Sahityasetu

Abstract:

This paper focuses on multilayer forms of oppression that persist in the minds of perpetrators through testimonies of Dalit women. It documents the significance of knowledge construction and praxis by studying the gendered construction and its influence on periphery through their stories of life. It aims to give agency to these voices which are missing from mainstream academia. Within the fresh theoretical perspectives of social identity and psychology of violence the study aims to explore more about the construction of perpetrators' mindset, histories of acts of oppression and representative spaces in these testimonies. Through Kamble's ‘The Prison we Broke’ (2018) & Panwar’s ‘Bawandaron Ke Beech (2020), this paper incorporated the views from the bottom about how the saviours of caste perceived the violence and how the perpetrators persisted it. The paper argues that there needs to be inclusion of such testimonies and narratives in educational pedagogy of psychology and its praxis in diverse forms.

Introduction:

Caste and Gender socialization is relevant to understanding from the psychological point of view, which indicates that both are intertwined together when we are talking about Dalit women. Caste and Gender are socially constructed norms and practices of these normative patterns followed by deep-rooted Hindu patriarchy reflect the psychological roots of the human mind. Caste and gender socialization is the process where individuals internalize social expectations and attitudes related to one’s own caste, class, and gender. Linkage with the intersectionality theory (Crewshaw, 1991) to social identity psychological perspective, reflects dynamics. It is crucial to understand the situatedness of Dalit women and they are not just only subject of categorization but they are active agents of their own narration, understanding, and actions concerning social categories. However, when Dalit women recount their experiences. As Guru (1995) points out that Dalit women are more prone to violence which is the cause of both external factors (non-Dalit forces, which normalized the issue of gendered- caste experiences) and internal factors (patriarchy within Dalits) as well. Further, Thorat and his colleagues (2020) argues that outcomes based on caste and gender attitude is more conservative based on their analysis of surveys like the National Family Health Survey (2015), indicating that Scheduled caste women were faced more marital violence as compared to general category women.

In the status report, ‘Dalit Women Rise for Justice status report (2021) by All India Dalit Mahila Adhikar Manch (AIDMAM) analysis the violence on the basis of caste and gender in their report, which clearly indicate the increasing rate (3,486 in 2019 from 2,233 in 2014) of violence and discrimination against women of ‘low- caste’. There are major causes mentioned by the report of AIDMAM access to land, education, work, wages, payment of services.

Also, the National Crime Records Bureau (2019) data indicate that every single day more than 10 Dalit women are raped. As reported on atrocities against Dalit women by NCRB (2014-2019), 15.11 % of total crimes registered under the SC & ST (POA) Act. Singh (2020) writes that sexual violence on Dalit women were gendered and caste-oriented form of crimes. Also, Sonalkar (2021) talks about caste cruelty and its interlinkage with misogyny in everyday practices of Hinduism.

Das (2007) talks about men in general and sexuality for them is the power to procreate. Similarly, the caste system is the power to procreate social division. Meanwhile, the explanation by Arya & Rathore (2020) given for Lower caste women becoming victims of violence while facing three oppressive levels as follows: caste as subject, caste as laborers subject when it comes to land and spaces, gendered oppression based on caste inequalities.

Furthermore, Kannabiran & Kannabiran (2013) tries to understand the question of women and caste intermeshed with each other and understanding this intersection with the reference of others. They explore the dimension of power- It can be simple and direct and it can be complex in terms of not providing space to vocalize the issues.

‘Most absolute exercise of power is that grievance or dissent is not even articulated. Articulating a grievance indicates a degree of political awareness of a wrong which the absolute exercise of power does not permit. So what we witness today in the increasing violence that enforces the maintenance of “order” in relations of caste and gender is the weakening of an absolute power that did not allow or permit space for the articulation or even the awareness of grievance or a sense of wrong and the consequent blurring of carefully drawn lines of demarcation’ (pp. 287)

Channa (2013, pp. xxii) invoke that the violence is cultural and symbolic which can reflect the brutality on Dalit in the morning newspaper and classrooms. The replacement of physical violence and discrimination in the context of urban areas.

‘The kind of violence that is most difficult to get rid of because it is so difficult to locate’ (pp.xxiv).

Understanding of Becoming a Perpetrators & Bystander

Bystander

Events of caste-based violence can be witnessed by different sources such as social media, newspapers and by witnessing it. Most of us are neither victims nor perpetrators but we are witnesses to such acts. Those of us who witness such cruel acts in our society give space to the perpetrator for their destructive actions by accepting them. Bystanders have been passive in their role when they are observing such incidents. This leads two ways: they appreciate the perpetrators for their doing and sometimes they recognize the suffering of victims.

The psychology behind the mind of Perpetrator

Dalit women body is the source of pollution for the upper caste groups. In the holy rituals, the entry of women from low caste was banned. It is still evident in rural areas. The incident of Rakehra village of Kurja, U.P. Women from the Valmiki community were stopped from entering the local temple called ‘Chamad Mandir’. (The Hindu Newspaper by Kumar (1, Nov. 2019). Another such incident, Sukumar (2020) encountered social inequality perpetuated by upper-caste people and upper-caste menstruating women. She said that ‘All the menstrual taboos are based on the separation of purity and pollution and therefore could not be applied to Dalit women, as we are considered impure and polluting from birth until death (Pg. 138).

It is pivotal to understand the caste system and its inherent groupism based on a particular caste group that gives potential to individuals to turn against other groups. The major division between in-group and out-group, us versus them, reflect in itself to provide favouritism to one group and exclude the other at the same time and space. (Tajfel,1982; Brewer & Silver,1978). There is a history recorded about the negative stereotypes and images circulated in the form of films, arts, and textbooks, and these sources lead to devaluate the individual belong to Dalit community and their representation get limited and violated and this individual and group saw as scapegoat and enemy. In addition, the historically deep-seated structure of Hindu culture re-evaluate the representation of Dalit women in mainstream feminist movements.

Another dominant cultural characteristic is that groups must follow them and obey their authorities. They store resources in their control so that Dalit men and women respect them and ask for guidance and follow decisions by them. Psychologically, it is noted that groups turn to authority for guidance (Fromm,1965). Sometimes, these strong authorities had a major influence on the dominant group. They lead to harm to other groups by the individual of the dominant group. Such instances were reported by Rao (22, August 2019) which reflect on the rejection of the authority to Dalit presidents to entry in the office of Panchayat. Later, Muthukanni, who is a Dalit president made her own panchayat office. Here, the idea of the dominant caste is that they are the authority to make decisions and Dalit women were struggling daily for their spaces. Authority is reflected in terms of belief in their Hindu cultural superiority, power, control, and endogamy. Dalit women are seen as potential scapegoats in dominant public sphere. When they reject their power and control. The upper caste group starts to see them as enemies. These authorities pollute their mind and this decline in power and privilege does not fulfil their dominant identity. The origin of becoming perpetrators starts at a conscious level and their unconscious and conscious thinking turn them to destroy the Dalit group. The group process is the major influencer to the dominance of the perpetrator. The predisposed cultural characteristics such as watching parents while doing harm to Dalit individuals. These are intensely by the dominant group to fulfil needs and that turn against other groups. These needs evolve their own personal growth, positive identity, security, control over events, their understanding of reality and authority. They turn against other groups because they think that other groups can destroy and destroy their phenomena to fulfil those needs and they connote them as ideological enemies or in Nandy (1988) terms as ‘intimate enemies’.

Indeed, Dalal (2009, pp. 77-78) made an argument that belonging to a specific group is made, not a natural process. This division of belonging is foreground in vicissitudes of power relation. Both emotion and cognition mechanisms are involved in making a group. Psychologically, we mentally do division of the continuum, and distancing one another creates idealizing one group and downgrading another group. Similarly, Ambedkar (2014, Vol 1, pg.49-50) rightly argues in the context of the caste system, ‘Caste is a social division of people of the same race...There is no Hindu consciousness of kind. In every Hindu, the consciousness that exists is the consciousness of his caste’. Hence, the consciousness of caste belongingness derives from the power relation which was internalized through vulnerable cognitive and emotional bases in the construction of the Hindu psychic and its relations. Social sciences in this context needs to decolonise itself by focussing on including these narratives in discipline and praxis (Sawariya, 2021).

Social Psychological Framework: Navigating into the minds of perpetrators

Based on the theorization of the social Identity framework, group membership gives a sense of belongingness to an individual. Similarly, caste membership of a particular group gives a sense of identity to ingroup members, which is psychologically found very significant. The impact of caste membership of the perpetrator has huge implications on their quality of life and well-being. Meanwhile, during the development of children belonging to specific caste membership shapes their emotions, morals, personality, intelligence and constructs their paradox of Us versus Them. The children learn through their environment which is evident in many developmental theories of psychology. Caste-based atrocities by observation learning can also be one of the possibilities. Likewise, individual lives are constructed by watching their ingroup members involved in violence, oppression, and exclusionary practices, for example, inter-caste marriage is not allowed, and following the endogamy was constructed in the mind. Hence, the perpetrator is constructed by our social world and their inner world follows the norms of their ingroup caste membership. A bystander has the capacity to observe the violence without getting involved in the violent event. They have their lens to support their own ingroup members while rejecting the outgroup member over the issues of caste-based violence. Their identification to own ingroup members is strong and based on the common prejudicial behaviour (Pal, 2015) that objectify Dalit women as sex objects, dark, polluted, and illiterate. The objectification is not only centralized but it also very much visualizes by the comments on the social media platform. Besides the comments on their body, language and education also objectify like in one of the performances of Gini Mahi (2016) demonstrated her singing as challenging lyrics on caste oppression posted on YouTube ‘The Bridge talks’ platform under the comment section there was one of the comments which stated as ‘Ladki ko bigad rhe hai, ye jatiwad sikha rahe hai’. The individual mind of this commentator is not based on instant reaction, rather internalization of ‘what he/she observes, learns and ideology from their ingroup caste membership. Psychologically, the social behaviour of perpetrators is not just extreme through distancing Dalits but they feel threatened about their social relationship and normative society which they follow for ages.

Furthermore, Bansode (2020) argues that Dalit women testimonies of sexual violence in India need to consider that can help in empowering the feminist and Dalit movement in contemporary times. Moreover, building on Hamby's (2017) conceptualization of violence consisting of four elements: (1) Intentional (2) Unwanted (3) Non-essential (4) Harmful. It is relevant to look upon the psychological violence and its varied manifestations, like an individual who is the perpetrator having an understanding of one’s own motives behind his/her act. It is clear that there is a lack of understanding of how motives develop especially, from the childhood development phase. In the Indian Hindu context, there are varnas systems which further, teach children how to live, whom to make friends, and whom to share one’s own lunch. These developments of motives to differentiate and control others based on power and high position/ strata in society lead to intent to physical psychological harm and exclude others. The evidence of acts of violence happening which the Dalit women is still persistent and visible. Who leads the group to perpetuate the Brahmanical ideology? What are the individual characteristics and psychological processes that lead to psychological violence? Caste-based violence has a deep origin in psychology and culture. It is not just shocking but depressing that studies were not done on perpetrators who aims to destroy the life of Dalit women. Now, there is more need to study perpetrators. As a researcher, we require ‘theory of mind’ to understand and interpret the actions of the perpetrator. A primary example of violence against Dalit Women, a popular Hathras case of Dalit girl who is 19-year-old ganged raped by the upper caste in Uttar Pradesh. Many such examples are present in contemporary times and there was widespread use of torture, humiliation, and psychological violence against Dalit women.

Dalit Women’s Autobiography as testimony

In the Autobiography ‘The Prisons We Broke’ by Baby Kamble (2018) which was later translated by Maya Pandit describe one instance where Ambedkar speech on why education is crucial and how it can help Dalits to bring transformations have a huge impact on people as she points out how villagers start discussing these pointers which were Babasaheb mentioned in his talk during a visit to their village.

Bhika Aaji (Kamble’s Aaji) concluded the address given by Ambedkar as:

‘Let me assure you, my sister, what Bhimrao Ambedkar says is absolutely right. We must educate our children. We must not and will not eat dead animals. We must educate and reform our community (pg. 65).

Hence, education is not just one step toward academic achievement but also, uplifting and empowering the excluded caste.

Dalit women in their everyday life faced tremendous humiliation by the upper caste. As Kamble described that ‘They were not allowed to use regular road... they have to cover themselves fully if they saw any man from higher castes.’(pp.52)

She shared that how ‘young girls or newlywed girls’ faced continuous arrogant and aggressive nature of higher caste. The attitudes maintained by Higher Caste people clearly reflect their belief in the caste system and their motive to humiliate the ‘outcaste.’

‘Doesn’t she know that she has to bow down to master? Shameless bitch! How dare she pass without showing due respect? (pp. 53)

She further expressed that there was caste rule in tucked the plates of sari. Only Upper caste women have privilege of their caste to show their border of Sari but Mahar women don’t have this privilege because of her caste. The argument explained by Rathore & Arya (2020) clearly put forth the cognizance of the mind of the mainstream Indian feminism that exclude the Dalit feminism, they said

‘The Dalit feminist thought is subordinated by both a masculinist approach to theorising (the patriarchal nature of academia) as well as, ironically, by the mainstream Indian feminism community (the castiest nature of feminist discourse in India thus leading to characterise it as Brahminical feminism)’ (pp 16).

In her autobiography, she expressed how the young women were beaten by their husband and in-law family. The female member of the family was treated badly by questioning her character.

In another Autobiography ‘Bawandaron ke Beech’ (2020) by Kaushal Panwar, has written about her journey of education, family, and being a professor in Sanskrit. It is crucial to talk about gender and caste interlinkages, she stated that she was in eight standard, and as a child, she had a desire to study Sanskrit. But her teacher humiliates her that she mentioned ‘mere mastar ne mujhse kaha , Sanskrit tumhare bas ki nhi hai aur waise hee tumhare gharo ka gobar aevam khuda kachra hee toh uthna hai. Jitna padh nhi hai uthna bahot hai. (pp.59)

Can Psychology and Praxis be Inclusive?

Pal (2019) in the view of caste, discrimination and violence stated that there is an increasing need to intervene social and psychological group dynamics based on the ‘intercommunity communication’ among caste groups to change their mindsets about the other. It is also important to empirically work on caste from ‘localised’ narratives and there is urgent need to attend to the mental health dynamics inside the mind of the perpetrator (Sawariya, 2021). Caste can only be understood from the narratives from ground that talk about dehumanization and lack of respect for human dignity. Psychology and Praxis must be integrated but must be located in the experiences of the group on the edges of segregation.

Conclusion

Testimonies of caste- based violence in the writings of Dalit Women depicts how it influences their life cycle located deeply in the minds. These narratives underline the spaces which Dalit women asserted for social justice and equal rights. Breaking the rigidity of existing social structures and minds of caste, these narratives create an autonomous body of knowledge that was never attended before in the domains of this subject and its praxis. It evokes an urgent need to look at the forms of caste based gendered violence, most of the times left unattended by social sciences. This paper hence concludes that in the subject of psychology and its praxis, localised narrative must be used to understand minds of segregation and oppression so that future interventions must be inclusive and holistically designed to reach people located on margins.

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