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Spoiled Brides and the Fear of Education: Honour and Social Mobility among Dalits in South India*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 September 2010

CLARINDA STILL
CLARINDA STILL*
Affiliation:
School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, University of Oxford, 12 Bevington Road, Oxford OX2 6LH Email: clarinda.still@area.ox.ac.uk
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Abstract

This paper examines female education, marriage and honour among upwardly mobile Dalits. Using data collected during fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork (2004–2005) in a Dalit community in rural Andhra Pradesh, I describe how families who constitute the upper strata of Dalits are educating their daughters in order to marry them ‘upwards’ within their caste to a groom with prospects of employment. Education allows these Dalit girls to become housewives, escaping a life of demeaning agricultural labour, colloquially: ‘hard work in the hot sun’. But as educated wives they must have middle-class virtues to match. Unlike their labouring counterparts, their language, dress, movement and manners must convey shame and modesty. As their responsibility for maintaining family honour increases, they are progressively more scrutinised and controlled. I explore this heightened emphasis on honour among traditionally egalitarian Dalits and suggest reasons for the increasing concern about female sexuality. Education for girls is seen as a particularly risky business: on the one hand it provides opportunities for sexual encounters, but on the other hand it holds the promise of hypergamy. Given their already precarious circumstances, many Dalits choose to cut short the education of their daughters, rather than take the risk.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 5 , September 2011 , pp. 1119 - 1146
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 The names of people and places have been changed to protect anonymity.

2 The value of land in this area fluctuates but in 2007 one acre of irrigated land allegedly rose to almost one crore (ten million rupees). Its value is in part due to its proximity to two market towns and a city.

3 For more on segregation see, Deliège, Robert, The Untouchables of India (Oxford: Berg, 1999)Google Scholar; Gorringe, Hugo, Untouchable Citizens: Dalit Movements and Democratisation in Tamil Nadu (London, New Delhi: Sage, 2005)Google Scholar; Mines, Diane, Fierce Gods: Inequality, Ritual and the Politics of Dignity in a South Indian Village (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

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19 Agnihotri calls this the ‘prosperity effect’ (2000, 2003).

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38 This has historical significance. In the past, Dalit women were forbidden to wear blouses and jewellery and men could not wear shoes through the uru. Defying these injunctions would be taken as a sign of insubordination. These rules cannot be enforced today but some old women are not in the habit of wearing blouses and prefer to cover themselves with just the sari.

39 Their body language dramatically changes in the presence of the landlords and in their employers’ houses, however.

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42 See also Jacobson, Doranne and Wadley, Susan, Women in India: Two Perspectives (New Delhi: Manohar, 1999), p. 55Google Scholar.

43 This is on average about Rs. 40, depending on the season, demand for labour and type of work.

44 State initiative: Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas.

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50 Here ‘kin’ refers to actual cross-cousins (MBD or FZD) as well as more distantly related classificatory cross-cousins.

51 Kapadia (1995).

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63 Hugo Gorringe (2006).

64 Kapadia (1995) and Berreman (1993).

65 Kapadia (1995, 2002).

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