Indian feminishm and the patriarchy of caste

There are many Castes which allow inter-dining. But it is a common experience that inter-dining has not succeeded in killing the spirit of Caste and the consciousness of Caste. I am convinced that the real remedy is inter-marriage. Fusion of blood alone can create the feeling of being kith and kin and unless this feeling of kinship, of being kindred, becomes paramount the separatist feeling – the feeling of being aliens – created by Caste will not vanish. Among the Hindus inter-marriage must necessarily be a factor of greater force in social life than it need be in the life of the non-Hindus. Where society is already well-knit by other ties, marriage is an ordinary incident of life. But where society [is] cut asunder, marriage as a binding force becomes a matter of urgent necessity. The real remedy for breaking Caste is inter-marriage. Nothing else will serve as the solvent of Caste. [emphasis in the original]

BR Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste

Recent critiques of Indian feminism have highlighted the fact that feminism tends not to embrace all women, but is exclusionary. Generated in the main by dalit feminists' critiques of how practices of caste respectability and caste privilege produce significant inequalities amongst women, such debates have exploded the concept of gender upon which feminist analysis rests and brought to the surface internal tensions in feminist practice. For instance, in writing about the formation of the National Federation of Dalit Women, the political scientist Gopal Guru argued that dalit women experienced two distinct forms of patriarchal control: a dominant form of brahminical patriarchy that rested on conceptions of caste purity, as well as patriarchal control within the dalit community by men who saw 'their' women as sexual property. Thus feminist critiques of gender domination and sexual control were themselves criticised as both casteist and monolithic. It is crucial for Indian feminism to engage with debates on caste. Both caste and gender are involved in formations of intimacy and desire, among other things, and indicate how the political life of a citizen depends on deeply personal issues of the body and its expression. Furthermore, arguments that gender is regulated by caste – that gender is in fact unthinkable without addressing questions of caste exploitation and upper-caste privilege – points to the political possibilities of bringing radical anti-caste struggles together with feminist critiques of gender oppression. This is a significant opportunity for understanding brahminical male privilege as a thoroughly "modern" form of power through which the postcolonial Indian state operates, and for bringing together powerful critiques of caste and gender that have historically been separated and disconnected from each other.