Aditya Verma Week 3

       Uma Chakravarti, in her book Gendering Caste: Through a feminist lens, begins with a critique of sociological writing on the caste system, as written by men with a brahminical lens. She then explains how the brahmana have kept their hold on power even if not the dominant caste in the region. She analyzes certain stories that are used as lessons for sudra communities to remain within their scope of work ie. serving the upper castes. She uses the examples of Eklavya and a Sudra Ascetic to show it was perpetuated. She defines the caste system as  material and permanent repression.
       In the next chapter, she goes on connect gender within the larger aegis of the caste system, she begins by explaining the significance of endogamy as an essential feature of the caste system, and then connects it with a previously discussed idea of purity and impurity and how it has affected gender relations.  She uses various societal practices to highlight how the caste system has kept women under 'control' such as arranged marriages where marriage is seen as a means to ensure the continuity and purity of the male line for which a woman has to be, necessarily brought into the family, reducing her to a commodity or gift given to a male outside the family or kin group.
Both chapters highlight it's portrayal and how it has been fused and entrenched within the psyche of the society and its practices, the author also uses stories to prove her point effectively.