A Space of her Own & Women Heroes and Dalit Assertion in North India

A SPACE OF HER OWN
Personal Narratives of Twelve Women
edited by: Leela Gulati & Jasodhara Bagchi
ISBN: 0-7619-3315-8
Published : March 2005 Pages : 276 Price: Rs.340 Paperback Edition
Publisher: SAGE India www.indiasage.com


WOMEN HEROES AND DALIT ASSERTION IN NORTH INDIA
Culture, Identity and Politics (Series:Cultural Subordination and the Dalit Challenge, 5)
Author: Badri Narayan
Published : September 2006 Pages : 186 Paperback Edition
ISBN: 0-7619-3537-1
Publisher: Sage India www.sageindia.com Price: Rs.295.


Very often myths are more influential than reality, they also give new meaning to reality. Memories too often help to triumph over an oppressive present and the past is often invented in new forms to overcome such a present. This can be seen in the case of many historically marginalized communities who give new interpretations to their past to suit the needs of their present in order to move towards a better and brighter future. The Dalit castes of UP in north India form one such group. This group though large in numbers has always been looked down upon and reviled by the hegemonic upper castes who are small in number. The volume, Women Heroes and Dalit Assertion in North India explores cultural repression in India and ways in which it is overcome. The book studies the burgeoning Dalit politics in North India and shows how Dalit women heroes (viranganas) of the 1857 Rebellion have emerged as symbols of Dalit assertion in Uttar Pradesh and are being used by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) to build the image of its leader, Mayawati. Our caste-ridden society subaltern castes have had an inhuman, subjugated existence for a very long time. Over a period of time they began to resist upper-caste hegemony and began the quest for political and cultural space. With awareness setting in, the Dalit identity is taking a concrete shape today. Among the factors contributing to this evolution are politics and the process of fashioning alternate history through the resurrection of memories and myths regarding Dalit heroes – both men and women – of yore covering the time span ranging from the two epics to the more recent 1857 War of Independence and even later.
On the other hand the collection of twelve narratives, A Space of Her Own focuses not so much on women’s subservient position vis-a-vis men, but on women’s relations with each other. With the authors locating their personal struggles within those of three generations of women in their families, these narratives span a period of over a 100 years, and intersect both the private and public domains. Each narrative in A Space of Her Own is a tale of how the author fought to establish her own personhood and create a sphere of autonomy where she is able to make decisions to nurture herself and those around her.

While demonstrating how myths and memories of the role of Dalits in India’s freedom struggle are employed for constructing identity, and then reconstructed for political mobilization, Women Heroes and Dalit Assertion in North India narrates some of the tales used to develop political consciousness at the grass-roots level. It also reveals how stories picked up from among the people themselves are reinterpreted, packaged and disseminated orally and via pamphlets, describing how gods, heroes and other cultural resources of each caste are converted into political capital by giving them a visual image through calendars, statues, posters and memorials and also shows how the BSP creates and recreates historical material to expand its electoral base.

Four themes emerge prominently from the narratives in A Space of Her Own, reflecting on the emotional lines of matriliny within the social structure of patriliny. They include the role of the renegade predecessors in the family who set out a pattern of independence that paved the way for her inspirational act, the presence of mothers or grandmothers who come forward in situations of stress to exhibit unforeseen strengths, stories of obstacles overcome and stories of external social change that shaped the lives of these women. Eight of the narratives were written for a workshop of women’s lives hosted by the center for developmental studies in Trivandrum. 12 narratives form the core of this book edited by edited by Leela Gulati formerly at Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvanthapuram & Jasodhara Bagchi West Bengal Commission for Women, Kolkata .The authors include women of substance namely; Bagchi herself, Zarina Bhatty, Priti Desai, Nabaneeta Dev Sen, Carolyn Elliott, Leela Gulati, Arlie Hochschild, Saroja Kamakshi, Maithreyi Krishna Raj, Vina Mazumdar, Vijaya Mehta, Sushil Narulla, Mary Roy and Hema Sundaram. Each narrative is a tale of how the author established her own parenthood. Several of the authors recount how previous generations of women found personal space under the ‘bushel of domesticity’.


Badri Narayan of G B Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad, author of Women Heroes and Dalit Assertion in North India has attempted to examine the relationship between cultural politics and the democratic participation of marginalised communities of UP. He also highlights "hidden issues related to identity construction, which underlie the obvious issues related to the fulfillment of basic needs and socio-economic development`85" and how they are used to mobilise the Dalits at the grass-roots level.
Based on field studies and secondary information, the author outlines the politics of dissent which uses historical and cultural resources as identity markers in political mobilization. This book, therefore, becomes invaluable for students of politics, sociology and history and all those engaged in Dalit studies.

It is inevitable that in Women Heroes and Dalit Assertion in North India the BSP, especially the Mayawati factor is given due attention here and that’s not a minus in any form. The Mayawati faction has emerged because of social malaise and it’s only fair on the part of the author to recognize that fact. What is important about this book though, is the community-wise examination of the evolution of Dalit consciousness in UP. And this especially makes this book an invaluable text , well researched and lucidly told!




It is stories such as in A Space of Her Own ,when repeated over generations, have the power to inspire women to live with dignity and to create and defend lives for themselves, their families, and the women who follow them. The book dwells at length on women in relation to other women within families. It does not follow the trend of caricaturing the mother-in-law daughter-n-law stereotype. Here women together derive strength from ea ch other and is therefore a revelation. Can these narratives be considered the social history of previous generations? They are certainly not eyewitness accounts of the past and can be seen to be clearly mediated by each authors contemporary effort to express herself and her own reasoning of her life story so far. Despite this short-coming this book has all the makings of a more often than not realistic construct of a historic past.
Johnson Thomas