Author – Dr. Amritpal Kaur

The human social organisation has evolved through a series of stages: animal-like sexual promiscuity was followed by matriarchy (rule of the mother), which was in turn followed by patriarchy (rule of the father), which continues to exploit, suppress and oppress women of all ages. The hunting gathers communities were egalitarian, worked on the principle of ‘Separate but Equal’ and there was no rigid division of sexual labour. Female sexuality was not considered separate from female existence. With the formation of complex communities like Clans or Tribes, the production and reproduction roles of women were domesticized by their heads (male) but still having control over the family property. After the institutional division of agriculture in the form of male-dominated plough culture and female-dominated horticulture, the roles of women were compartmentalised to reproduction and domestic production of labour, to keep a check on her movements in order to ascertain that the family property was passed to the biological sons of her husband so that the property remained in his lineage.

Patriarchy is not a natural or God-given condition that came into existence because of inherent biological differences between men and women but a human (male’s) invention having its origin in the development of human race with a specific historic period (3100B.C to 600B.C.) when the concept of fatherhood originates in the family structure. It developed partly from the practice of inter-tribal exchange of women for marriage in order to maintain cordial relations among other tribes. As agriculture evolved, civilization began to develop and prosper in the form of material resources and private properties. The patriarchal setup helped to keep these resources confined to their families. Patriarchy, therefore, can be defined as a form of social organization where the father is the supreme authority in the family/tribe/clan and descent is reckoned in the male line, with the children belonging to the father’s clan or tribe. The father/male holds primary power and predominates in the roles of moral authority, political leadership, control of property and social privileges.

Patriarchy is a universal phenomenon and can be found in virtually every society in varying degrees. A distinctive form of patriarchy peculiar to Hinduism and unique to Indian Society is Brahmanical patriarchy, which was formulated by the Brahmans (the highest caste in the Indian social caste hierarchy) to maintain their status quo and power over other castes through endogamous marriage system. Brahmanical patriarchy can be defined as a set of rules and institutions in which caste and gender are linked, each shaping each other and where women are crucial in maintaining the caste boundaries. The exclusivity of Brahmanical patriarchy lies in its tightly controlled reproduction through endogamous marriages.

Endogamy is a practice of marrying within a specific social group, caste or ethnic group rejecting those from others as unsuitable for marriage. It serves as a form of self-segregation to resist merging with the surrounding populations in order to maintain the purity of blood/caste. This type of practice helps smaller cultures to survive over a longer period of time, just the way it has helped the Brahmanas, who are a few in number yet were successfully able to maintain their authority (moral, social, religious, economic, legal and political) over all other caste groups since ages. Men and Women are bound to marry within their castes of birth to maintain the purity of hereditary lines, enclosing all kinds of alliances within the caste boundaries. Caste cannot be reproduced without endogamy. It can survive only if it is able to maintain its distinctiveness from other caste groups. This can only be ensured by reiterating separation through Endogamy i.e. marrying within one’s jati and avoiding Exogamy i.e. prohibition of marriage between members belonging to the same gotra or ancestors. Thus Endogamy is a crucial way to preserve the qualitative traits of a jati and arranging marriages is a way to ensure that endogamy functions in a circumscribed way. What makes endogamy unique to the Indian hierarchal social set up is the way it ritualizes female sexuality and marriage performance.

The primary aim of endogamy is to ensure the immortality, continuity and purity of male descent line or Vansha and the caste. This requires a girl to be brought into the man’s social group from a different line. This exchange is ritualized in the form of Kanyadan through which a man gifts his daughter to another man from within his jati/caste group, in form of her woman’s quality i.e. virginity and her femaleness i.e. her sexuality and procreative power. The gift of virginity ensures purity of blood while the gift of her procreative power or Matrashakti ensures the continuation of the male Vansa. A man’s position is fixed in the line while women are objects of exchange in form of wives, (both incoming and outgoing) who must maintain all rules of purity and pollution of their respective husband’s vansas.

The building and maintenance of Brahmanical patriarchy is an on-going process achieved through the complicity of women in the form of rewards for their consent and threats and punishments if not conforming. Therefore, women’s co-operation in the system is secured by certain means. These are-

(1) Ideology in the form of chaste and pativrata wives called Stridharma.

(2) Economic dependency on the head (male) of the family, thus denying them control over productive/material resources.

(3) Caste and class privileges in the form of a fixed economic and cultural capital.

(4) Respect and veneration showered upon conforming (both in family and society).

(5) Finally, the use of force (threats, laws and punishments,) if not conforming.

The concept of chaste or pativrata wives as stridharma was one of the most successful ideologies constructed by any patriarchal system, in which women themselves controlled their sexuality(thought virus that the best woman is the one who controls herself) and believed that they have gained power and respect. The fundamental motive behind the notion of stridharma was to tame women’s sexuality in order to organize their maternal power. Women were schooled in concepts of stridharma or pativrata dharma (wifely codes) from a very young age through unconscious assimilations. A Hindu wife’s life is nothing more than an attempt to internalising and aspiring to chastity and fidelity as a means to salvation and as the highest form of self-expression. Endogamy also ensures that her sexuality is channelized into legitimate motherhood to guarantee a successful patrilineal succession. Thus motherhood was also ritualized and mothers were eulogized as being worthy of worship.  However, women were not given the right to become performers of the rituals for or by themselves.

The upper caste woman is the object of moral panic because if she is corrupted, the existence of Brahmanical patriarchy is endangered. Her subordination was institutionalised in the prescriptive texts in the form of laws and the use of coercion and physical chastisement in case of women who violated or resisted the codes has been an intrinsic component to the working of patriarchy.

The notional relationship between pure-impure wombs of women with the purity-pollution ideology of the caste system is that of interdependency and hence inseparable. Child marriage was a norm till this practice was rendered illegal, through which the unpolluted womb of child bride was considered to be the sexual property of the husband before she began to menstruate, immediately after which the consummation ceremony known as garbadhanam, would be completed. The obsession of Brahmanical patriarchy with women’s sexuality continues even after her husband’s death in the form of Sati and enforced widowhood. While the practice of Sati demanded a woman to burn herself willingly on the pyre of her husband and achieve salvation by proving her worth as a chaste wife, widowhood was enforced on women who didn’t wish to become Sati. A widow was forced to live the life of social death which brought an absolute end to her being as an active member of the social unit of a family.

Just as caste is a system of graded inequalities, Brahmanical patriarchy is also graded, with more precise and strict codes reserved for the upper caste women as privileges. The sexuality of Dalit women was exempted from strict codes like Sati, enforced widowed, the notion of chastity and pativrata as her movement was required for labour works. They were allowed the right to divorce and remarry. The loss of a husband among lower caste women did not create the kind of fear and panic as it did for the upper caste wife who was expected to remain sumangali all her life i.e. she should die before her husband. The practice of levirate or secondary marriages (marrying the widow with her husband’s younger brother) among the lower and other castes associated with agriculture, labour or other kinds of manual works was not a recognition of her sexual needs/rights, but a shrewd arrangement through which productive and reproductive labour of widows was utilized. Whereas a sexual relationship between a low caste man and a high caste woman is highly condemnable, the upper caste man’s use (sexual) of a lower caste woman was naturalized. The lower caste women are not regarded as grihnis or family women as the high caste women are. The upper caste men were allowed the right to take a second wife from the lower order.

The fundamental difference between upper and lower caste woman is the possession or non-possession of material resources or property. Since lower castes were not allowed to possess any land or property of their own, they were forced to do cheap labour under the higher castes. For a Dalit woman, labour is central to her existence but is devalued by the caste system. Whereas upper-caste woman has no role outside reproduction, her sexual labour ensures the purity norms are maintained and pollution is avoided. Although her domestic labour is back-breaking, it is not regarded as productive labour. Therefore, upper-caste woman’s suppression perpetuates caste purity while a lower caste woman’s sexual freedom is a source of production of cheap labour and a natural object of desire and pleasure for upper-caste men. Thus Dalit women suffer caste oppression as a Dalit at the hands of upper castes, class-based oppression as labourers at the hands of both upper and middle castes also including their sexual exploitation at the workplace and lastly as women they experience patriarchal oppression at the hands of all men including men of their own caste.

The upper-caste women are better placed than both lower caste men and women as they have access (through their menfolk) to education, social power and material resources owing to their secure economic location and fixed cultural capital. But these benefits are made available to them only if they conform to the patriarchal codes of their families, communities and societies. Their obedience brings them gains both material and symbolic in the form of acceptance as a good woman, wife and mother, whereas their defiance expels them not only from material resource but are also excluded socially in terms of having a bad character. Thus by ritualizing her consent the oppressiveness of Brahmanical patriarchy is invisiblized under the notion of upholding traditions. Women are considered to be the storehouse of family honour as daughters, wives and mothers. “Izzat” or honour is a deeply internalized moral code and action to uphold the izzat is always a male’s privilege.

Dalit men and women remain the most vulnerable sections of our society with the oppression of Dalit women far greater than their men. An upper-caste male still remains the most privileged segment of our society holding maximum power to date. A Dalit woman, besides being poor is also treated as a woman with no autonomy and self-respect. No doubt when Dalit women’s rights are violated they don’t arouse the same reaction as seen in case of violations of upper-caste women. In the case of Dalit women, rape is more an atrocity than a crime. Specific forms of sexual violence like stripping and parading naked are unique to Dalit women. There is a complete non-co-operation by the administration, the police, medical establishment, local media and political parties in such targeted atrocities on lower castes. This culture of impunity and social silence in caste and caste-based gender violence has been deeply rooted and too normalized (just like patriarchy) to be recognised as a tool to retain dominance of upper castes.

Caste and patriarchy are not spontaneous but inextricably tied to each other. Caste has been kept alive and active through unequal control over property, unequal performance of labour and endogamous marriage system which binds production and reproduction together hence reproducing the entire system of inequality. Caste, according to Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, can never break until endogamy is allowed to prevail in our families and society.

The control over women’s sexuality becomes more aggressive as the benchmarks of caste and its marriage patterns are challenged in the form of social changes like upward mobility, caste assertions, changes in land and occupation, and political alternations. Although the constitution has formally ended caste-based discrimination in public spaces, it has neither broken the hold of upper castes on material resources and state machinery nor could weaken the grip of endogamy. Even the upward mobilization of lower castes by emulating the cultural and patriarchal norms of the upper castes could not weaken the system. The best example of aspiring upward mobility can be observed in educated, modern Dalit women blindly emulating the cultural codes of upper-caste Hindu women in relation to their dress codes, food habits, rituals like fasting (esp Karwa Chautha), applying vermillion, bindis, adopting notions of beauty (solah shringar), wearing mangal sutras and choora bangles after marriage etc. This act of emulation provides them with a sense of escapement from their actual place in the society but in no means changes the casteist mindset of upper-caste women.

Centuries of conditioning of women by the patriarchal social setup has unusually succeeded in dividing women and erasing a possibility of sisterhood. Women practice discriminatory attitude among themselves in terms of a good and bad woman for e.g. (in respective order of good vs bad): married women vs single, divorced or widow women, virgin vs non-virgin women, women who bore children v/s women who couldn’t, women who gave birth to male child vs who gave birth to a girl child, women who suffered sexual violence vs women who did not or who chose to remain silent, etc. The notion of sisterhood can only develop if caste breaks and caste can only break if upper-caste women dare to challenge the display of caste symbols which appear innocent and innocuous but are heavily loaded with meanings of hierarchy. Upper caste women and Dalits (men and women) must work together against caste and patriarchy. This process of reconciliation requires cultural repositioning in terms of their mental re-conditioning through the process of learning to unlearn what they have been made to learn.

The challenges for both women and Dalits are many, most important one is to realise that the ideological principle of the caste system and patriarchy (Brahmanical) are so intertwined that it splits the oppressor and the oppressed into many internal divisions. Another challenge is to deal with the ideological reinforcement through the medium of films and TV serials which are being used in reproducing the notion of carefully controlled marriage system and its need to remain unchanged in the face of rapidly changing society. The TV commercials and beauty pageants are no less in propagating the myths of beauty and perfect woman.

The tragedy of India today is that the relationship between caste, class and gender still remains intact and shows no sign of dissolving. This situation will not change unless women are set free from the clutches of Brahmanical patriarchy. The sexuality of a woman is an intrinsic part of her human existence and it cannot be seen in a different or alternate perspective. Holding the sexuality of a woman captive under the patriarchal codes will never be able to make her a free-thinking individual. And unless she becomes a free thinker she won’t be able to co-relate her exploitation to a larger system of bias.

References –

1. Gendering caste by Uma Chakravarti
2. The creation of patriarchy by Gerda Lerner