STORIES FROM BOTH SIDES

Why was it important for me to collect both dalit narratives as well as dominant caste narratives? Because it strengthens any comparative analysis I produce, and further because I can view with my dalit eyes the social worlds of those who historically researched my dalit social world from a dominant gaze. I can take back the narrative by analyzing that social world anew

Importance of Collecting Stories from Both Oppressed and Dominant Groups

Collecting narratives from both is crucial for social science research for several reasons:

1. Understanding Diverse Perspectives

Gathering stories from various groups allows researchers to capture a wide range of experiences and viewpoints. This diversity is essential for a comprehensive understanding of social dynamics and power structures.

2. Identifying Distinctions

By comparing the narratives of oppressed and dominant groups, researchers can identify key distinctions in experiences, values, and beliefs. These differences can highlight the impact of systemic inequalities and provide insights into social hierarchies.

3. Generating Themes

Analyzing the collected narratives enables researchers to develop themes that reflect the complexities of social interactions. These themes can reveal underlying patterns and contribute to a deeper understanding of societal issues.

4. Testing Theories with Quantitative Data

The qualitative insights gained from narrative analysis can inform the development of hypotheses, which can then be tested using quantitative methods. This mixed-methods approach strengthens the validity of findings and enhances the robustness of social science research.

5. Promoting Social Change

Understanding the narratives of both oppressed and dominant groups can inform policies and interventions aimed at addressing social injustices, ultimately contributing to social change and equity.

In summary, collecting and analyzing stories from both groups enriches the research process and fosters a more nuanced understanding of societal dynamics. Further, for me, it especially allows me to use my own positinality as a dalit and not a dominant caste researcher, to interpret the narratives I hear from both groups. This is rare, given the historical overrepresentation of dominant caste people and men in the research world telling the stories of the oppressed. To take this theory into practice, during my fieldwork, of the in-depth interviews I conducted, half of the respondents are dalit and the other half are dominant caste, specifically in rural and underprivileged parts of India. The themes that emerged from these interviews motivated the hypotheses that I tested in my dissertation using quantitative data.

The following is a segment from my dissertation highlighting two different narratives, one dalit, one dominant caste. It serves to illustrate the contrasts that I observed.

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Dissertation Section 2.1 : A Tale of Two Families: Pre-dissertation Qualitative Work

In Pathapalli(name changed), a village about 30 km outside of Hyderabad, one street divided the area where former untouchable caste groups lived and the streets in which the dominant caste people lived. On the dalit side, 35-year-old Lavanya(name changed) sat stitching and allowed me to interview her while her husband used a hose to clean their concrete front porch. Lavanya lived in a four-room house with her husband, mother-in-law, husband’s brother and his wife and their child. Her son and daughter were studying at a boarding school. 

An artistic representation of Lavanya, a south Indian woman in a sari, stitching in front of her home with two kids in the background

Education for her children was important to Lavanya, as a way to climb out of caste discrimination, attain a stable income, and delay an early marriage. In her own life, the end of her education was tied to an early marriage. She had studied until the 9th grade, then failed the 10th grade exam, after which she enrolled in a boarding school for tailoring training and her family pushed her into marriage when she was 17 years old. Lavanya didn’t know she was getting married until it got to the point of marriage, and she recalls crying, but the elders had talked and decided that she was to be married. Her husband was a relative, and he too, only got to study until the 2nd grade and then had to take care of his family, so they both prioritized a good education for their children. Lavanya’s daughter is 12 years old and studying in a selective local government school. She passed an entrance exam to gain admission and is now studying in 8th grade and staying at the hostel, where all her fees are paid by the government. Lavanya took pride in the fact that her daughter had been accepted into a selective school, and the school is associated with a level of prestige in the state and takes the children out of their village, insulating them from caste and other social issues, providing them with a quality education. (Hopefully ensuring a high educational outcome!) Lavanya seems to have great faith in government education, especially in these selective schools, and was very happy they did not have to pay any fees. She hopes her daughter can become a doctor. Like Lavanya, many women, especially dalit women, have high aspirations for their children, though it is yet to be seen if their environment allows for those aspirations to be achieved.

Many women in dominant caste households that I interviewed did not know about the family finances and were not allowed to work for a wage outside the home, though many, especially older women, also did not express a desire to work outside of the family care work. Unlike in dominant caste households with higher family income, Lavanya’s family definitely needed the money, so working for her was not something to be allowed, but something absolutely necessary for survival. To make ends meet for the family, Lavanya earns some money from tailoring. She quoted the prices of the blouses that she stitches, Rs.50 without lining and Rs.100 with lining, and that she could stitch 5 blouses a day, but it is an income that is not ensured or regular each month. Lavanya’s husband gets daily wage jobs with construction contractors and makes about Rs.10,000 per month (~$142 with a ~Rs.70 to $1 conversion rate in 2018). For a period of six months when her husband was sick, her income from tailoring was their sole source of income.  The knowledge of the house finances and her equal, or sometimes primary, role in breadwinning, automatically gave her some amount of equity in family decision-making and personal autonomy. 

Regarding experiences colored by caste, almost all Indian villages are segregated by caste. This segregation sometimes serves to insulate dalit children from caste realities until they venture out of their village, especially if their parents do not explain the significance of caste identity. Generally, dalit parents do not tell their children about caste hoping to overcome caste status by gaining in other status markers like education and income. Dominant caste parents usually tell their children, teaching them to be proud of their caste identity and also teaching behaviors like who should or should not be invited into the household or who they can or cannot share food with. Due to the spatial segregation of castes in her parents’ village, Lavanya does not recall experiencing social exclusions due to caste until she got married and moved from her larger home village to this smaller village with her in-laws. Here, she felt the social aspect of caste in the village temple, and some Reddy caste people (dominant caste) did not let her enter the temple. That was when she felt that “caste is real”, and she felt sad when she saw her children go to the temple and as they climbed up near the deity for a festival, the Reddy caste people made them go back down and stay outside the temple. 

This enforcement of the social behaviors associated with caste, essentially untouchability practices, is what I term the “social distance between caste groups.” These behaviors exist across India but at different levels of severity and different frequencies. The social distance between castes is experienced through behaviors unrelated to purchasing power, so it is certainly distinct from the purely economic (wealth, income, assets) distance that also exists between caste groups. From Lavanya’s narrative, it seems that the village she moved to after marriage had a higher social distance between castes than the village of her birth, so her experience of untouchability really began in her marital village.

In contrast to Lavanya's childhood, Lavanya’s 5th-grade daughter, growing up in her father’s village, experienced the social caste distance much earlier in life. She complained that another girl “was saying to my friends that they should not eat my curry, because [they] are higher people”. This is essentially untouchability practices exhibited by dominant caste girls against a dalit girl. Lavanya then discouraged caste-discriminatory speech and behavior from both girls and emphasized that they are children who are studying, and getting educated, and they should not be saying things like that. The way that Lavanya corrected the children’s behavior is again indicative of her great faith in education as an equalizing force, that because these children are getting educated, they should be leaving caste differences behind. She herself had not been told about caste until she experienced exclusionary behavior, and she never told her daughter about their caste name or status until her daughter faced exclusionary behavior from others. 

Just a 5-minute walk away, across the dividing street of the village, lived Sarita (name changed) (43 yrs) and Ramya(name changed) (45 yrs), two ladies of the “Reddy” caste, a dominant caste in the Telangana and Andhra area. They were related and consented to do a joint interview. In contrast to the dalit household, which was 4 rooms in one building, shared by 7-10 people, the size of the dominant caste property was larger and included multiple homes in the street. The economic distance between the dominant castes and dalits in the village was clearly evident in the difference in their property size. Unlike dalit families, dominant caste families tend to be land-owning. They are probably better off as evidenced by the women saying they would not work because their husband or other male relative supports them. In Ramya’s case, because she was a widow with bad eyesight, her brother supported her by giving her a share of the proceeds from the family farmland and Ramya helped take care of her brother’s children in return. 

An artistic representation of two south Indain dominant caste women in their mid 40s sitting on a jute woven bed frame with rice fields visible behind them an other homes down the road.

Sarita had studied until 6th grade and Ramya until 7th. Similar to the dalit respondent Lavanya, Sarita had gotten married concurrently with the end of her education at the age of 14. Signifying an early, proud, and ongoing awareness of caste, she referred to her husband as “my Reddy '', as one man of their Reddy caste group. Sarita had a daughter who was married at the age of 22, a later age than many women in the area. Her daughter had wanted to keep working but her husband did not want her to, saying that all their material wants were fulfilled and pointing out that she was so busy taking care of his parents that she would not have time to work, so she didn’t work. 

The economic distance between caste groups became further clearer to me as I compared the narratives of dominant caste women and dalit women speaking about their reasons for working or not working outside the home. The women of the house not working outside the home for a wage is a mark of privilege and status. Many dominant caste women I spoke to did not work outside the home. Most dalit women worked and spoke about their work as a necessity. There was one dalit woman I interviewed whose family was better off and she seemed to be mirroring dominant caste women in enjoying her status as a woman who did not need to work, saying that her husband makes enough.

In addition to her daughter, Sarita also has a son and half-jokingly claimed she prefers daughters these days because people think about the girl’s well-being but only ask about a boy’s employment status before offering their daughters in marriage. Sarita was content that her daughter was married, but in order for her to help her son get married, he needed to be employed or own land and earn a living. Because Sarita’s son was finding it difficult to find a job even though he had a bachelor's degree, there was some resentment against the government for providing quotas in education and jobs to dalit castes, but not to dominant castes like their own. Sarita felt that her son’s and other dominant caste children’s efforts go wasted when their job applications are put below those of SCs, and the SC people get the jobs faster. She especially wanted the government to know that all Reddy people were not wealthy and that there should be some preferential treatment for the poor among the dominant castes (implying that she perceived her family to be poor among Reddies)

When it came to talking about the impact caste identity had in their daily lives, both Ramya and Sarita said that they learned about being Reddy from their parents around the age of 10 and that they did have some caste feelings. The women felt that dalit people who visit their home should sit on the ground and not as their equals on a bed or chair. Their elders, their in-laws, had taught them that this is how things are done and they themselves felt that is how respect is shown and that is how they claimed their status as dominant castes. 

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I will conclude this segment here, inviting you to engage with these narratives personally. I welcome thoughts and reflections in the comments. My interpretations and analyses have been detailed in my dissertation and will be shared in upcoming blogs.