Summary
Contents
Subject index
The continuous demand for Gendering Caste: Through a Feminist Lens (2003) led to this revised edition which analyses the recent socio-economic and political changes that have taken place. Caste-based marriage and control over women's sexuality have been crucial for the continuation of the caste system in India. Thus, caste and gender are linked. Brutal reprisals have followed when dalits and women have tried to challenge caste-based marriage and inequality which allots strict rules of conduct for women and all dalits.
Pre-Colonial Structures of Caste and Gender: An Eighteenth-Century Example
Pre-Colonial Structures of Caste and Gender: An Eighteenth-Century Example
A number of scholars in the last decade or so have begun to argue that the colonial period marks a decisive moment in our understanding of caste and in the shaping of its contemporary manifestations. This standpoint has important ramifications as it treats the colonial period as a ‘rupture’ or a decisive break in the cultural patterns of our society, valorizing the pre-colonial indigenous structures. For instance, an important scholar representing this position, Dharampal, sees these indigenous structures as having an in-built self-correcting mechanism which ensured that these structures were never too oppressive.1 By implication (sometimes more explicitly too) this way of thinking positions most feminists, Marxists, ...
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