ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

Articles by Smita M PatilSubscribe to Smita M Patil

Law of One’s Own? On Dalit Women’s Arduous Struggles for Social Justice

This article discusses the differential treatment of two rape cases in terms of civil society’s outrage and the process followed in the aftermath by the police and the valid questions that need to be reiterated in the context of caste–gendered structures of violence in Indian society.

Gender Equity and COVID-19: Dalit Standpoints

This paper attempts to understand the larger meanings that interlink social spaces of Dalits women and COVID-19. It tries to foreground the following questions. How does it determine the realm of social distancing? Does it lead to a new world of caste and precarity? One of the central transitions in the lives of Dalits and their subsistence in an economy that is impacted by the transition of welfare state towards the neo-liberal state that does not address the question of social security. Capitalist phase of neo-liberalism thus is reshaping the gender relations within the Dalit families. Work forces of Dalit women are being caught in challenges raised by Brahmanic, socially regulated economy. Domestic and external labour of Dalit women are embedded within the larger facets of society. In addition to these social and political developments, atrocities on Dalit women are increasing day by day in addition to covert/overt marginalisation within the Dalit families. Thus, this paper tries to map questions of Dalit women in the time of COVID-19.

Revitalising Dalit Feminism

This paper revisits the project of dalit feminism through the social spaces that structure the assertions of dalit women from the Mang and Mahar castes in Maharashtra. It attempts to expand the theoretical possibilities of dalit feminism through engaging with the conceptual categories of Karl Marx, Walter Mignolo and Oyeronke Oyewumi and repositions the contextual specificity of the social reproduction of dalit women's social location-based knowledge. Thus, it critically examines the leftist critiques that reduce dalit feminism to an extension of identity politics. It also questions the non-committal inclusive avatars of feminism that welcome the category of dalit feminism, as any other feminist claims without recognising the epistemic turn offered by dalit feminism.

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