Author ORCID Identifier
Richa Nagar: 0000-0003-3629-8622
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-16-2020
Publication Title
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cgpc20 Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography
Abstract
This essay draws on ongoing translations of, and reflections on, journeys undertaken since 2002 with members of Sangtin in Uttar Pradesh. Sangtin, originally imagined as an NGO, has steadily evolved into Sangtin Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan (SKMS), a largely women-led movement of 8000 small farmers and laborers, most of them identifying as Dalit. SKMS emerged from encounters with NGOs, academ- ics, and artists whose fixed understandings of ‘feminism’ often failed to recognize that empowering women in isola- tion from the rest of their communities was not sustainable empowerment. Over the eighteen years of battling on this terrain for their rights, dignity, truths, and justice, the SKMS members and supporters have rejected the institutionalized categories of the development industry and academia that flatten the complexity and creativity of life and struggle. In refusing to separate the activist from the scholar, the expert from the ordinary, and the theoretical from the lived, the essay underscores how the struggles for socioe- conomic justice of impoverished rural, Dalit peoples cannot be separated from the fight against epistemic violence and intellectual disempowerment of the same communities. Through situated solidarities that involve delicate dances of i/we/you/they, SKMS saathis – or co-travellers – from unequal locations walk together on bumpy terrains. As we do so, we interrogate our previous understandings of gen- der violence and entangle them with structures of caste- class, and we reconceptualize the terrain of sex, gender, public, and private while embedding our critiques within the violence of the developmental state and neo-liberal brahmanical capitalist patriarchy.
Keywords
Caste-class, development, feminism, Sangtin Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan, social movements
Volume
28
Issue
2
First Page
161
Last Page
175
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2020.1764914
Version
Author's Accepted Manuscript
Recommended Citation
Nagar, Richa, "Gender, Caste and Movement: Lessons from Sangtin Yatra" (2020). Study of Women, Gender, & Sexuality: Faculty Publications, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
https://scholarworks.smith.edu/swg_facpubs/57