Vandana Rai
The writings on the complexity of caste and gender have recently received sufficient scholarly attention. Broadly, these works have engaged with two questions: ( a ) How does caste impinge on the lives of women and ( b ) what do women do with caste rules? The question of ‘how’ has been ventured using different registers such as sexuality (Yalman, 1963; Chakravarti, 1993; 2003; Abraham, 2014); ‘untouchability’, gender, and the political economy of (castebased) production (Guru, 1995; Kannabiran and Kannabiran, 1991; Rao, 2003a; 2003b); purity and honour (Gupte, 2013; Chowdhry, 2007); and caste, spatiality, and gender identity (Fuller and Narasimhan, 2014; Niranjana, 2001; Kapadia, 1996). The inquiry into this question foregrounds mainly two things: first, gender is significant in maintaining the reproduction of caste hierarchy through controlling sexuality and exploiting the sexual-economic labour of women (Yalman, 1963; Chakravarti, 1993; Rao, 2003b); second, caste structure, in the form of rules and regulation, invades women's lives differently (Dube, 1997). Engendering caste while emphasizing the question of ‘how’ constitutes a crucial aspect of the inquiry and it is less contentious that caste delimits and regulates individuals’ lives in many ways. However, its rules are not without challenges, contestations, and modifications through women's actions in everyday life. An overemphasis on caste as regulating gender may undermine the question ‘What do women do with caste?’ Centralizing the lives and practices of women's everyday life, many scholars have explored the response of women to caste norms governing their everyday lives. For instance, Raheja and Gold (1996), by analysing the women's oral traditions and uses of language in rural western Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, argue that women shape alternative moral perspectives on kinship, gender, and sexuality.