Author – Dr Amritpal Kaur

Dalit woman of Punjab (like all Dalit women) receive her identity through her relationship to a man and has no identity of her own. The life of a Dalit woman in Punjab is a true picture of the intersectional reality of caste, class and gender. Their experiences represent clear evidence of widespread exploitation, violence and indecent inhumane treatment. The social hierarchy and circumstances make her to work in the fields of local landlords which they are not able to defy owing to the heavily entrenched caste system. Because of the hegemony of caste, they cannot earn a decent living.

The destructive results of the caste system in Punjab can be easily felt through the social, economic, political and educational status of Dalit women. In Punjab, the caste system plays through class politics than on the purity-pollution notion of Brahmanism. According to Gulzar Sandhu, a Punjabi, short fiction writer, in Punjab Brahmins enjoy little or no power either religiously or politically and are generally addressed in contempt owing to their strict ridicule by the Sikh Gurus. Jats are the most aggressive upholders of caste system through feudal power (feudalism is a system of social hierarchy based on local administration control by the landlords who control the distribution of land).

The disgraceful life of a Dalit woman of Punjab can be understood through three divisionary labour lives that she is allowed by a deeply patriarchal society. (1)Her farm or field labour involves strenuous work of cleaning field and removing weeds and other unnecessary plants before the wheat and paddy season while the migrant labourers sow the seeds, picking cotton, sowing potatoes, doing other menial jobs in the fields. Road sweeping is done by Valmiki women who are called derogatory words in public (mehtrani is one such word still widely used in Pakistan). (2)Their work as household helps in upper-caste Jat families, include cleaning utensils, cleaning toilets, cleaning cattle sheds stenching with dung and urine filth, making dung cakes, however cooking food is not assigned to them owing to their caste status. However, they are given leftover food which sometimes serves as a one-time satisfactory food for their hungry children. (3)Her domestic duties include cooking, cleaning, bringing up children, fetching water, collecting fuel and fodder (they walk miles for fodder and fuel from Jat owned lands and suffering indecent comments and liaisons), tending livestock or land, grazing them on either private land or ordinary village land.

Sexual harassment at the hands of their husbands at home, landlords at fields and other men in the society is the intrinsic part of their daily interactions. Body of a Punjabi Dalit woman (in fact all Dalit women) is very easily seen as an object of casual and easy abuse. Their bodies have served as a site of oppression since centuries owing to their lowest of the low position in the caste hierarchy. Jokes on their body and sexuality by upper-caste Jats are systemic and not born out of the vacuum. Caste pride and power dominance make them arrogant enough to laugh out at such a painful reality.

For Jat boys, rape of a Dalit girl is considered to be a coming of age normal. A teenage Dalit girl of Kot Todar Mal village was gang-raped by upper-caste youths for four days in 2006. Three women were stripped, beaten and given electric shocks by the police for refusing to gratify two upper caste men of Johar village in Muktsar district. These types of crimes where caste and gender out rightly intersect are a routine affair in most villages and towns of Punjab but are rarely reported or given any media coverage.

The climate in villages of Punjab is deeply casteist and patriarchal because of the feudal power structure, which makes it unsafe for Dalit women, especially if she happens to be attractive. There is systematic sexual exploitation and women have to pay the price for fetching fodder or defecation in the fields belonging to upper caste Jats. Most of the cases go unreported. As soon as Dalit girls reach puberty Jat boys start wooing them in the fields. They become easy prey because of

Their low self-esteem and poverty. Sexual exploitation of Dalit women by landlords is accepted fast as it is socially and culturally rooted, therefore considered to be a regular affair and silently absorbed. Girls consent holds no meaning especially when exploitation and humiliation combine caste, class, poverty and gender. Whenever any woman comes out to speak against sexual harassment or domestic violence or simply challenges a man’s privilege, she is labelled as a loose woman or a prostitute. This social resistance by male-dominated society has very deep roots in (silent/unsaid) patriarchal structural setup.

Tradition has sanctioned the sexual abuse of Punjabi Dalit girls in different ways; a myth regarding her sexuality is one such way. One such myth often carried out in practice by Jat boys is that if he has sex with a virgin Dalit girl, he will be immune to ailments of throat, eyes, nose and even headache. Defloration of young Dalit girls is a funny power play for Jat boys. Poverty, sexual abuse, illiteracy, social exclusion and class exploitation has created weak minds as well as weak, undernourished pale bodies of Dalit women. Agricultural crisis impacts women the most, who in their search for survival turns into a debt-ridden bonded labourers, prostitutes or dancers. The girls who dance at the weddings and parties where currency notes are showered in them are neither the daughters of politicians or upper-caste Jats; they are the daughters of Dalit labourers.

Debts are taken at the times of weddings often ends in the vicious cycle of indebtedness. There are cases where Dalit women have to work for 12 to 15 years without any wages to repay a meagre loan of Rs.1000/1500. A common practice in Punjab is Dalit labourers hooked on to opium and poppy husk by landlords so that they work continuously for long hours without feeling fatigued. Women are the worst hit as they have to endure physical and sexual violence at the hands of their drunkard husbands. Suicides of their labourer husbands and shrinkage of agricultural land leave them to fend for their huge families. As there is an acute lack of earning options for them, they remain stuck in extremely low paying back-breaking odd jobs in the village.

Dairy remains an important income-generating activity for Dalit families, but in the absence of land for cattle and fodder, women have to walk miles for fodder and grazing, putting their dignity and sexual safety at risk. There is not much evidence on the wages of women labourers of Punjab as there is hardly any analytical work in exploring their work and wages in Punjab’s farm economy. The Dalit women of Punjab are simply not visible to professional economists or scientists as agricultural labourers, farmers or survivors of male suicides.

Most of the struggles of Dalit women of Punjab have been individual, silent struggles in the form of endurance. Baljit, daughter of Bant Singh, a Dalit agrarian labourer and activist, was gang-raped by upper-caste men. Bant Singh lost both his arms and a leg in an attack by upper-caste Jats for having fought for justice for his minor daughter. This was the first case of sexual assault filed, fought and won by any Dalit in Punjab so far. Baljit, like her father, had shown great courage in rebuilding her shattered life and today she is a proud wife, mother, stepmother, home-maker and an activist. However, most of their individual struggles have not seen the light owing to their fixed position in the social order, but a few collective struggles have forced society to acknowledge their presence.

Punjab has been a centre of peasant struggles and most of these movements remain unreported in the national media, making Dalit women in Punjab unnoticeable in the public sphere. There a few collective expressions of resistance by Dalit women of Punjab against the state politics.

Gobindpura Struggle

In October 2010, the Punjab government acquired 806 acres of fertile multi-crop yielding land in Gobindpura village of Mansa district for a power project which forced farmers to surrender their lands and compensation was far below the market price of land. A large number of farmers became landless and Dalit labourers, who had a few milking

Animals lost land for grazing. Women became the face of this agitation blocking roads, railway tracks and did not retreat even when they were abused by the police. This movement continued for four years and in 2014, during another peasant mobilisation in Bathinda, that first time in the history of India government of Punjab agreed to pay monetary compensation of Rupees three lakhs each for the rehabilitation of Dalit landless labourers.

Bathinda Morcha

This was a unique protest where gender role reversal was publically accomplished and welcomed as women led the agitation and men made chapattis. This protest was also documented in a Punjabi folk song. The demands of this protest were the release of compensation money to the families of farmers and landless labourers who had committed suicide, release of compensation for the families of Gobindpura, putting an end to taking auctioning of land reserved for Dalits, implementation of land reforms and awarding plots to landless.

Dalit women of Matoi

In 2014, in village Matoi of Sangrur district, an auction of 17 bighas (3.4acres) of Panchayat land reserved for scheduled castes under the charge of block development and Panchayat officer (BDPO) was challenged by a group of young Dalit women. Despite being harassed by Jat Sikh landowners and police, these brave girls did not deter and started collecting money to bid for the land. The only demand was to grow fodder for Dalit households on their reserved land so that they don’t have to endure humiliation and sexual abuse at the hands of landowners. The Punjab Village commons Land Act of 1961, allows Panchayats to lease village land to the highest bidder from which a third is reserved for the scheduled castes and auctioned separately. The landlords have been hiding for this reserved land in the name of Dalits or proxy candidates. Dalits organised in a local union forming zameen prapti sangharsh committee (committee to take back land) for this resistance, as a result, they had to suffer boycott by Jat landlords. They were stopped from using fields for relieving themselves, from cutting grass for their livestock, were humiliated and animals were thrashed while grazing, women were stalked and abused publically. Women decided to take stand against the sarpanch and collectively bid for their share of common land called Shamlat.

Gandhar Rape Case

On 24 January 2014, in the village of Gandhar in Muktsar district, a 24 years old Dalit girl was gang-raped by three powerful Jat Sikh landlords. After a hostile legal response, thousands of women and girls, including many rape survivors mobilised and showed their strength collectively. Under political pressure, women and men were arrested by the police. In revolt, more and more women came out of their private sphere and marched the streets of Bathinda as a result of which the accused were arrested, and the arrested protestors were released.

Dalit identity (like most of India) has remained confined to Dalit masculinity. Dalit identity in the form of Dalit dominated deras have served as a sign of social mobility and centre of politics, but it is completely blind to the presence of Dalit women of Punjab. Although women gain strength in a numerical collective deras have failed to encounter the question of gender in understanding Dalit identity and denied them individuality.

Next and concluding part of this series will be about Dalit literature of Punjab with reference to writers, singers and poets.

About the author – Dr Amritpal Kaur, Institute of Ambedkar Studies, Jalandhar, Punjab.