Gandhi: Caste, Class and Gender To better

Transcript:Gandhi: Caste, Class and Gender To better:
Gandhi: Caste, Class and Gender To better understand Gandhi and Gandhi’s India WHY pay attention to these categories? These are among the most important VECTORS of POWER in India people’s lives (and identity) shaped by these categories they determine the opportunities and disabilities people encounter rich and poor, upper and lower castes, men and women do not share the same experience of nationalism or perception of Gandhi This focus allows us to understand nationalism in general, and Gandhian nationalism in particular, in more complex ways Might help us better understand Gandhi’s later marginalization HOW do we study this? In ADDITION to the textbook, we explore these via three sets of readings 1. Godaan to better understand the lived and intersectional reality of the three categories 2. Hardiman, “Father of the Nation” from Gandhi in His Time and Ours to better understand Gandhi’s own gendered worldview and its limitations 3. Ambedkar, “What do the Untouchables Say?”, Guha, “Gandhi’s Ambedkar”, and Hardiman, “Dalit and Adivasi Assertion” to understand the differences in perspective and politics of Gandhi and Ambedkar The powerpoint Caste, a historical approach is critical background “reading” for all of the above, but especially #3 ALWAYS keep in mind that the three categories INTERSECT, so will make references that go back and forth between the three sets of readings Godaan Published in 1936, in progress before that, so depicts life in the 1920s and early 1930s Premchand committed to “social realism,” that is to depict society as he saw it. His political inclinations apparent in the novel. He also inaugurates the Progressive Writers Association in Lucknow in 1936 Godaan is fiction, of course, but fiction that allows us to understand the workings of class, caste and gender among the vast majority of Indians who lived in rural India as intersecting hierarchies (i.e. inequalities) To re-state the obvious, CLASS here refers primarily to ECONOMIC inequality, CASTE to those premised on the VARNA-JATI model, and GENDER to the inequalities between MEN and WOMEN Main Characters Class (Economic Hierarchy) Clear CLASS division between those on the left (poorer, steadfastly rural) and those on the right, who are richer, connected with a more urban and cosmopolitan, MODERN world. Most men, and some women are also familiar with English or have western-style education Their ECONOMIC privilege also allows them to be much freer of caste restrictions. Think of their parties and contrast with restrictions on who