Beyond binaries: Rethinking Dalit families and women’s realities

Drawing from her own complicated relationship with her grandmother, a matriarch who often shamed her, Christina Dhanuja seeks to reimagine the traditional family system as a safe space for Dalit women, where they can breathe and be themselves

Dalit families make up Dalit communities. But families, in the manner they exist today and the ones that some of us belong to, can be patriarchal, heteronormative hotbeds. They can be sites of sexual violence, internalized casteism, sibling rivalry, emotional injury and unresolved trauma. Given my complicated relationship with the traditional family system — both as a concept and by experience — the eulogizing of Dalit families hasn’t always rung true for me. Unlike Suraj Yengde, who in his book Caste Matters, writes this of his grandmother:

‘My grandma’s purity of love is a continuation of thousands of years of history. Her gentle touch on my face, her palms cupping my cheeks, and her eyes illuminated with tears are a window to my ancestors, whose blood in me is a proof of Dalit love.’

I share no such devotion to either my grandmothers. I remember my maternal grandmother — the one we were slightly close to — as an extremely sharp-tongued, strong-willed woman, who showered praises on men and hurled abuses at women. She was particularly nasty to young girls, including her granddaughters, slut-shaming them at every turn. She lacked the warmth of my friends’ grandmothers and had no kind word to say.

Christina Dhanuja

So, as I was growing up, I felt justified in dismissing family-based systems as nothing but stifling. ‘Of course, Dalit families are violent to their women,’ I would bleat. Dalit men are the worst and Dalit aunties the most regressive. Only to realize that these weren’t perceived by the world as just personal opinions. They served a more sinister purpose.

Two narratives

For instance, mainstream discourses of the last few years, have tended to be wildly presumptuous about Dalit women’s experiences in Dalit families. On the one hand, we have had people regurgitate opinions on how patriarchy amongst Dalits is considerably more democratic than what exists amongst upper castes. Dalit women have more access to public spaces. Dalit women are more assertive. And on the other, we have had savarnas selectively use our very valid and real experiences of familial dysfunction as an excuse to ridicule us. They have upheld the perception that Dalit women are mere victims, lacking personal agency in their relationships with Dalit men and elders. 

Neither of these narratives is entirely true, nor fair to the complexity of Dalit lives. And perhaps they contribute to why writers like Yengde feel the need to exceptionalize Dalit love — to the extent of describing it as a ‘powerful antidote to the malady of caste’. If only.

While academic and social-media spaces abound with critiques of Yengde, Illaiah, Geetha, Chakravarti and Guru, what I’m interested in is how these opposing narratives are helpful in constructing communities and families that are Dalit-women-centric.

What purpose do these narratives fulfil other than specimenize Dalit women for the sake of ‘insights’, with no resultant shifts in culture or structures? Are feminists who study Dalit women and pronounce them victims for staying in patriarchal institutions willing to offer reliable alternatives? Are they willing to do more than just critique? Are Dalit ideologues who aggrandize Dalit families for being ‘democratic’ willing to interrogate and eliminate the insidious forms of brahminical patriarchy active in our communities? Or would they only mock, deny and feign innocence? Are Dalit men who glorify their mothers and grandmothers willing to treat other Dalit women with respect and deference? Are Dalit women who fight for their families’ honour willing to see how they too are proponents of brahminical patriarchy?

Dalit Women and the Fullness of Life

My grandmother passed away when she was ninety. It felt like the end of an era, and to my surprise, I was even a little sad. Ammachi had spent most of her adult life as a schoolteacher and, in addition to leading women’s fellowships and vacation Bible schools in churches across north Tamil Nadu, she was the mother of five children. She was known for her magic in the garden and kitchen. She dried and pressed coconuts to make hair oil. She soaked raw mangoes to make pickles. She grew kannakabaram and roses and jackfruits and drumsticks, and sat on the parapet of the blue house, yelling at passers-by. She was, all things considered, a matriarch — the one who got things done, who held the anchor for a Dalit Christian family, and who played human before she could play mother and wife. Loving her was not easy, but neither was losing her.

How the family must evolve

Existing in this paradoxical third space feels more authentic to me than borrowing into polarizing narratives. Feeling gratitude towards our families for having got us far while feeling indignant about the trauma they’ve inflicted on us is as real as it can get. It may not be ideal, but it is also why many of us run to our families during crises, even though we have experienced the worst at their hands.

That said, it is precisely because of this predicament that families must become safe and sturdy spaces for Dalit women. Where Dalit men actively divest from their subscriptions to misogyny and false notions of masculinity. Where their journeys of self-determination, critical as they are, don’t demand the tearing down of Dalit women. Where Dalit women aren’t trained as little girls to disregard their inner voices, coerced into obedience, and subjected to relentless punditry. Where their pain and hunger are attended to. Where family honour isn’t prized over their happiness. Where Dalit women can breathe and be, in freedom and rage. Where their fullness is not optional. Where comfort and solace are not conditional. Where there is enough love to spur—and cushion — defiance.

(This is an edited excerpt from Dalit Women and the Fullness of Life By Christina Dhanuja with permission from Penguin Random House India.)