, 163, 209
Mines, Diane, 29 Reddy (caste), 29, 33, 34, 38, 73
Mitchell, Lisa, 215 reputation, 144
258 Index

of Dalits(men) 174; (women) suicide, 36, 129–30, 198

113, 127, 136, 157, 200, 202
reservation, 39 Tamilattay, 215, 216
sub-division of, 39, 40, 41 TDP (Telugu Desam Party), 29fn 2,
respect, 3, 29, 51, 92, 101, 120, 35, 36, 40, 186
172, 213 Telugu, 46, 95, 205, 216
respectability, 4, 16, 33, 42, 145, citizenship 217
165, 185, 209, 213, 218 language 113
talli, 142, 145, 215, 216, 218,
sanskritsation, 5, 9, 63, 206, 212 221
sex ratio, 7
sexuality, 89–90, 165 Untouchable/ity, 3, 4, 18, 39, 42,
female, 92, 103, (control of) 3, 48, 66, 67, 70, 72, 78, 80, 146,
12, 63, 162, 166, 193–4, 201 207, 219
and fertility, 92, 110 shame of 27, 32
sexual relations, uru, 20, 31, 45, 49, 79, 83–7, 121,
cross-cousin 108, 119 150, 154, 180
extra-marital 113, 115, 120, 172, uruvallu, 31, 51, 78, 81, 86, 217
194
pre-marital 157 Vijayawada, 56, 57, 147
inter-caste 113, 114, 115 violence (see domestic violence), 24,
shame (siggu), 22, 30–61, 63, 68, 128–9, 163, 176, 194, 222
93–5, 116, 120
and boundaries, 92, 93–4, 174, Wadley, Susan, 25, 30, 60, 93, 110, 178
184, 218 westernisation, 9, 12, 206
among men, 112, 173, 175, 179, western culture 218
221–22 women(s) see Dalit women
among women, 92, 94–5, 111– economic contribution, 91, 98,
16, 199 105, 111, 163, 217
SHG (Self-Help Group), 185, 186 empowerment of, 46, 148, 184,
social mobility, 107, 143, 158, 207, 185, 186, 200, 222
211 elderly, 97, 99
sorcery, 131, 132, 133 and kinship, 103–111
state programmes, see Development, pollution and 93
146 representations of, 12, 13, 93, 210
status, 65, 66, 143 work, 7, 92, 95–103, 146
subordination (chinnatanam), 4, widow,
27, 31, 32, 33, 47, 51, 53, 54, restrictions 193, 204, 217
68, 78, 93, 114, 127, 133, 166, status of Dalit, 105, 198, 200
210, 221 widowing ritual 110–11