Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T02:37:19.122Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Resurrecting Seva (Social Service): Dalit and Low-caste Women Party Activists as Producers and Consumers of Political Culture and Practice in Urban North India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 December 2011

Manuela Ciotti
Get access

Abstract

This article examines Dalit (ex-untouchable) and low-caste women activists within the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Underrepresented in Indian political history, these women frequently portray political activities as seva or social service, thus recalling upper caste/class notions of self-sacrifice and philanthropy of colonial memory. Seva, however, finds no place within the history of Dalit politics articulated through a language of rights. This article argues there exists an interlocking relation between the resurgence of seva and the process of upward class mobility that was a precondition to both the creation of the BSP and women's political participation within it. Further, it suggests that women activists appropriate and re-enact gender idioms and models coined in colonial India, refashioning them for the exigencies of contemporary politics. In turn, this points to the presence of shared structures of gendered political agency cutting across time, class, and caste among Dalit/low-caste communities usually considered as “other.” In addition, this ethnographic focus on agency challenges the usual trope of Dalit/low-caste women as “victims,” offering a critique of the burgeoning field of Dalit studies.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 71 , Issue 1 , February 2012 , pp. 149 - 170
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Ambedkar, Bhimrao R. 1946. What Congress and Gandhi have done to the untouchables. Bombay: Thacker.Google Scholar
Basu, Amrita. 1992. Two Faces of Protest: Contrasting Modes of Women's Activism in India. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Basu, Amrita. 1999. “Hindu women's activism in India and the questions it raises.” In Resisting the Sacred and the Secular. Women's Activism and Politicized Religion in South Asia, eds. Jeffery, Patricia and Basu, Amrita, 167–84. New Delhi: Kali for Women.Google Scholar
Basu, Amrita. 2003. “Gender and Governance: Concepts and Contexts”. In Essays on Gender and Governance 20–58. New Delhi: Human Development Resource Centre, UNDP India.Google Scholar
Beckerlegge, Gwilym. 2004. “The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's ‘Tradition of Selfless Service’.” In The Politics of Cultural Mobilization in India, eds. Zavos, John, Wyatt, Andrew, and Hewitt, Vernon, 106–35. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chakravarti, Uma. 2003. Gendering Caste: Through a Feminist Lens. Calcutta: Stree.Google Scholar
Chandra, Kanchan. 2004. Why Ethnic Parties Succeed: Patronage and Ethnic Head Counts in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chatterjee, Partha. [2004] 2006. The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World. Delhi: Permanent Black.Google Scholar
Ciotti, Manuela. Forthcoming. Political Agency and Gender. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ciotti, Manuela. 2010a. Retro-modern India: Forging the Low-caste Self. New Delhi and London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ciotti, Manuela. 2010b. “Futurity in Words: Low-caste Women Politicians’ Self-representation and Post-Dalit Scenarios in North India.” Contemporary South Asia 18(1): 43–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ciotti, Manuela. 2009. “The Conditions of Politics: Low-caste Women and Political Agency in a Northern Indian City.” Feminist Review 91:113–34.Google Scholar
Ciotti, Manuela. 2006. “At the Margins of Feminist Politics? Everyday Lives of Women Activists in Northern India.” Contemporary South Asia 15(4): 437–52.Google Scholar
Corbridge, Stuart, Williams, Glyn, Srivastava, Manoj, and Véron, René. 2005. Seeing the State. Governance and Governmentality in India. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Corbridge, Stuart, and Harriss, John. [2000] 2001. Reinventing India: Liberalization, Hindu Nationalism and Popular Democracy. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dube, Saurabh. 1998. “Entangled Endeavors: Ethnographic Histories and Untouchable Pasts.” Comparative Studies of South Asia and the Middle East, vol. XVIII N. (1):82–92.Google Scholar
Eckert, Julia. 2003. The Charisma of Direct Action: Power, Politics and the Shiv Sena. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Forbes, Geraldine. 2005. Women in Colonial India: Essays on Politics, Medicine and Historiography. New Delhi: Chronicle Books.Google Scholar
Gauri, . 2004. Interview by author. Lucknow, India. September 9.Google Scholar
Guru, Gopal. 1995. Dalit women talk differently. Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 30 n. 41/42, October 14–21, 2548–2550.Google Scholar
Harriss, John. 2007. “Antinomies of Empowerment: Observations on Civil Society, Politics and Urban Governance in India.” Economic and Political Weekly, June 30: 2716–724.Google Scholar
Jaoul, Nicolas. 2006. “Learning the Use of Symbolic Means: Dalits, Ambedkar Statues and the State in Uttar Pradesh.” Contributions to Indian Sociology 40(2):175–207.Google Scholar
Jayal, Niraya G. 1999. Democracy and the State: Welfare, Secularism and Development in Contemporary India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jeffery, Patricia. 1979. Frogs in a well. Indian women in purdah. London: Zed Press.Google Scholar
Jeffrey, Craig, Jeffery, Patricia, and Jeffery, Roger. 2008. Degrees without Freedom?: Education, Masculinities, and Unemployment in North India. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Katju, Manjari. 2003. Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Indian Politics. New Delhi: Orient Longman.Google Scholar
Krishna, Anirudh. 2003. “What is Happening to Caste? A View from Some North Indian Villages.” Journal of Asian Studies 62(4):1171–193.Google Scholar
Krishnaraj, Maithreyi. 2009. “Women's Citizenship and the Private-Public Dichotomy.” Economic and Political Weekly, XLIV, (17):43–5.Google Scholar
Kumar, Radha. [1993] 2003. The History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women's Rights and Feminism in India 1800–1990. New Delhi: Zubaan.Google Scholar
Medha, . 2005. Interview by author. Lucknow, India. January 20.Google Scholar
Meena, . 2004. Interview by author. Lucknow, India. August 22.Google Scholar
Meenakshi, . 2004. Interview by author. Lucknow, India. September 16.Google Scholar
Meera, . 2004. Interview by author. Lucknow, India. August 24.Google Scholar
Minault, Gail. 1981. “Introduction: The Extended Family as Metaphor and the Expansion of Women's Realm.” In The Extended Family: Women and Political Participation in India and Pakistan, ed. Minault, Gail, 3–18. Columbia, MO: South Asia Books; Delhi: Chanakya Publications.Google Scholar
Narayan, Badri. 2006. Women Heroes and Dalit Assertion in North India: Culture, Identity and Politics. New Delhi: Sage.Google Scholar
Omvedt, Gail. 1993. Reinventing Revolution: New Social Movements and the Socialist Tradition in India. Armonk, NY: Sharpe.Google Scholar
Pai, Sudha. 2002. Dalit Assertion and the Unfinished Democratic Revolution: The Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh. New Delhi; Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Pai, Sudha. 2009. “New Social Engineering Agenda of the Bahujan Samaj Party: Implications for state and national politics.” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, n.s., Vol. XXIII (3): 338–53.Google Scholar
Pandey, Gyanendra. 2006. “The Subaltern as Subaltern Citizen.” Economic and Political Weekly, May 6, 1779–788.Google Scholar
Patel, Sujata. 2007. “Sociological Study of Religion: Colonial modernity and 19th Century Majoritarianism.” Economic and Political Weekly, March 31, 1089–1094.Google Scholar
Priya, . 2004. Interview by author. Lucknow, India. December 15.Google Scholar
Rao, Anupama. 2003. “Introduction.” In Gender and Caste, ed. Rao, Anupama, 1–47. New Delhi: Kali for Women.Google Scholar
Sapna, . 2004. Interview by author. Lucknow, India. November 30,Google Scholar
Sarkar, Tanika. 1995. “Heroic Women, Mother Goddesses: Family and Organisation in Hindutva Politics.” In Women and the Hindu Right: A Collection of Essays, eds. Sarkar, Tanika and Butalia, Urvashi, 181–215. New Delhi: Kali for Women.Google Scholar
Sarkar, Tanika. 2001. Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community Religion and Cultural Nationalism. Delhi: Permanent Black.Google Scholar
Ilina, Sen, ed. 1990. A Space within the Struggle. New Delhi: Kali for Women.Google Scholar
Ilina, Sen, 2004. “Women's Politics in India.” In Feminism in India, ed. Chaudhuri, Maitrayee187–210. New Delhi: Kali for Women.Google Scholar
Shaila, . 2004. Interview by author. Lucknow, India. November 26.Google Scholar
Skaria, Ajay. 2002. “Gandhi's Politics: Liberalism and the Question of the Ashram.” South Atlantic Quarterly 101(4):955–86.Google Scholar
Silva, Neluka. 2004. The Gendered Nation: Contemporary Writings from South Asia. New Delhi: Sage.Google Scholar
Singer, Wendy. 2007. “‘A Constituency Suitable for Ladies’ and Other Social Histories of Indian Elections”. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Srivatsan, R. 2006. “Concept of ‘Seva’ and the ‘Sevak’ in the Freedom Movement.” Economic and Political Weekly, February 4, 427–438.Google Scholar
Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari. 1993. Real and Imagined Women: Gender, Culture and Postcolonialism. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Vanita, . 2004. Interview by author. Lucknow, India. September 11.Google Scholar
Watt, Carey A. 2005. Serving the Nation: Cultures of Service, Association, and Citizenship. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar