ANANDI Collective

Published as part of the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID)'s Building Feminist Movements and Organisations (BFEMO) initiative, this 16-page paper traces the history of efforts on the part of women's movements in India to address the caste question. Although the Constitution of independent India outlawed untouchability and its practice in any form, and directed the government to take affirmative action to compensate so-called "untouchable castes" for a history of oppression, "the stigma against them continues in both subtle and overt forms to this day." Accordingly, struggles by the oppressed castes have also persisted through both militant movements and advocacy.

As the authors explain, the Dalit Mahila Samiti (DMS) is a movement of over 1,600 Dalit women in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (UP). Supported by the feminist non-governmental organisation (NGO) Vanangana, DMS has its roots in grassroots empowerment training and strategising. "Initially, Vanangana focused on the individual Dalit women who were the target of its mobilization. As these Dalit women began working for change, they challenged patriarchal norms as well as the caste structure. The women gained a lot of experience, and their interventions on cases of violence became sharper and more skilled. However, the emphasis in analysis and strategizing at this stage was still on the woman seeking justice, not the caste to which she belonged." Strategies at this phase were essentially about building from individual women's experiences of oppression and creating collective power for the fight for justice. Translating feminist ideology into practice also meant dealing with other vulnerabilities that economically poor women faced in their day-to-day lives, like non-payment of wages, harassment by forest guards, lack of access to water, and so forth. It was through these struggles that they eventually came to the understanding that there is a need to look at the larger culture that promotes inequality.

This new direction was reinforced with the "anti-Muslim carnage that took place in western Indian state of Gujarat in 2002, with Muslim women being violently targeted for the first time....Vanangana took this issue to the women they worked with, in a conference that brought together about 300 Dalit women in their area....Issues such as religious fundamentalism, and the position of the Dalits and minorities, were discussed for the first time with community leaders." At around the same time, the murder of a Dalit political activist, who was from one of the villages where Vanangana works, proved to be a catalyst in sharpening the Dalit identity of the women at the grassroots level. This identity was consolidated further in 2002 during padyatras - foot marches - which the Vanangana team undertook in all the villages where they worked. They conducted meetings with the Dalit community to explore the women's Dalit identity, its meaning in their lives and practices, and what they would like to change. The women leaders were involved in several rounds of training and exposure to other Dalit organisations in Gujarat. Vanangana consciously moved into a facilitator role and the primary leadership and strategising role fell on DMS's shoulders.

During this next phase, the strategies used worked to highlight the Dalit identity and its significance in the overall fight for dignity and justice. This involved a series of dialogues at the community level to see the linkages between the women's struggle for justice and a life of dignity, as well as the larger social inequalities in which the caste structure and the concept of untouchability creating conditions of indignity and injustice. Out of these dialogues a Dalit feminist consciousness was created, as was the ability to take leadership in the cases of violence.

Specifically, Vanangana has had several public meetings wherein they have had ceremonies to burn effigies of untouchability. DMS goes from village to village to perform a play that seeks to raise consciousness against the practice of untouchability and what it does to human dignity. The play also provides some pointers towards the way out - i.e. through education and making courageous changes. They then seek women members, giving them a badge and a write-up about icons of the Dalit movement, and invite the men to become sathi dars, or givers of support. DMS is also working on changing practices at the household and individual levels. There is an insistence of drinking water and eating together, and thus getting families to change untouchability practices based on their new understanding of the concepts of purity and impurity. The Dalit women have identified some key activities which they refuse to perform as a strategy against traditional norms regarding untouchability. In violence-related cases, the DMS leadership adopts a strategy of scrutinising the various elements at play in the case. These are discussed in their various forums - at the cluster level, and if required, at the regional level. By sharing information on the cases, DMS builds solidarity and communicates the support of a larger movement to the victim.

The leadership model promoted in both Vanangana and DMS is based on collective power: not a top-down, authoritative model of power, but, rather, one that respects the power that each one in the collective has to achieve common goals – i.e., inclusive power. The leaders are encouraged to use their power for change, to take risks, and to involve others in the decision-making process. The organisation went beyond representational participation, but invested in a process of putting women in the leadership of building the movement. In terms of leadership, it meant taking risks, which shook the core by putting the larger movement at risk on various issues - big and small - particularly when it came to taking up individual cases. While taking on the legal aspects of the violence against woman cases, working with a community-based approach meant investing in communicating to other women the various elements of injustice at play, and then to demonstrate strength in negotiating with the combined power of the state and local elites.

Due to the fact that most of the DMS leaders are illiterate or neo-literate at most, Vanangana will continue to play a critical role in the following areas: proposal-writing and fund-raising; dealing with state, legal and judicial systems, which requires not just literacy, but a strong feminist perspective; contributing to knowledge building – trained, educated middle class women can provide the link between the contexts in which the Dalit women create a movement and the questions confronting a feminist scholar; and managing accounts and audits.

Amongst the achievements outlined here to date are DMS's persistence in pursuing cases of injustice against Dalit women, some of which have been "followed closely by the local media and administration, and had it not been for the women's resolve, they would have been buried and forgotten....As a feminist movement they are also building alliances with other groups working on Dalit issues, including Dalit groups that are led by men."

In the concluding sections, the authors articulate lessons for feminist movement building. First, they ask: what makes the DMS movement "feminist" in character, approach, and strategies? They also identify some discordance in terms of how DMS and Vanangana leaders are situated in relationship to the national autonomous women's movement. Some key elements of how DMS members define movement building include: internalising the goals of the movement, being able to generate mass mobilisation when required, and having strong leadership. In short, "[t]hose who are oppressed have to first walk a long path in their own hearts and minds, in order to realize that there is a way out of their oppression. To enable this, organisations like Vanangana are required to change peoples' consciousness and to provide opportunities to think and act differently. Trainings, interactions, and exposure all form an integral part of building a feminist movement."

Posting to the Women's United Nations Report Network (WUNRN) listserv on January 14 2009.