Placing the Dalit Women at the Intersections: A Sociological Study of Dom Women of Kolkata

Introduction

The caste system in India is built on the idea of purity and pollution. On the lowest rungs of this hierarchy is the Dalit. The Dalit (lower castes) violates, by his very existence, the Brahminical (uppermost caste) obsession with hygiene. ‘Purity’ and ‘pollution’ remain central to the caste system—indeed—central to Hinduism itself—and the necessity for the Brahmin’s purification and hygiene (Dumont, 1996). After 73 years of independence, India is flourishing as the world’s biggest democratic institution, taking great pride in its economic development. Despite all its glory, the country still struggles to come out of the clutches of the caste system which has denied generations of Dalits, their rights and dignity.

The practice of manual scavenging is prevalent across the length and breadth of India even after abolishing the practice by law in 1993. Economic development neither guarantees a society free from the evils of the caste system nor frees the Dalit body from the stigma and humiliation they face. India’s caste system provides a fertile ground on which humiliation and untouchability are played out in different forms. Structures of humiliation are produced and built within this context of the caste system and oppression (Guru, 2009). Societies based on humiliation uses all means to keep the humiliated groups in conditions of poverty, squalor, ill-health, political isolation and marginalization. In societies like these, humiliation is inbuilt into the very structure of the society (Parekh, 2009). The caste system relegates the dirty tasks of society to the lower castes. The work that the lower castes engage in is often an extension of their identity of being ‘dirty’ or ‘polluted’. Thus, humiliation is not only an integral part of the very structures of the society they live in but also constitutive of their daily life and experiences.

In this context, this article tries to study the everyday experiences of women belonging to the lower-caste manual scavenging community of Kolkata. The manual scavenging community of Kolkata is called Dom. To study how violence and marginalization operate, one has to look into the everyday interactions, because it is in the everyday life that we find inequality, injustice, power relations, oppression and domination. The individual identity is the result of the place one holds in the wider institutions of society. An effort to understand any form of violence and oppression must begin with and be built upon the analysis of an individual’s everyday interaction (Sztompka, 2008). This article tries to understand the everyday experiences of Dom women in their workplace.

The women of Dom community lie at the intersection of various forms of oppression and marginalization. The concept of intersectionality by Crenshaw (1989) is crucial to understanding the experiences of these women as they lie at the junction of caste, class and gender oppression (Crenshaw, 1989). The various forms of structures of oppression exercise power on them in different forms and varying degrees, leading to their marginalization. This article seeks to place the experiences of Dalit women at the intersection of caste, class and gender oppression. This article tries to map out and understand the concept of intersectionality by placing the Dom women at the intersections of caste, class, and gender oppression and see how these structures play out in her everyday life. This article will attempt to place the experiences of Dalit women vis-à-vis their male and upper-caste lower-class female counterparts to understand how their experiences are similar or different from them. It tries to explore how lying at the intersections produces everyday instances of violence and humiliation for Dalit women.

The Field

Doms of Kolkata, who reside in the capital city of West Bengal, India, live in a slum area called basti. For this research, the Dom community of the New Market area was studied. Doms of New Market, Kolkata, are involved in cleaning and sweeping the public place (although the Dom community from other parts of Kolkata may be involved in other occupations). Their work (of both men and women) primarily includes sweeping and cleaning roads, public places, manual scavenging and cleaning household toilets.

Methodology

For this research, nine women were interviewed. Out of the nine women interviewed, eight women work as latrine cleaners and one of them works in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) office. The husbands of the respondents are sweepers who sweep the offices and roads around the market area. Most of the men are also manual scavengers. They work as manual scavengers as the wage they get by the KMC is not sufficient enough to meet their basic needs. Manual scavenging is the extra work men do sometimes to survive and make ends meet.

This research is a qualitative exploratory one, and the methodology used to conduct this research was face-to-face interviews. All the interviews are semi-structured. A snowballing sample has been used where one respondent acted as a gatekeeper and introduced me to the rest of the respondents. A bottom-up approach has been used to study the experiences of these women. Channa (2013) in her work ‘Life as a Dalit’ argues that reality can be better understood when constructed out of experience rather than an uninvolved observation. She argues that to study the Dalit community one has to look from bottoms-up. A bottom-up approach helps us look at the caste system and caste oppression from the viewpoint of those located at the lowest rungs of the society (Channa, 2013).

The Field Setting

The Dom basti (slum) of New Market lies at the heart of a busy market space of Kolkata. The paradox lies at its strategic position where it lies at the centre yet at the periphery of the market space. Hidden behind the chaotic market lies a Dom basti of more than one hundred households. The entrance of the Basti is narrow, thus making it insignificant to notice. But once we cross the narrow lane, it opens into the universe of people relegated to the most polluted job of cleaning dirt and feces. The Dom basti consists of a central open space like a courtyard, surrounded by a series of houses adjacent to each other on all sides of the courtyard. The houses are small with no window or source of ventilation. When I first met the respondents, they refused to take me inside their house because they told me that I won’t be able to stay in their house for more than a minute. The house had no source of ventilation; women were cooking under a thick blanket of hot air that came out from the stove.

Each family has one room in the slum. Due to the shortage of space and lack of ventilation, men sit on the footpath outside the slum. Children play on the roads or footpaths. The open space inside the slum is occupied by women who spend their time chatting or weaving baskets once they find free time after their chores. Here too, we see a clear spatial distinction between the inner and outer space, men sit on the footpaths outside the slum and occupy the outer areas of the basti whereas women sit in the open space inside the basti and inhabit the inner space. Most of the interviews took place in this inner open space or courtyard of the basti. This open space is also the area where there is water supply so most of the essential household chores like washing clothes, utensils and bathing take place in this area. Groups of women sit washing and cleaning their utensils and clothes coupled with chatting with each other. The conversations here range from what they have cooked to discussing incidents from their workplace. It is the time and space when women come together talking about their everyday lives with each other. It is also the space where women collectively enjoy some leisure time and discuss their day-to-day routine.

Experiences of Dom Women

The women interviewed for this research are working women who work as domestic helpers or as toilet cleaners. While the women of the upper castes are the cooks of the house which is a better-paid job, Dom women reported that they are never given the job of a cook. Women of the Dom basti reported that none of them ever found any work other than that of toilet cleaners or household sweepers. No upper-caste household will employ a lower-caste Dom woman as a cook or caretaker. Identity plays a crucial role for all these women in their jobs. The fact that these women belong to the lower caste is a matter of obstacle for them. On asking why they have never found jobs as a cook, they appeared puzzled at this question. Rakhi said, ‘Who will have food cooked by our hands, I am a lower-caste woman nobody will have food cooked by me’.

This resonates with the age-old concept of upper castes not accepting food and water from the lower castes. The respondents reported that finding good jobs was difficult because in that area everyone knew their identity and would not employ them in better jobs like that of a cook or aaya (children caretaker). Thus, the Dom women would always be relegated to the job of sweeping and cleaning latrines by the upper castes because of their identity. The women reported that to find better jobs, they would have to move to some other area where their identities remain unknown. But this was difficult because of child-caring and household responsibilities since traveling to far-off areas would not only be expensive but also inconvenient for them.

Experiencing Violence at the Intersection

All the women interviewed for this research and most of the women of the basti are employed as domestic sweepers or toilet cleaners in and around the New Market area. Domestic service is distinct from other forms of employment because a woman’s domestic work is seen as an extension of her innate qualities of being a woman (Crompton, 2006). There seems to be a historically established relationship between domestic work and femininity and this relation has remained unbroken and considered to be a women’s terrain. Since domestic work is women’s work, it is often devalued or considered less valuable (Barker & Feiner, 2010). The women of Dom basti are not only involved in domestic work that is devalued but also involved in a work that is the most polluting. According to Geetha (2009), the Dalit body is reduced to do all kinds of ‘impure work’ because contrary to the bodies of upper castes whose bodies have some symbolic value to offer, the lower-caste Dalit body is devoid of any value. The Dalit body does not secrete any material or symbolic value thus the untouchable body becomes a labouring body whose work is to carry out the hazardous, unclean and impure work of the society (Geetha, 2009). Thus, their work is assigned the dual quality of being less valuable and most polluting of all jobs. The Dalit woman is not only involved in a work that is essentially considered to be an extension of her innate feminine qualities but also regarded as an extension of her quality of being ‘polluted’. The work that the Dom woman does reflects her two marginalized identities, one of being a woman and the other of being a lower-caste Dalit. In a patriarchal society, the gender identity of a woman is regarded as subservient and valueless. In a patriarchal and casteist society like India, a Dalit woman is additionally regarded as not only less valuable due to her gender but also most unclean and polluting due to her caste. The feminine quality of being less valuable and the lower-caste quality of being the most polluting is played out in the public sphere for the Dalit woman in the kind of work she is employed in. Therefore, the Dom woman carries with her the dual quality of being less valuable and most polluting; she is an extension of her two marginalized identities. The Dom woman will always be relegated to the most unclean job of the society due to her dual marginalized identity of being a woman and Dalit. Lakkhi said ‘Who will give us jobs? Everyone knows in the area that we are from the Dom basti, we never get jobs other than latrine cleaners’.

Here, caste, class and gender intersect in such a manner that it relegates her to the most unsafe, unclean and profane job. It is not only her caste and gender identity that puts her at a disadvantageous position, but class too plays a role here. While the lower-class economically poor upper-caste woman may find domestic work as a cook or caretaker, the lower-class and lower-caste Dalit woman may never find one. The upper-caste woman lies at the intersection of class and gender oppression, but the Dom woman lies at the intersection of class, gender and caste structures. It is because of her caste that she is left to take up the most polluting jobs of the society that no one else would do. One should take note of the caste angle that plays out in the public sphere which safeguards the lower-class upper-caste woman but oppresses the lower-class lower-caste women. This is a classic example of Crenshaw’s theorization of intersectionality, and the lives of Dom women show us how different forms of oppression play out in the social reality whereby the most marginalized individuals lie at the intersection and often overlapped forms of oppression. Positioned at the intersection of caste, class and gender, these women narrated everyday instances of violence and untouchability they experienced at their workplace.

It is often believed that urban spaces have become free from the evils of untouchability. But the narratives collected from the Dom women of New Market show how untouchability plays out in covert and overt ways in an urban space like Kolkata. D’Souza (2016) uses the term, ‘white untouchability’, to refer to the ‘safe distance’ that is maintained from workers belonging to marginal castes in urban contexts (D’Souza, 2016). When asked about their everyday experiences in the workplace, Lakkhi who is a domestic worker said ‘I have a separate glass for drinking water, obviously I won’t drink in their glass’. Guddi said, ‘if madam gives me anything to eat she tells me to sit outside the house and eat or go home and eat, not inside her house’.

Pandita (2017) highlights how caste plays out in the everyday life of a Dalit. He highlights that most of the sanitation workers are Dalits. People who hire these workers maintain a distance when they speak to them. This kind of humiliation plays a vital role in the everyday lives of Dalits. Barua et al. (2017) writes how domestic workers are treated as subhuman. The stigma of domestic work and workers as dirty is acute in India where the perception of the lower caste as ‘unclean’ or ‘untouchable’ explains their inferior treatment as legitimate. Meera a toilet cleaner, narrated incidents from her life when her Madam asked her to wash her feet before entering their bedroom toilet. Shanta who is 52 years old, works as a toilet cleaner. She said ‘when I leave their house, one more domestic helper cleans the room, they clean the house immediately after I leave’.

I asked Shanta, Lakkhi Guddi if the other domestic helpers had a separate glass, plate or seating area, all of them replied with a ‘yes’. While having separate utensils for domestic helpers may be a common practice among high-class caste households and experienced by both—high- and low-caste women domestic workers, the cleaning of footsteps narrated by two respondents is a practice peculiar to the Dom women only. This echoes the age-old belief that the Sudras are so impure that their footsteps need to be cleaned. In instances like these, caste plays a very glaring role to marginalise and producing violence. All the respondents experience untouchability in varying degrees. Sarrukai (2009) uses Derrida’s concept of deconstruction to deconstruct the act of untouchability. He uses the logic of supplement and writes that the necessity to create and construct a group called untouchables arises due to the inherent presence of the notion of untouchability in the very idea of a Brahmin. Sarrukai makes a binary between the Brahmin and the Dalits and writes that in this binary, the category of the Dalit is inferior to the Brahmin so that it can supplement the Brahmin (Sarrukai, 2009). The category of the Dalit is solely created so that they legitimize the presence of the Brahmins and reinforce his superior position. The lower-caste Dalits are thus needed by the Brahmin to sustain himself. This notion of untouchability legitimizes the cleanliness of the upper castes. The act of cleaning the footsteps of the Dalit domestic worker is an attempt by the upper-caste madams to reinforce their superior and ‘pure’ position. While the lower-class upper-caste woman is saved from such humiliation because of her caste identity, the lower-caste class Dom woman is the most impure—more impure not only than her madam but also than her fellow lower-class upper-caste domestic worker of the house.

The experiences of Dom women are also very different from their male counterparts. While the men of the Dom basti are sweepers under the Kolkata Municipal Corporation or clean the streets and the drain, the women of the Dom basti are exclusively domestic cleaners and toilet cleaners. The women work in the informal economy that is not only unsafe but also unregulated. Here again, both Dalit men and women are in a marginalized position due to their caste identity as both are employed in unclean jobs. However, it is the Dalit woman who is further marginalized because of her gender and relegated to the informal economy leading to her more oppressed position in the society. Thus, we see how caste and gender both operate simultaneously to marginalize the Dom woman. Dalit feminism sees how caste and gender are two interrelated structures of oppression that simultaneously and actively operate to oppress the Dalit woman (Pan, 2019). Caste and gender operate simultaneously to produce violence. Caste and gender are interwoven in such a way that sometimes these two structures overlap to produce instances of everyday violence and exploitation. The following narratives will substantiate this claim and show how most of the time, structures of oppression cannot be delineated from one another as they are so closely interlinked.

The respondents who work as toilet and domestic cleaners reported that their male counterparts who clean offices do not face such harsh treatment in their workplace. This is because they work in formal office spaces where upper castes people of the office have some level of accountability vis-à-vis the office rules and untouchability laws. Dom women are bereft of this benefit since most of the Dom women work as domestic cleaners and thus fall under the informal economy. Domestic work happens in such a privatized space that the boundary between the private and public gets erased (Neetha, 2013). In this informal and unregulated market, the exploitation of labour is rampant. This is the reason why instances of violence are so extreme towards the Dom women. Hence, we see how caste and gender simultaneously push the Dom women to a more marginalized and exploitative position. The first kind of marginalization is when Dom women are first and foremost relegated to the informal economy but even if few of the women who do get the opportunity to work in the formal economy narrate experiences of violence that are very different from their male counterparts, resulting in the second kind of marginalization.

Nirmala, a widow, is the only woman who works in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation office as sweeper reports how men in the office always make her do ‘extra work’.

Dom men who work in the office are never made to do such extra work, but Dom women are so devalued and dehumanized that the upper-caste men often treat the lower-caste woman as their servants to carry out informal work beyond the ambit of their job responsibility. In incidents like these, the Dalit woman is denied humanity, where she is treated like a sub-human, and this treatment finds its explanation in the caste system that justifies such actions. People from the lower castes are treated as inferior beings that are exploited and made to do work without any break. This is because their bodies are not assigned any value. According to Guru, it is the karma theory in Hinduism that legitimizes their oppression. It makes it appear as a natural social arrangement thus diminishing the moral capacity of the Dalits to stake claims against humiliation (Guru, 2009). A Dalit woman is treated as a sub-human due to her caste, class, and gender identity. The gender oppression that they face in the public sphere takes a different form and continues in the private sphere of their homes.

While men work only one shift a day and return to the Basti by 3 p.m., women of the Dom Basti work in double to triple shifts. The time that is left after household chores and working in the public sphere, is then assigned to do the extra work to earn some extra money and make ends meet. Around 6:30–7:00 p.m. when women find some free time, they weave baskets. While men of the basti drink in groups and play cards after work, women work one shift after the other to earn some extra money for their family. The families of the Dom basti are very poor with an average family income of ₹8,000–10,000. The burden to feed children and run the household ultimately falls on the Dom woman. She works all day, one shift after another to survive. Men of the Dom basti work in one shift in the public sphere and then come home and conveniently enjoy their leisure time. Women of the Dom basti have no time for themselves, as most of them reported their whole day is spent doing one work after another. Hochschild (1989) argues that contrary to men who work in a single shift in the public sphere, women work in double shifts, one in the public sphere and the other in the domestic sphere in the form of unpaid domestic work. Thus, women employ double the amount of labour both physical and emotional in their day-to-day lives (Hochschild, 1989). In the case of the women of the Dom basti, they not only work in double shifts—one in the public sphere and the other in the private sphere but also do extra work (basket weaving, selling pickle) which makes them work in triple shifts. Thus, we see how gender, caste, and class simultaneously dehumanize the women of the Dom basti. The everyday life of a Dom woman is situated at the intersection of these structures of oppression whereby the upper-caste class men and women at work and Dom men at home exploit her labour.

Conclusion

The lives of Dom women are woven together by the narratives of oppression and exploitation they face in multiple shifts of work that they do. The Dom woman lies at the intersection of caste, class and gender oppression that constitutes in covert and overt ways experiences of humiliation, exploitation and marginalization in the public sphere of the Dalit woman. Caste, class and gender operate simultaneously sometimes in an overlapping manner to dehumanize them. This article used the concept of intersectionality and placed the experiences of the Dom women vis-à-vis her upper-caste lower-class counterpart to show how a Dom woman’s caste identity marginalizes her more than the female domestic workers who are upper castes even though they share the same gender identity. Similarly, Dom women face more marginalization compared to their male counterparts even though both Dom men and women possess the same caste identity of a Dalit. The category of gender, class and caste results in the triple marginalization of the Dalit woman. While Dom men occupy the formal economy, the Dom woman is relegated to the informal economy that is unsafe and unregulated. Even if a few Dom women find a job opportunity in the formal economy of the office, they face more violence at the workplace compared to Dom men who work at the office. Moreover, it was also seen that it is not only the upper-caste men in the office who violate the Dom women but also their men who exploit their labour at home. Dom women after returning from their workplace indulge in household chores and do extra work to earn some money. The responsibility to run the household entirely falls on the Dom women. Thus, the Dom woman works one shift after another without a break that dehumanizes them. The structures of oppression and dehumanization often intersect and overlap and cannot be differentiated from each other. Thus, to understand the everyday lives and social interactions of a Dalit women one must adopt an intersectional perspective to view their life experiences. An intersectional perspective that views the Dalit woman through the lens of caste, class, gender, age, ableism, sexuality and other structures of oppression will show us the fragmented and complex ways in which Dalit lives can be studied.