This chapter explains khap panchayat as a traditional patriarchal institution in odd with the changing values, norms, lifestyle and outlook of the new generation, resulting in latent and manifest intergenerational tensions. As a traditional institution, it is struggling to retain its source of authority amidst its declining social role and emergence of modern institutions of authority and power. As a desperate move to maintain its authority as a patriarchal social institution, it is resorting to reprehensible practises like social boycott, expulsion from the village and honour killing and bypassing (defying) the established institutions of law and justice.

The reprehensible practices of the khap panchayats have often been seen in the context of maintaining the caste endogamy and gotra (clan) exogamy, the two fundamental norms of establishing marital relations in north Indian society. This also involves the issue of women and gender relations, as more often women are subject to the violence and punishment and are considered the custodians of honour and prestige of the caste, gotra and family. This necessitates examination of gender relations in society where such institutions are still able to command social obedience.

The skewed sex ratio is another peculiar problem of north-western Indian society where the khap panchayat is an influential social institution, although the link between the two is weak and ambiguous. Nevertheless, the skewed sex ratio has thrown new social challenges.

The discussion that follows has two primary locations: the first is related to the human rights struggles in India, particularly in relation to the Dalits and other oppressed sections of society, the second is about subaltern studies which emerged as a radical rereading of history, particularly history as viewed from below. Both are related to providing voice to the people who are oppressed and marginalized in the mainstream society, and they seem to have some common concerns and focus, not just in the choice of this subject, but also in the manner of investigation. The main objective of this chapter is to map the discourse on subaltern studies with reference to human rights question in India in order to examine how the subaltern condition of Dalits can be understood. A comparative analysis of the two discourses, it is hoped, would bring to focus the actual nature of Dalit subalternity and the multiple ways in which it manifests in Indian society. In addition to developing a critique of subaltern studies from a caste perspective, the study would try to locate the caste question within a human rights discourse. It is well known that subaltern studies, which began as a conscious rejection of elitist and bourgeoisie-nationalist approaches to the study of Indian history, was also an attempt at exploring alternative approaches to the study of social science that is rooted within the Third World context.

I

Introducing Subaltern Studies in India

Ranajit Guha, the founder of the subaltern studies in South Asia, is considered as the practitioner of a critical Marxist historiography, who sought an active political engagement with the postcolonial present, inspired by Antonio Gramsci and Mao Zedong (Chatterjee, 2009). Guha, as founder and guiding spirit of subaltern studies, has provided a critic of both the colonialist and the nationalist historiographies of modern South Asia. He critically examined in the first volume of Subaltern Studies (1982) itself the two elitisms — the colonialist and the nationalist (Chatterjee, 2009). David Arnold, Shahid Amin and Gyanendra Pandey joined Guha in England on debates on the two elitisms and the new path of historiography. In 1980, in India, Gautam Bhadra, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Partha Chatterjee joined him in the ongoing initial discourse on subalternity.

Partha Chatterjee (2009) states that the early volumes of Subaltern Studies (1982–89) were mostly concerned with the studies of peasant agitations during the nationalist movement. Guha's emphasis in these volumes was on the autonomy of peasant consciousness. The nationalist politics of the peasantry was not the same as that of the elite. Guha published his essay on this theme under the title – Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (1997).

I

While in the decades of the 1980s and 1990s, Dalits and Backward Classes in India were asserting social and political empowerment with an urge to get their shares in the development pie of a declared welfare state, the traditionally dominant upper caste/class national elite fashioned a political discourse and an agenda for new political economy, which were not only inherently biased against the interests of the newly assertive social groups, but were capable of eroding the ideological legitimacy of their politics and movement and defeating their larger objectives. Firstly, through the vocabulary of political discourse, an element of apprehension, uncertainty and instability was infused in the national psyche to claim that any change in regime, i.e., replacement of the traditionally dominant upper-caste/class ruling elite by leaders of the new social groups, would unleash an era of political and economic uncertainty, social conflict and immoral politics. Secondly, the new policy regime – free market economy, non-state actors (greater participation of non-governmental organizations or NGOs) and review of the constitution – were premised on the understanding that there had been something wrong with the policy and institutions and not with the policymakers; power structure and not the power wielders.

This discourse would serve the interest of the traditionally dominant upper-caste/class national elite in two ways: one, it would put down curtains on the (failures) past regimes, which in spite of lofty preaching and umpteen promises failed to improve the life chances of Dalits and Backward Classes in general.

I

Introduction

Agriculture in India has been going through a big transformation in recent years. Due to demographic, distress, and other factors, men have been migrating to urban areas in large numbers and women have been pushed to take the responsibilities of agriculture. For example, the share of women farmers has increased from 42 per cent in 2004–05 to 52 per cent in 2009–10 (NSSO, 2010). This has been increasing for more than two decades. The increasing participation of women in place of men has been termed as feminization of Indian agriculture.

While the share of women's participation in agriculture has increased substantially, the proportion of land-owning women farmers out of the total women farmers is very less. Around 12 per cent of the total agricultural holdings are operated by women covering 9.3 per cent of the total land but without any data regarding their ownership of the operated area (Agricultural Census, 2005–06). However, it is argued that women's participation in agriculture can increase efficiency and productivity if they are simultaneously given title to the land. Unless women get access to land, the efficient use of land resources cannot be ensured. This factor has been recognized by the policy makers, and there have been efforts since the 1990s to increase women's access to land through ownership. There have been legislative reforms in favour of women and other policy changes in the domains of extension, input services and technology favouring women.

The Indian Muslim faced several problems because according to the British perception, all Muslims of the world formed a monolithic category; they assumed that Indian Muslims were no different from the Muslims they had come into contact with in Europe or other Islamic countries. The connection of Indian Muslims with those in other Islamic countries can be better understood in Edward Said's concept of Orientalism:

The British needed to provide a moral basis to their rule, and therefore projected Indian society as uncivilised and backward. Muslims, as part of that society, were placed in the same category. According to the British, their purpose was to introduce rationality in what they assumed was the irrationality inherent in Islam.

This chapter explores British remarks about and observations on Indian Muslim women, and argue how and why the British projected them in a derogatory manner in their discursive writings. The revolt of 1857 alarmed the British, making them review ways to control Indian society, and future policies to be adopted towards Muslims. This incident also served as a lesson in maintaining a distance from Indians where administration was concerned. As a result, recruitment became restricted to the upper-class service gentry of European origin. British men began arriving in large numbers with their families, followed by many unmarried women, who came for missionary work (and sometimes in search of appropriate husbands). The sudden influx of Europeans made it even more vital for the British to establish a racial hierarchy and condemn Indians as morally and racially inferior.

The making of the Punjabi society, a frontier society, for the last 3,000 years has been a fascinating story of complex paradoxes. If the Punjab served as a theatre of warfare, it has also been an abode of sages, seers and sant poets. Perpetual political and ideological contestation did not necessarily close the doors to meditative contemplations. Even if the established religions, including the new ones, could not avoid sectarian manifestations, the universal spirituality kept the doors open for egalitarian inclusiveness cutting across all divisive lines. If the rise of Sikhism as a new religious ideology was a popular expression of egalitarian urges and came to offer respectable space to the untouchables from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, it also degenerated to Brahmanical caste praxis by the mid-nineteenth century. Meanwhile, the Dalit sant poets, as part of the tradition, offer a seemingly paradoxical response of devotion and dissent. We have four major Punjabi Dalit poets emerging from the last quarter of the seventeenth century to the first quarter of the twentieth century who were soaked in the contemplative world of knowledge and spirituality, while seeking an egalitarian and just society. The Punjabi Dalit literary tradition begins with Bhai Jaita alias Jeevan Singh (c. 1655–1704), who became part of the guru's household as he had carried the severed head of Guru Teg Bahadur from Delhi to Anandpur, and in his late years, composed a devotional epic poem, Sri Gur Katha, around Guru Gobind Singh's life at the turn of the eighteenth century.

The great uprising of 1857 brought about a significant change in Indian society. This incident led to several socio-political developments in the Indian subcontinent. However, the impact was greater on north Indian Muslims, both socio-culturally and politically. For centuries, Delhi remained the centre of power, and for over six centuries Muslims ruled this region. To the common people, the Mughal dynasty was very important, given their long emotional connections with the emperors, irrespective of whether the emperors were strong like Akbar, Jahangir or Shah Jahan, or inconsequential like Bahadur Shah Zafar. For the people, the king was their anndata, a divine power who would bring back their lost glory, and therefore a figure of rebellion, whether real or symbolic. This perception helped the Mughals to consolidate their presence over a long period. Although the country was fragmented into several small states after the disintegration of the Mughal Empire, these newly-formed states could not erase the memory of Mughal glory, specially after their painful experiences with regional power. The erstwhile subjects were filled with despair and frustration, which was why the spark of rebellion caught on so quickly.

Historians are coming to terms with a comprehensive paradigm shift in early medieval India, which also has a bearing on the historiography of protest and revivalist movements. While there is an abundance of literature on the protest movements, and the dissidents as well, but the nature of protest, however, needs a critical review. This essay seeks to understand the process by which the ‘protest’ itself becomes dogmatic and therefore requires a protest and/or ‘reform’ to further revitalize the ‘tradition’. Moreover, the protest in itself needs a cogent qualification: for a question arises about the protest being aimed against whom/what? We shall ask this twofold question from the non-conformist North Indian Nath Siddhas over a long period, from the tenth to the sixteenth centuries, reflected in the waxing and waning of the movement, particularly in the Punjab. Also, we shall contextualize the protest against the changing profile of ascetic institutions and their nexus with the state; as much as against the dominant medieval perceptions impacting the language, norms and issues of devotion and worship.

The post-Gupta period in India is characterized by political fragmentation (particularly with the fall of the Palas, Pratiharas and Rashtrakutas), the crowning of the Puranic religion with profound impetus on temple activity – temple building, images and rituals – and the horizontal expansion of the ritually lower castes, the Shudras. The turbulence was such that the later Puranas predicted a systemic inversion, ‘the chiliastic image of total cataclysm’, whereby the Brāhmanas will behave like Shudras and the Shudras like Brāhmanas; the kings will become paupers and the paupers, kings; the servants as masters and masters like servants. That such an assertion was made at a time when the economy was being feudalized – declining trade, increase in land grants, declining towns and enhanced dependence upon agriculture – things must have been desperate, as the positional inversion within the power structure is inbuilt in this argument.

Can all Muslims be referred to as a monolithic bloc? Although all the women who can be classified as ‘Muslim’ adhere to Islam and its customs, is it an adequate basis for referring to them as a collective entity, or placing them within an undifferentiated category? Are there no differences of caste, social class or region among them? Is it not true that in culturally, socially and economically progressive regions, the status of Muslim women is better than in the regions that have experienced no such development historically? Is it not time for researchers to explore how these differences affect these women's status—within the same or different regions of India?

The answer to these questions lies in comprehending the significance of social stratification amongst the Muslims. The first question that comes to mind is, ‘Who is the Indian Muslim/Musalman?’ The definition provided in colonial deliberations and census reports is: ‘One who eats cow, who hates pork, who believes in one God and does not believe in idol worship; whose men keep beards and wear skull-sized caps, and whose women wear a burqa.’ The general perceptions that form Muslim identity state that Muslim women are veiled, as opposed to the unveiled Hindu women, as Muslims always do the opposite of what Hindus do.

Varkari Tradition

A continuous religio-socio-literary phenomenon, such as the Varkari tradition, which can be traced back to the late thirteenth century at least, may be seen in categories that have been termed as ‘a history of cultural memory’ or ‘mnemohistory’. The public memory of traditional societies is constructed from a dynamic version of the past that cares not so much for historical accuracy or fact, as for the continuing significance that the past holds for the present. The relationship of the present to the past is dynamic and is constantly shaped by the interpretations of several texts and narratives, written and oral, which live on in a kind of a living debate, extending over centuries. Chronicles of pre-colonial Indian figures, especially those from the domains of religious and devotional sects, and the literary works attributed to them, are not recorded in ways that are amenable to biographical reconstruction, but live in the collective memory of communities. Sanctified and mythologized in hagiographies, these lives may be said to be socially constructed. The contours of the life of a proto-historical figure take shape from the values and norms that constitute that community. In a sense then, if one were to trace the lives of two poet saints from the Varkari sampradaya, separated from each other by a couple of centuries, yet connected in ways that this essay hopes to explore, the narrative would also be a reconstruction of the culture of the community that had kept the memories of these lives alive.