Why education is a magic wand for Dalits… Indian-American historian tells everything

Indian-American historian Shailja Pike has been made a MacArthur Fellow and has received a ‘Genius Grant’ of $ 800,000. Pike grew up in Pune’s Yerwada slum and now teaches at the University of Cincinnati. She researches the challenges faced by Dalit women. She is quite famous on social media.

Authored byKetaki Desai | Edited byAshok Upadhyay

• Shailja has done a lot of research on Dalit women
• Shailja Pike is a resident of Pune, Maharashtra
• Shailja Pike has also taught at Yale University

New Delhi: Raised in Pune, Shailja Pike has been made a ‘MacArthur Fellow’ and has received a ‘Genius Grant’ of $ 800,000. 50-year-old Paik now teaches at the University of Cincinnati. She is researching the challenges faced by Dalit women. Pike’s work is receiving a lot of appreciation. Her inbox is flooded with emails and her schedule is jam-packed. People are also talking about her on social media. But Pike is not distracted by all this. She is focusing on her research. Here are excerpts from an interview with Shailaja Paik.

1. What was the experience of winning the MacArthur Genius Grant like for you?

I am very happy and delighted with this highest honour. It is a great recognition of my hard work. I am very grateful as an Indian American woman to be included in this group of talented, creative people in America. I already have several book projects. I am working on my third monograph which is tentatively titled ‘Caste Domination and Normative Sexuality in Modern India’. I also have a few co-edited books that I am working on. There is a Dalit Reader, where I will be translating historical documents from Marathi to English. I think it should be a great resource for people who want to be able to connect with these primary sources. I am also working on a co-edited book titled ‘Caste, Ethnicity and Indigeneity in South Asia and Beyond’. I am collaborating with around 24 international scholars working across multiple disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, geography, religious studies and women and gender studies.

2. How did your childhood influence your work?

Growing up in Pune, belonging to a certain social and economic background and having limited resources had its impact on my family. But I always thank my parents and uncle who focused on education. Education and getting out of the slums became a chapter in my first book. Education became a magic wand not just for me but for millions. Higher education opens up so many possibilities

3. Your previous book focused on Tamasha artists of Maharashtra, how do you see this?

This is what I call the ‘sex-gender-caste’ complex in my book ‘The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality and Humanity in Modern India’. I analysed how caste gets intertwined with gender and sexuality and oppresses women, especially marginalised women. I focused on Dalit Tamasha women. They have to fight double discrimination due to both caste and gender. They were under constant threat of sexual and caste violence. This is because Tamasha women are seen as ‘public women or promiscuous women’ by the larger society. Let me give you an example. Mangalatai is an artist whose family has five generations of Tamasha performers. She told how when she was a teenager, she was performing in a village, she was forced to dance on a bullock cart that went around the village. Many men danced around the cart like madmen, trying to jump on the cart, trying to touch her or meet her.

4. Dalit women in India have long been victims of sexual violence. What is the role of caste discrimination in this violence?

On one hand we have laws and work is being done on paper, but at the same time atrocities against Dalits are increasing on the ground. Caste violence combined with gender leads to sexual vulnerability of Dalit women. Historically, dominant castes have used violence as a tool, as their power and authority to maintain caste hierarchy. This is the accumulation of their centuries-old power and privilege. Dalit women are poor and lack autonomy. The book edited by Aloysius I.S.J., Jayashree Mangubhai and Joel Lee traces the nature of violence against 500 Dalit women within and outside the family (2011).

5. How did Ambedkar view his work in this area?

Ambedkar was very familiar with what I call the sex-gender-caste complex. Both the colonial British and elite Indians portrayed Dalits as ‘childish’, ‘immature’ or ‘effeminate’. In addition, Dalit women faced even more discrimination because they were considered ‘sexually promiscuous’. In 1927, when Ambedkar was raising funds for the Mahad Satyagraha, Patthe Bapurao (a Brahmin male Tamasha and Lavani artist) offered money to support Ambedkar. But Ambedkar refused because as he argued, money was collected by making Dalit women dance to music that is considered erotic. He did not want Dalit women to be objectified as it promotes sexual exploitation. As we move into the 1930s, he faced various pressures – socially, politically, ideologically and religiously – and he announced that he was going to embrace Buddhism. When he did so, in 1936, there was an occasion when he gave this speech to the so-called public women which included prostitutes, tamasha women and jogtinis. There, he said that women should give up these so-called ‘dirty occupations’ and embrace Buddhism. At first glance, this may seem patriarchal. However, one should pay attention to who he was fighting against. Dalit liberation was the main agenda to carve out human dignity for Dalits. It was intrinsically linked with Dalits and the entire community that has not been given the privilege of being called human.

Courtesy : Hindi News