Organizer and Chair: Stewart Gordon, Independent Scholars of South Asia
A Brother and His Sister
Jacqueline Conrath, Rutgers University
Brothers in South Asia have certain expectations of a sister. The relationship is life-long with many duties on both sides. In recent years, some families have reformed some aspects of the lives of women such as inheritance. Traditionally the daughter’s share was in the form of a dowry, but today some families are dividing property and wealth equally among the siblings. Also in some families education for professions is being given equally to girls and boys. The girls and later the women with professions, even if they continue the duties of sisters, have much less of themselves to put into the traditional duties of a sister. It stands to reason that some brothers will feel a loss. It might be said, if girls are treated equally with boys, then the boys have had something they had a right to expect taken away from them. Many brothers think these reforms for girls and women are just, but many others feel the loss and are dissatisfied with the sister. In this paper, the words of brothers, of sisters and other family members in several families from different regions and groups are heard on this issue.
"I’ll Not Farm While I’m Alive": Resistance among Hunter-Gatherers of South Asia
Jana Fortier, Southwest State University
South Asian foragers, known in India as "scheduled tribes," "adivasi," and "vimukta jati," have been depicted as backward, passive, and primitive in relation to surrounding sedentary populations. Research accounts of forager exchange behavior can inadvertently promote this misrepresentation when they focus on simple reciprocity and sharing behavior and neglect the range of other strategies that enable foragers to resist assimilation into the underclasses of Hindu society. The paper counters oversimplified representations of forager economics with recent research about the nomadic Raute of western Nepal who practice net hunting of monkey, collection of forest yams and other vegetables, and wood carving. Raute in-group social relations emphasize sharing and demand sharing, practices which, I argue, resist the dominant Hindu society’s hierarchical structure. With surrounding Hindu agropastoralists, however, Raute employ asymmetrical strategies of patronage, fictive kinship, barter, and begging in order to accommodate the dominant society. I suggest that the Raute’s flexible resistance and accommodation when dealing with sedentary populations has enabled the Raute to maintain a separate, autonomous social space and resist the assimilation into the underclasses of Hindu society that has befallen many other South Asian foragers such as the Chenchu, Malapantaram, and Vedda. The paper concludes that contemporary South Asian foragers like the Raute actively manage their cultural spaces through accommodation in some cases and resistance in other cases in order to survive within the hegemonic cultural spaces of the surrounding Hindu agropastoral populations.
Exploring the Dialectics of Gender and Tribe in South Asia
Aarti Saihjee, University of South Florida
A "caste" vs. "tribe" model is frequently used to analyze the relationship between dominant and marginal groups in South Asia. The perception of tribal women as being free and tribal societies as being marked by egalitarian relations among men and women has been primary in understanding and emphasizing the boundaries of caste-tribe distinction in India and maintaining the homogeneity of these classificatory concepts. This understanding stems from the tendency to equate tribal women’s visibility in the economic sphere with their freedom and autonomy. This in turn is further contrasted with caste women’s invisibility in the public sphere and their accompanying cultural subordination. Using data gathered from the Oraon of Eastern India, it is argued that adoption of a dichotomous stance—tribal women vis-à-vis caste women—emerges from an ahistorical and limited conceptualization of the nature of patriarchy and its equation with the politics of female seclusion in South Asia. This understanding obfuscates the gendered nature of structural subordination which women belonging to different tribal communities mediate on a daily basis and which in turn is constantly transforming with the growing integration of tribal households in the larger capitalist economy. An alternative analysis which draws upon the understanding of patriarchy, both as a set of cultural practices and material relationships, is proposed to explore the dialectics of gender and tribe, as they get played out not only within the household, but also in the larger economy, polity, and society.
The Positive Discrimination Policy and the Indian Medical Profession: Questions of Equality, Merit, and Social Justice
K. Lavanya, Jawaharlal Nehru University
The proposed presentation draws mainly from the data collected during my doctoral program. The empirical data for the study was collected by conducting detailed interviews with 300 medical professionals. It includes 150 scheduled caste professionals and 150 non-scheduled caste professionals from the clinical, non-clinical and teaching specializations. The study also drew upon life histories of the scheduled caste medical professionals.
In this presentation, I seek to propel a meaningful debate on the following issues: (i) Equality in the context of welfare measures; (ii) Equality in the context of merit; (iii) The State’s positive discrimination policy for social justice.
The questions of equality, merit, and social justice in the medical profession are examined by presenting the perceptions of the two categories of medical professionals—the scheduled castes and the non-scheduled castes. The schedule caste medical professionals are those who benefit from the State’s positive discrimination policy.
Merit contributes to the scientific and technological advancement in all professions. The professions are by themselves in pursuit of excellence in terms of both performance and discovery. The professionals thereby emphasize the relevance of merit and at times tend to overlook the necessity of welfare policies for social justice. These welfare policies were developed with an idea to bring about a healthy balance in the society and one such a policy is the State’s positive discrimination policy. This policy aims to integrate the weaker sections such as the scheduled castes.
As part of its broader objective, this policy reserves seats in the educational institutions and jobs in the employment spheres for the scheduled castes. Medical schools and hospitals also follow these procedures of the positive discrimination policy. Since doctors handle human lives, it is generally argued that such reservations are detrimental in the medical profession. Further, it is often argued that merit and excellence will deteriorate with such policies. In this presentation, I seek to examine the questions of equality, merit, and social justice in the context of the medical profession.
Conceptions of Childbirth: Cultural Meanings and Biological Processes in Nepal
Laura M. Ahearn, University of South Carolina
In this paper, I use qualitative and quantitative data to explore how a group of Hindu women in Nepal interpret, endure, and culturally construct the biological process of childbirth. Drawing on years of participant observation, dozens of tape-recorded narratives of childbirth, and my findings from a survey of birth histories of all ever-married women in the village of Junigau, I present an analysis of rapidly-changing birthing practices and the meanings villagers associate with them. Whereas only a generation ago most Junigau women gave birth alone in the cowshed or out in a field for fear of ritually polluting their homes, most births now occur inside houses or in the district center’s hospital, which is a three-hour walk away. Moreover, most births are now attended by female relatives or trained birth attendants. What effects have these changes had on birth outcomes and on how Junigau villagers conceive of the process of childbirth?
After discussing several trends, such as age at first marriage, age at first birth, location of birth, and infant and maternal mortality rates, I correlate these trends with changes in courtship and marriage practices. In particular, I look at some of the effects on fertility and childbirth practices of a shift away from arranged and capture marriage toward elopement (or ‘love’ marriage). Finally, I analyze excerpts from Junigau women’s narratives of childbirth in order to ascertain what meanings and values the women themselves attribute to these changing patterns.