Devika, J. ‘The Defence of Aachaaram, Femininity, and Neo-Savarna Power in Kerala’. Indian Journal of Gender Studies. Published ahead of print, 15 September 2020.
Abstract (edited): This paper examines the discourse of the Ready to Wait (RTW) campaign, led by highly-educated professional neo-savarna women in Kerala, against litigation to open the doors of Kerala’s Sabarimala shrine to women of menstruating ages, hitherto barred from the pilgrimage. The term savarna refers to the privileged caste communities that, from pre-colonial times, controlled land and other material resources and ritual practices, and continued to do so to a large extent even later.
Avarna refers to those oppressed groups that laboured for the savarna and were subjected to degradation through such practices as untouchability and unseeability, and whose exclusion from social power continues in different ways despite these groups having achieved economic presence and education. Following a Supreme Court verdict in September 2018, which struck down the Sabarimala taboo, Kerala was shaken by violent protests led by neo-savarna and right-wing Sangh Parivar organisations.
Through a close reading of the Facebook engagement of a Right to Wait campaigner, I seek to make sense of the particular sorts of ‘dissonance’ these organisations seem to be creating within the male-defined space of Hindutva, the specific caste politics they represent, as well as their articulation and disarticulation with a discourse on women’s empowerment and feminism. I argue that it is time that we seriously theorise the power relations between savarna and avarna women under brahmanical patriarchy, instead of focusing singularly on the subordination of upper-caste women by the male brahmanical elite.
More info: https://doi.org/10.1177/0971521520939283
Reposted from Kerala Scholars eGroup
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