Gender and Caste

Finalised by Anna 2.8.04 and sent to Ritu for setting. Told prod done so.Gender and Caste is the first volume of a seminal new series, Issues in Contemporary Indian Feminism, which will serve as a point of entry and a guide to the complex and often contentious debates in Indian feminism. These volumes will construct a longover-due archive of writing relating to profound gender issues which will make a significant contribution to global feminist theory.Gender and Caste focuses particularly on the specificity of Dalit women's movements, and the development of Dalit feminist positions. This volume makes explicit the ways in which Dalit women are oppressed by a brahminical form of patriarchy which deeply stigmatises them because of their caste status, as well as the more intimate form of control by Dalit men over the sexual and economic labour of 'their' women. Mainstream Indian feminism has also had to acknowledge its part in rendering Dalit feminisms invisible, and address its own exclusionary politics.Gender and Caste argues that Dalit feminisms should take their place at the heart of Indian feminism, since Dalit women's struggle for equality requires not only a transformation of Indian society, but also of exclusionary upper caste mainstream feminist perspectives. This book also aims to support the recent alliances being forged between anti-caste activists and Indian feminists more generally.By selecting important texts, published for the most part in the last decade, that elaborate and advance our understanding of the relationship between caste and gender in either implicit or explicit ways, Anupama Rao has provided a succinct account of the caste and gender debate/discourse and a perspective on the theoretical tendencies that determine its frames of reference.