Author – Dr Amritpal Kaur

Although Punjab has a rich tradition of literature, the entire genre of identity literature is blind to gender and has strongly refused to engage with Dalit women. If we carefully observe, we realize that this missing of gender is systematic and innate in the understanding of Dalit assertion.

The Dalit assertion is the assertion of a man and is most noticeable in Punjabi songs like putt chamaaran de (sons of chamaars) which is blatantly masculine. Blocking of gender in historical context has made Dalit women of Punjab almost invisible in literature as well. Sant Ram Udasi and LAL Singh Dil remain the icons of social protest, who have tried to express the silent pain and humiliation of their women through their poems. A passage from Sant Ram Udasi’s long poem titled ‘Abode of the Labourers’ is as below:-

“Where all the roads are shut Where the dove is beset by crows

Where unwed girls become mothers Where daughters sigh in grief

Keep shining, O bright sun, on the abode of labourers.”

Omprakash Ghaso’s novel Mitti da Mul (the worth of soil) holds a special place in Dalit Punjabi literature for producing the first Dalit female protagonist (fictitious) of Punjab, Mindo Bazigarni who dares the Jat Sikh landlord for his promiscuous offer of collecting fodder from his farm. This novel was later in the 1980s turned into a play by Gursharan Singh, a Punjabi play writer. In fact, it was in his plays that Punjabi Dalit women protagonists made their entry into public theatres which created a large female audience and gave them a chance to get out of their private spaces into public spheres.

Mindo Bazigarni, Sheelo Ghumiyaran, Surjit Kaur Sarpanchni are SHE Heroes in Dalit bastis. Women mobilized in big numbers for these late evening cultural performances. Gurdial Singh in Anne Ghode da Daan (alms for the blind horse), succeeds in conveying the humiliation seethed by a Dalit woman after she returns to the four walls of her crumbling house from the fields where she had to hear insults for a few stalks of mustard from the landlord. Later on she walks out in the blind streets in the middle of the night to avoid what she feels as suffocation. Dalip Kaur Tiwana, a non-Dalit, writes in her novel, Eho Hamara Jiwana (this our life) that a poor Dalit woman has no kith or kin, once they are sold (even for a little money) she lives in an island of the social outcaste, even in the small village she belongs to none. Socially and individually, she doesn’t exist, only floats.

Female Dalit singers of Punjab have also suffered the same fate of exclusion from the mainstream entertainment. Folk legendary singer Narinder Bina gave a tough competition to upper caste female singers of her time like Surinder Kaur and Gurmeet Bawa. It is said that Narinder Biba was a far better singer in qualitative terms than her competitors but was given fewer opportunities in terms of technology. Bibi Nooran was another prolific Sufi singer of Punjab with a mesmerizing and powerful voice. Owing to patriarchal society and extreme poverty she wasn’t allowed to pursue her career in singing but few of her songs available today are still matchless and captivating. None of the present-day singers, both male and female belonging to upper castes, stand a chance in matching their powerful voices.

Swaraj Nooran, daughter of Bibi Nooran, followed her mother’s dream, despite strong opposition from family and society. Her daughter’s, popularly known as Nooran sisters, have created a mark for themselves in the Punjabi music industry which is male and Jat oriented. Another promising singer Ginni Mahi, has been able to make her presence felt by confidently embracing her identity of a Chamar. She praises Dr B. R. Ambedkar and Guru Ravidas through her revolutionary songs. Amrita Pritam, Ajit Kaur, Sujhwinder Amrit and many more women writers from Punjab have successfully expressed the feelings of humiliation, inferiority, anguish, love, desire, in their writings but none could touch the humiliation caused by the intersection of caste, class and gender.

Bahujan Andolan is a socio-cultural political movement in North India. Many Dalit women of Punjab have actively participated from the genesis of movement becoming more than mere cultural participants. Sheela Rani remained active in Majha, Malwa and Doaba regions, Darshna Devi fought assembly elections from Mukerian constituency in 2007 and stood third (earning her the title of Mayawati of Punjab), Nirmala Dasua fought the assembly election from Gardhiwala in 2002, Rachna Devi from Phagwara was the general secretary of BSP, Harvinder Kaur, (daughter of Tajinder Singh Jhalli who was the chief of BAMCEF) participated in historical cycle march of 1984 from Delhi to Jammu along with Kanshiram, Manjinder Kaur from Patiala, Hardev Kaur Shant from Jalandhar and Sawarna Kaur from Balachaur constituency remained the backbone of the political identity of Punjab

Dalits have been struggling for upward mobility in caste hierarchy. Many Dalits have been able to shift occupationally from being agricultural labourers to low-income private jobs in beauty salons, private companies and other shops as helpers, waiters, etc. Many are bearing the fruits of reservation, a hard-won right by Babasaheb for his people. The betterment of their economic status has not produced any significant result in their social position as lack of cultural capital is a huge roadblock.

The educated Dalit youth is busy in the processes of Sanskritisation and migration. Migration is synonymous with the Punjabi culture despite the fact that Punjab has the most abandoned NRI brides. The NRIs, however, do not contribute to the upliftment of their community but squander their money in expressing newly gained class consciousness. They rejoice in their false pride in being able to spend like Upper caste Jats. In their aspirations for upward mobility and adoption of high-status cultures, educated Dalit women are seen enforcing ideas of development and modernity.

Retro modernity is constructed at the outskirts of normative modernity for most of the Dalit community, who lack the purchasing power like the upper castes and cannot engage in consumption to claim modernity like them. They continue to fluctuate between rurality and modernity without being able to belong to either of identities. The educated Dalits blindly emulate the upper caste behaviour adopting more conservative norms around women’s behaviour which upholds female seclusion (dalitisation of patriarchy). Today, the educated and working Dalit women are nothing more than the producers of respectability (respectability hinges on the successful balance between work and home) and status despite being economically productive members of the families.

Today, the Dalit women of Punjab are living two lives in extremity. First is the rural life marked by extreme poverty, deprivation, domestic and sexual abuse, crime, addiction, labelled as quarrelsome, vulgar, coarse, devoid of moral sense, sexually promiscuous and complete social exclusion. On the other side as the dutiful daughters and wives engaged in the work of status production. In both cases, they are rendered powerless by the family, society and culture, and their powerlessness is being reproduced by all these social structures.

Punjabi Dalit women suffer from systematic silencing and have been widely under-represented in feminist discourses dominated by Jat women. They have no identity of their own and their Dalit identity is actually disempowering. Although they have been silenced in the mainstream, their bodies remember. The bodies of Dalit women of Punjab speak of their minds and memories. Their silent struggles are engraved in the furrows of their wrinkled faces and dried eyes; they only need to be touched upon through human endeavours.

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