admin SAVARI
Caste violence stems from the inherent notion that superiority based on birth in the caste order is reason enough to hate, despise and harm those born among the lower and outcastes. Caste violence is one of the most powerful weapons with which resistance to caste is controlled and the caste order is kept in place. A caste society is a society that sanctions violence at all levels, in a top-down fashion. This sanctioned societal violence heavily impacts Adivasi, Bahujan and Dalit women, every minute and day, lasting throughout our lives and across generations.
In this forum, our aim is to document, analyze, expose and protest the intricate, historic and continuing relationship between caste and violence. This topic is vast; here we highlight some aspects of caste violence as an enmeshed part of our everyday lives. And also trace the contours of caste-violence which remains completely welded by seamless connections to the entire apparatus of the caste society.
The increased vulnerability of women to caste violence and the fact that this space is drawing predominantly from the perspectives of female experiences, memories and reactions, the emphasis here will definitely be more on caste violence on women. However, the conversations are informed by the clear understanding that men and women are individually and together subjected to caste violence by upper caste Indians, and it impacts both genders, children and the community at large. The perpetrators of caste violence range from random individuals to organized social groups, from employers in the organized and unorganized sectors to the Indian state itself in the form of targeted police action and inaction.
Caste violence is experienced in ways that cannot be easily categorized and slotted into specific types of violence, and consequently, violence cannot be remedied individually or in combinations, unless caste is completely emptied of its potential to discriminate humans.
Resisting caste violence requires the use of strategies that constantly demand our emotional, psychological and intellectual resources to be directed at non-productive human activity. It enforces a constantly stressed state of always being on the edge of dangerous survival, impeding our right to live, work and relax as regular citizens in a democracy.
Upper caste male violence
To expose and protest the intricate relationship between caste and sexual violence. This aspect of caste violence is undoubtedly the most widespread, elaborated from various perspectives, often other than the ones who experience and resist these assaults. As a group of women from these subjugated castes, we are also the ones who have benefitted directly and cumulatively from the resistance strategies of our sisters, aunts, mothers and foremothers. We experience the social pain and grief of the violated women from our communities like physical pain and personal grief.
If there is a common thread running through the diverse histories of Adivasi, Bahujan and Dalit women, it is caste violence. Of these communities, the Dalit and the Adivasi women to an extent are the prime targets of organized and open violence. The violence that Bahujan women face is also structural but not as open. It may appear like the Savari members are exceptions and have actually negotiated themselves away from this web of violence, but, this would be a misleading narrative. Too many educated young girls’ names appear as dead names in dishonor killings, because of their caste origins. The suicide of Sunita, a mathematics researcher in a central university leaves no illusion that upper caste male violence has loosened its grip on our lives even in supposedly modern, secular places of learning too.
Upper caste women’s violence on Adivasi, Bahujan and Dalit women
Violence is perpetrated by both upper caste men and upper caste women. Both are implicated. Solidarity between upper caste women and Adivasi, Bahujan and Dalit women is delusional, until such a time when upper caste women’s role in violence on women is openly acknowledged, studied and clear reforms are undertaken by the upper caste women to be civil and respectful towards Adivasi, Bahujan and Dalit women.
Violence perpetrated by upper caste women on Adivasi, Bahujan and Dalit women include domestic violence, workplace violence, verbal abuse, sexual abuse and economic exploitation. This includes their active participation in upper caste men’s sexual abuse of Dalit and Adivasi women, as well as participation in acts of public sexual humiliation such as in witch-hunting, stripping and parading naked women.
Caste and Prostitution
Caste and prostitution are irrevocably linked in South Asia. For us, it is the most terrifying and concrete manifestation of the downward spiral of the intersections of gender, caste, class and religious oppressions.
Savari does not subscribe to the view that prostitution is sex work. Our caste histories have shown clearly that prostitution has no element of choice. Prostitution in India is the consistent exploitation of Adivasi, Dalit and Bahujan women through the ages. This forum views and protests prostitution in India as an abominable aspect of caste violence. We seek the rehabilitation into the mainstream of all the women and girls from our communities entrapped in prostitution via educational scholarships and employment that offers respectful opportunities and upward mobility.
Caste and violence on children
The most vulnerable members of our communities are our children. Violence sanctioned by the caste society gives children the ugliest legacy that no other human society has ever imagined giving to its young.
We hope to stitch together the perpetual concerns and anxieties of parents from our communities about the safety and dignity of our children and evolve strategies to protect Adivasi, Bahujan and Dalit children from caste violence in schools, colleges, universities, neighborhoods and other public spaces.
Caste violence in literature, mythology and mass media
Savari continues the anti-caste traditions of deconstructing the encoded caste myths in the religious, fictional, non-fictional and curriculum texts. Particular attention is given to exposing the violence directed at women characters who belong to the lower and outcastes, in these texts. We are blessed in this endeavor to have at our disposal enormous variety of analytical tools that anti-caste poets, writers, thinkers and reformers have given us through the ages.
Savari believes that the way in which the mass media circulates a dominant notion of womanhood based on the social location of the upper caste woman results in the marginalizing and stereotyping of Dalit, Adivasi and Bahujan women, thereby delegitmizing them as women and legitimizing all sorts of violence on them. Clearly recognizing this link between mass media and the everyday violence that we encounter in our lives, Savari attempts to thoroughly scrutinize and study mass media so as to bring out these connections.
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This mission statement is an evolving document; new perspectives emerging from ongoing discussions will be periodically updated into this statement. Our stand on anti-violence will be elaborated using various formats-poetry, prose, plays, fact-finding statements, analysis of news reports, audio and video productions and reproduction of conversations in the social media, on this website.
Aspects of caste violence, such as violence within and between Adivasi, Bahujan and Dalit communities are topics that are continuously discussed at Savari. Internal critiques on such topics have often been misused by mainstream academics and others, therefore at present, these conversations are archived where they are accessible only to Savari members.
