Yashasvee Kumar Week 3

Gendering caste through a Feminist Lens

1. The Chapter begins with an impending question and a proverb that states how caste is never forgotten. It can be safely assumed that this is also due to the fact that caste is something that is always being reminded by the society including our own parents. The main concern of the chapter is to emphasize the role of caste in women’s lives. The author states how caste ideology denies subjectivity to the Dalits as they deprive them of dignity and person-hood and also describes how the person who dominates the means of production has the domination in the standards of the rule by which they will be evaluated leading the lower castes to not even have any place in the sphere. The author states how the lower castes have never accepted this hierarchical lower caste upper caste ideology and had constructed themselves a normative world in which they are respected and contain dignity and even some power. The author also converses about Viramma who is a woman being affected by caste and sex-based segregation.
2. In 2^nd chapter, the author claims how the studies on women have shifted from the generic purview of property rights, marriage age etc. to the specific nature and basis of their subordination in Indian society and their relation to patriarchal society and the transformation of the same over the period. The author describes the distinction between class and caste and explains endogamy that plays an important role under the caste system as well as marriages. The author goes ahead to state women’s sexuality and the restrictions put on them by the patriarchal society. The author also converses about how marriages are conceived in India along with the concept of Brahmanical patriarchy as a mechanism to preserve land, women and ritual quality.