From: kapalini-AT-Brown.edu
Date: Sat, 7 Dec 1996 23:11:58 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re:  Harvard dowry conference -- some comments


Hello everyone,I wanted to go to the conference as well, but I couldn't
make it. I was interested to read the responses to it. Partha wrote:

 >>a small group of Hindu fundamentalists tried to defocus the issue of
> >dowry deaths in India upon the excuse that oppression on women is a global
> >phenomenon -- thus there is no need to blame Hinduism or India for these
>abuses
> >(Read: Don't rock the socio-religious status quo in India). The rising
>number of
> >dowry deaths in Pakistan was frequently cited by one such speaker.

       I have to agree with the fundamentalists, unfortunately: I don't
think that dowry deaths can just be blamed on Hinduism alone - it is the
same as blaming the practise of female circumsion on Islam. I would imagine
the ideological impetus for bride burning comes from and in some cases is
revived through religious leaders and texts, but one cannot blame a concept
as broad as 'Hinduism" for a phenomena that is dependent on so many other
factors, including women's status- and that hinges upon
political/social/economic/cultural structures, not just a religious or
ideological one. It is difficult to reduce a concept as broad and diffuse
as "Hinduism" to a single structure of oppression, and unfortunately, in
our alarm at the fundamentalist revival, we seem to be going all the way to
the other end by categorizing all religious aspects with the fundamentalist
ones, therefore alienating people to whom many of these structures still
provide a meaningful worldview. There are so many people
practising/believing/living their lives by it in so many different ways it
seems almost an outside imposition for us to be reducing it to a simplified
cause of "women's oppression". And the same goes for Islam as well.
 I would think that dowry death is probably correlated to the status that
women have in particular cultures. An agricultural society in rural Punjab
probably has more dowry deaths than in the urbanized, upper class, college
educated Hindu women of New Delhi. I don' think we can separate factors of
class, economics and education from pure "religion".

Rinita - I was interested in your ideas of subalternity, and "women" vs
"feminist" movements.

> ``women'' do not and more importantly CANNOT form a category by
>themselves. There has to be a total subaltern movement towards
>democracy. This is why, while I am ardent supporter of ``women's
>movement'', I am NOT a supporter of so the so-called ``feminist''
>movement.
        Could you explain more about this? Why is the so-called "feminist"
movement so bad - as one who identifies as one, I find it hard to
understand your argument. A feminist is one who asks for equal rights, and
translates belief into political action. Most of the "women's movements" in
both the North and the South have been based on this fundamental
assumption. So why is it so bad to be a feminist?
        Feminists have had this tendency to lump all women under one
umbrella category, as if there were no distinctions between
culture/geographic location/class/race of various women, and this, I agree,
is a faulty premise. A few powerful women cannot speak for all women as
"women". But recently feminisms as many different movements have become
more self reflexive, and people have started to shy away from any
assumptions of "speaking for" a group based on nothing more than a common
gender. How are these various feminist movements then, at this stage any
different from "women's movements"?

        A cultural revolution. But who brings this about - a few elite
people like us sitting in our computer terminals, or is it going to come
>from changes from within the cultural setting? Weren't we supposed to be
all in favor of the revolution coming from the subalterns?

        (ps: one of these days, somebody's gotta define this term
"subaltern" for me. I'm a Clarity Fetishist, you know. One of those.)

 Stay warm, Sushma