Caste and Gender

Intersectionality is a praxiological tool that helps understand complex and cumulative discrimination along several interlocked and coproduced axes of power, domination, and hegemonies. On the Indian subcontinent, the genealogy of this concept may be traced back to the resistance to the caste-gender complex especially as part of anti-caste movements from the late nineteenth century. The challenge to Brahmanical supremacy by Phule, Savitribai, Tarabai, Ambedkar, and Periyar among a host of others, notably women in Ambedkarite and self-respect movements, was predicated on freeing women from the thraldom of patriarchal family and kinship practices. This resistance has a continuing and cascading presence. In opening out of the field of intersectionality through translocational positionalities and to transnational and diasporic contexts, this chapter investigates the proliferation of caste discriminatory practices and exclusions in culturally and historically rooted ways in different locales. A key aspect of the caste-gender complex is the deployment of deeply embedded practices of structural violence and atrocity – hostile environments – especially sexual assault and humiliation, which may only be grasped adequately through an intersectional approach. The constitution of India, in setting out the nondiscrimination protections, provides the possibility for an elaboration of justice, mindful of the long history of combatting the realities of caste through intersectional approaches to resistance.