A high-ranking Dalit Indian Administrative Services (IAS) official recently disturbed a hornet’s nest by stating that caste-based reservations can be discontinued only after a Brahmin father offers his daughter’s hand in marriage for my son, or if she is allowed to have a relationship with him. 

A heated debate followed in the media about how an upwardly mobile Dalit had chosen to malign upper castes, especially Brahmins and brazenly challenged traditional Hindu caste hierarchies. The official has since been served a notice by the state government for his audacious views. 

But what most discussions missed was a vital issue. The remark may have challenged the taboo on intercaste marriages that Manusmriti had laid out; but what was equally questionable was the assumption that girls of all castes must be treated as a piece of paternal property that the father could give away at will. 

This also throws up a basic question: how far can the transaction of one woman being between two men be deemed proof of: A) the demolition of the Manuvadi caste system, and B) after accepting Manu’s laws that women of all castes and ages must remain under male ownership and protection, give her away at will to another man, as proof of being truly emancipated? 

A true answer can surface only after women’s own lived experiences of the caste system – which is very different from males’ – are invited for scrutiny under this debate. From a woman’s point of view, basic   segregationist ideas on which the Hindu caste system is based are all learnt, implemented and taught first at home. Vivekananda once condemned folk Hinduism as a religion of the kitchen. He was quite right. It is within ordinary homes that Hindu ideas of purity and impurity are given physical shape. 

It starts in the kitchen with food and its distribution dictated by a code of genderised hierarchy where males are the leaders. Generally, in most Indian homes, it is deemed that women will cook and men come in only to eat – “Maa khana pakaati hai. Ramu aur Pita ji khaatey hain (Mother cooks. Ramu and father eat the food),” as told in many school texts. 

Even if both men and women work in the fields or at the marketplace, the order remains just so. Whatever the caste or location, even when food is being distributed in families with lean incomes, a similar pattern emerges: men and boys will be served first and the best portions. 

Women always serve food uncomplainingly, often eating last. After eating, men leave the table while women and girls finish cleaning and wiping the kitchen, washing the pots and preparing for the next meal. Whether it is the choice of food, methods of cooking, eating and seating patterns, while consuming cooked food at home or outside in community feasts, neatly genderised caste lines are clearly visible. 

This politics of food impacts young minds and goes on to form lifelong opinions. Yet, it is seldom reflected in caste discussions in parliaments or academic seminars where manels – all-men panels – usually dominate. 

If proof is needed, just look at the rise, of late, of aggressive right wing groups within political parties demanding ban on eating non-vegetarian food in public, asking also for banning meat fish or eggs in school midday meals and frequently attacking vends and dhabas serving non-vegetarian meals along the routes of religious yatras. 

Even housing societies now ask tenants to stay off ‘non veg’. Meanwhile, the state mostly looks the other way, quoting privacy laws. 

It took a female social scientist, Leela Dubey, to penetrate the myths that cover the caste system and reveal the exploitative relationship between caste hierarchies and gender that inform administration and law. She identified three characteristics of caste: jati (birth status group, where rules of marriage and contact are encoded), hierarchy (where order and rank according to status are decided) and interdependence (division of labour based on hierarchy and segregation). 

To analyse the total phenomena, thus, is to realise how real and yet hidden male power and its network of interdependencies is. How these will often operate silently with support from all four pillars of democracy: the legislature, the judiciary, the executive and the media until stray testimonies of female whistle blowers unveil the truth. The entire network then gets together to castigate and deny her, as was in the case of Nirbhaya, Jessica Lall, the ‘Me Too’ group, and the female wrestlers from Haryana.

Male power within the caste-dominated system is not as benign as it is made out to be. It is a myth that has made itself true because all code writers and decoders of power hierarchies within the caste system have been male. Even as the mandal gender hierarchies may have not changed much within homes, the right wing state has suddenly begun talking of how women are goddesses and that ‘Mother Nation’ dictates all women’s sashaktikaran (empowerment). 

Hmmm, so how is it being done ? 

Earlier than 2014 (period before Independence as Kangana Ranawat claimed), during election time, efforts to influence ‘beti-mata-behen’ triads began with distributing pressure cookers, colour TVs and Janata sarees. By now, the coercion comes in the form of direct cash transfers under pro-women schemes. 

Interestingly, while professing such love for women, the state still will baulk from challenging the units of kinship within homes where men still by and large remain far more entitled and empowered through legal ownership of assets and custom.

From Nirbhaya to Nikki’s murders, it is clear that Acts banning dowry, female foeticide, marital abuse and child abuse remain useless for majority of women. The marriage market, meanwhile, is booming. 

So, while some states are taking an inordinate interest in controlling inter faith marriages and live-in relationships in the name of morality,  traditional marriages are being held with more glitter and show of Hindu rituals all over. 

In the name of helping families with marriageable daughters, often the state is organising mass weddings replete with a minimal dowry for girls, unaware it is flouting its own laws.

My grandmother used to recount an apocryphal tale about a poor cousin’s beautiful daughter. She had to marry a very poor man because of caste and gotra considerations. Once, when the father visited his daughter unannounced, he found her roasting some seeds in a pot of sand over a fire made with twigs. 

“What are you roasting my child?” the father asked the bedraggled daughter. 

“I am roasting caste and Gotra, Babu ji,” the daughter answered.

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Mrinal Pande is a writer and veteran journalist.

Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes of what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author and as chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues.

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