The Dalit-Bahujan woman was the first woman to have ever entered the workplace either as a land labourer, a toilet cleaner, an artist, a dancer, a hand weaver or a house servant. Why is she missing from the #metoo movement despite her having endured sexual harassment at the workplace for a time longer and an extent graver than Savarna woman.

Progressive Savarna women and Ambedkarite Dalit men have both been silent on the #metoo (sexual harassment at workplace) of Dalit-Bahujan woman for long. At best, she has found marginal inclusion or rather some form of token representation in the discourses of the feminists as well as the Ambedkarites. She finds mention when a few amongst her manage to reach the top, the likes of Mayawati, Tina Dabi and Devyani Khobragade, or by way of tokenism in the occasional atrocities (mostly rapes and murders) on Dalit women.

Lone Warrior

What is evident is how the Dalit-Bahujan woman is missing from the #metoo movement despite her having endured sexual harassment at the workplace for a time longer and an extent graver than the Savarna woman.The Dalit-Bahujan woman was the first woman to have ever entered the workplace either as a land labourer, a toilet cleaner, an artist, a dancer, a hand weaver or a house servant. Caste, class and gender have worked organically to subject her to this triple burden/discrimination. In the spectrum of power, she is at the rearest end. Her stories at the workplace are known, but not spoken about. Her abuse is at the hands of the ‘upper caste him’ and the ‘caste him,’ not to forget the silence of the ‘upper caste her’. She finds herself a lone warrior in this struggle.

Savitribai Phule has been one such warrior. She was the first non-savarna woman to have entered the modern workplace and quite literally so. It makes me wonder why we are always fed a desexualised image of all our women icons. Wouldn’t she have survived this kind of sexual abuse? She was after all crushing caste and gender stereotypes at the dawn of the 19th century. The stone pelting, curses, allegations thrown her way, symbolise the casteist and sexist abuses every Dalit-Bahujan woman survives and endures. Unfortunately for my Dalit-Bahujan sister, the majority is not a passive bystander but an active perpetrator in her victimisation.

Most vulnerable

It is not surprising therefore, that the Dalit-Bahujan woman at the workplace today is the most vulnerable of the lot. She works in the unorganised sector, her labour is contractualised, her jobs are either dirty or looked down upon and her sweat disgusts one and all. She is harvesting, winnowing, threshing in the fields, toiling under the bare sun on construction sites, shining our used utensils and dirty linen, picking rags from foul smelling dumps and cleaning dry toilets with a broom and tinsheets.
 

The Dalit-Bahujan woman at the workplace is the most vulnerable of the lot. She works in the unorganised sector, her labour is contractualised, her jobs are either dirty or looked down upon and her sweat disgusts one and all.

As she works, she is being ogled at, caste and sex coloured remarks are thrown her way, she is touched, grabbed,  her clothes ripped off, her inhuman rapes and murders all reek of a concoction of the caste system and patriarchy together. She is invariably rendered most insecure and vulnerable at her workplace.

Statutory lip service

Despite this, the 2013 Act on sexual harassment at the workplace that claims to include women of the unorganised, informal sector, provides mere lip service. The provision of the Local Complaints Committee at the district level is the only recourse for women in the unorganised sector whether it is rag pickers, safai karmacharis, land labourers or domestic workers. These local committees are either not set up at the district level or where they exist, they are made inoperable due to lack of resources.
 

Local Complaints Committee at the district level, the only recourse for women in the unorganised sector, are either not set up at the district level or where they exist, they are made inoperable due to lack of resources.

The inaccessibility of such district level local committees to these women at the taluka, ward, and village level is another major concern. In addition, the lack of resources – education and capital  – makes justice inaccessible to her. The government has set no preconditions of setting up an Internal Complaints Committee (Vishakha Committee) before handing out contracts to contract companies or contractors in the unorganised sector. The Act remains silent on all such issues. Even the efforts of civil society (feminists and Ambedkarites alike) have been inadequate in educating and empowering working class Dalit women about existing provisions of the Sexual Harassment at Workplace Act.

High Time

Movements like “metoo” are crucial in creating a healthier and more egalitarian society. Their feminist objectives cannot be denied.
 

Civil society (feminists and Ambedkarites alike) has been inadequate in educating and empowering working class Dalit women about existing provisions of the Sexual Harassment at Workplace Act.

However, they will not be complete if they fail to penetrate across caste and class. It is high time that the working class Dalit, Adivasi , Bahujan woman shouts out a “metoo”. She may not find a voice on Twitter, Facebook or Whatsapp, but her struggle on the streets will compel people to hear her out. Her chorus should serve as a stimulus to all feminists as well as Ambedkarites. It is now time her issues don’t remain invisible or mere tokens in these movements.

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum
 

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Photo Courtesy: Indian Express

Former Minister of State for External Affairs in the Modi Cabinet, MJ Akbar had resigned after this piece was written. It is still relevant —Editors}

Everybody is surprised. Why does Narendra Modi continue to carry on with such a huge embarrassment in his cabinet: even while (a) Akbar does not carry much political weight, nor a mass-base, nor does he even have a skilful hold on organisational structures and leaderships? (b) Modi’s ‘Beti Bachao’ campaign is being rendered hollow while sort of letting Akbar abuse his office by hiring as many as 97 advocates. This in itself may suggest spectacularly that Akbar himself is shaken and lacks confidence in the merit of his defence.    

The vocation of politics has increasingly been losing decency and morality. More and more people perceived as ruffians, land mafia, and sex-racketeers, and accused of rape, murder, loot, gangsterism, etc., are becoming legislatures.    

Akbar, however owes his rise into politics to his previous association with the Congress because of his outstanding professionalism in sort of introducing and popularising investigative journalism. Later, he turned hostile against Sonia Gandhi which endeared him to the BJP. Thus, while he rose through the Congress because of his professional distinction, his continuation in the Narendra Modi cabinet, despite mounting (as many as 20 women have thus far come out including one from USA) accusations of highly outrageous and perverted instances of sexual harassment, puts the Congress and BJP in sharp contrast.
Akbar’s track Record of Cunning Opportunism
 
Great genius that M.J. Akbar is, in the late 1980s, he published (or reproduced his news reports) “Riot after Riot“, when the dominant political wisdom of India was displaying some concerns and sympathies for the pathetic condition of the India’s Muslims. The Gopal Singh Committee Report had also come out. So, this book played to the galleries of power. Not long after that, he was elected M.P. from Kishanganj, Bihar, and subsequently, he became advisor to the then Minister of Human Resource Development.
 
When A.B. Vajpayee came to power with an almost comfortable shift, Akbar published Shades of Swords, on Jihadi Islam, that appealed to the dominant political wisdom of the day, both Hindutva forces, as well as post 9/11 USA.
 
Again in 2004, when the Congress-led coalition (or non-Hindutva formation) came to power, the masterly prose writer and perceptive thinker in Akbar did not delay the publication of his autobiographical novel, Blood Brothers, depicting the dilemma and pathetic conditions of the Indian Muslims, particularly in the 1960s. It was consistent with the political concerns catalogued in and articulated through the Sachar Committee Report.
 
In 1991, in a Sunday supplement of the Times of India, M. J. Akbar had written a column, “Is Islam in Danger?” This was the worst possible vilification of Sir Syed.   In Aril 2010, the AMU’s Sir Syed Academy had invited M. J. Akbar to deliver the annual Sir Syed Memorial Lecture. He displayed a complete volte face from what he had written about Sir Syed in 1991.There was applause at many points in his speech. But much of what he said in 2010 would have certainly been branded utterly communal and chauvinistic by none other than the Akbar of 1991.
 
Today (he has since resigned) , he is in the cabinet of Narendra Modi, a regime which has almost pathological hatred towards Nehru. Let us not forget, Akbar wrote an erudite biography, Nehru, the Making of India, while he enjoyed the privilege of power from the Congress. Another instance of the appalling contradiction or opportunism of Akbar!
 
 
 Shamelessly Stubborn BJP
The BJP has shown (until today) the utmost arrogance in retaining tainted ministers in the cabinet. When in the opposition, the party resorted to all sorts of protests: hitting the streets, obstructions inside the Parliament. [Its Sangh Parivar is a kind of organization which even resorts to outrageously wrong and unconstitutional means when the institutions of democracy prohibits it from letting them wish their fulfil. One may recall how they pulled down the Babri Masjid in defiance of their own assurances to the judiciary].

The press was sincere in articulating public ire, hence supporting the opposition in every legitimate way. Today, a bigger section of popular media is busy deflecting all those issues which can embarrass the incumbant regime. Such sections of media are not exposing the outrageous details of unprecedented huge corruption in Rafale deal. All their interrogations continue to be against the opposition, which is perhaps at its weakest in recent decades. The media channels appear busy creating acute polarisation by administering excessive doses of nationalism and religion and by vilifying and incriminating minorities and Dalits.   

This manner in which both the ruling BJP and [this section of] the media are debilitating democracy is dangerous. At any point of time in the future when the BJP sits in the opposition, it will not have any moral authority to ask for the resignations of erring ministers.

Perverted Urban Middle Class
What is most disconcerting is the perversion of the urban middle class of today. They hardly appear to be outraged as much as they greedily look for salacious, lewd details of the ways in which Akbar assaulted the women. The accounts of women suggest he was a serial offender. By that logic, a section of the non-outraged urban middle class, too, should be categorised the same way. Every day they eagerly wait for some more of such details to be revealed by yet another victim. It is this perversion, pervasive in today’s rabidly and pathetically sex-consumerist society, which has even more dangerous implications.

Until this evening (when he resigned), it was possibly, this lack of outrage among sections of the otherwise vocal urban middle class which provides confidence to the BJP to arrogantly remaining dismissive about the issue. Or who knows, there could be another reason: someone higher up in the league may also fall because of this #MeToo Campaign!

It is common knowledge that besides corporate establishments, it is the world of the media and academia where sexual exploitation is said to be rampant. Career-prospects of young aspirants depend upon seniors in these sectors. This vulnerability is abused by many.

 Today, the daunting challenge before society therefore is: how to get rid of the collective moral perversion of this patriarchial -consumerist urban middle class? As far as Akbar’s continuation in the cabinet is concerned, it is exposing the BJP and its timid, silent allies, every moment. The RSS cannot go on claiming its moral high ground conveniently, selectively and opportunistically invoking Bharatiya Sanskriti.
 
 (The writer is Professor, Centre of Advanced Study in History, Aligarh Muslim University)
 
 

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