Name: Awantika Deora

Roll Number: B20150

Is Feminism about ‘Women’ ? A Critical

View on Intersectionality from India

For understanding the argument of the author, we must first understand the term
‘intersectionality’. Intersectionality as implied by the name itself too is the intersection of
identities. For example a woman is not just a woman, their race, caste and religion are also part
of their identity. In this context it means that when we talk about feminism, it’s not just about
‘women’, the disadvantages and discrimination faced by all women are not the same. Gender
whether it’s men or women or any other gender is a social construct, like race, caste and
religion. That is why the author argues that we need to recognise that women is neither a stable
nor a homogeneous category. Author argues that intersectionality as a universal framework
doesn’t capture this complexity. To understand and move forward with the argument, we come
up with two sets of questions. The first set of questions is how the concepts in the west are
assumed to be true everywhere but the concepts emerged in India are never assumed to be
true globally. For example, the trope of Draupadi can never be used to speak for Euro-American
experience while the play Antigone can be made to speak from women globally. The second set
of questions is that does the power of international funding to promote these concepts such as
intersectionality depoliticise initially radical concepts ?

Women in Indian feminism has never been just about women. In Fact when the identity of
women is added with race, class, caste, it doesn’t seem like a new thing to us, because it has
always been there, it’s not something that emerged suddenly. For example, after independence
too, the idea of national identity was never through individual identity but through communities.
That is why in our constitution too, not only fundamental rights of citizens but the rights of
religious communities are also protected. This often contradicts when the religious personal law
discriminates towards women because then it violates the personal rights as a citizen. For
example, the case of Triple Talaakh, if it had been just about the personal rights of individuals,
there wouldn’t have been so much debate in the first place but because it was a religious
personal law, the case had to be fought from both sides. So the point is that the overlap of
identities was from the start located in each aspect in India.

The politics of caste and religion also questions the commonality of female experience in India.
For example the ongoing debate of giving blanket reservation of 33% to women. The opposition
cannot be seen as patriarchal as their argument comes from the point of view of caste and not
gender. Note that the opposition isn’t against reservation for women, their argument is that this
‘blanket’ reservation will simply replace lower caste men with upper caste women. Rather they
are insisting on giving reservation within reservation for example reserving a number of seats
among the 33% for OBC etc. Intersectionality should also be seen in context of location for
example how in France the democracy emerged based on individual citizens alone which was
contradictory to the emergence of democracy in India. So the intersectionality in Indian context
and European context are very different. Also it’s not like only lower caste challenges the
feminist politics as seen in the debate for blanket reservation. For example, the case of Dalit
feminist groups versus Dalit bar dancers, in this case the feminist group found it impossible to
support the bar dancing profession but here on both sides there are equally political and
feminist positions.

The demand for UCC has also become more about National Integrity versus Cultural Rights of
community. The right wing supports this unambiguously using it as an argument towards other
religions that they don’t want to merge into the national stream. The idea of UCC started as
about the rights of women but became the topic of secularism. So here also we need to
recognise the personal laws of women in all religions aren’t the same. That is why the minorities
fear that UCC will erode their identity.

Queer in European context has mostly been talked about just about sexuality but in Indian
context it has always been talked about with respect to class, caste and community too. For
example, the Dalit guy whose parents gave him an upper caste surname to pass as upper caste
Hindu. It was never just coming out as gay for him but first coming out as a Dalit and then gay.
Note that treating sexuality as fluid and gender as not given isn’t trying to make a new category
or universal of all sexual identities but seeing queer as a political term and enabling the
continuous challenge to heteronormativity.

Intersectionality was coined at first to address the overlap of identities but it sometimes fails to
recognise that one’s identity is not always just the sum of two parts for example experiences of
Muslim plus experiences of women will not equal experiences of a muslim woman. Also
intersectionality is not always relevant in all contexts. For example, when I am giving the JEE
exam, only my identity as female and upper caste is taken into account. My identity as gay is
not relevant here. On the other hand if I want to marry someone of the same sex, here my
identity as gay is relevant and not getting the marriage rights can be seen as a disadvantage of
the same. So not all societies at all times and in all places make male/female distinctions.

In most of the cases, Intersectionality has been reduced to merely a way to check the boxes of
diversity. We are still missing the origin of it and the main cause. No doubt the intentions of
people might be very good, but they are failing to address the issue and serve the purpose.
Most of the government schemes in fact, in the name of empowering the women just
reestablishing the position of women in a patriarchal society. For example, helping them or
giving them a head start in a specific sector thought to be relevant for them by men.

In conclusion, no universal framework can capture the feminist solidarities in all contexts and
complexities. And funding in the name of intersectionality isn’t actually working for feminism but
for the government and funding agencies.
Before going through this reading, I had always seen feminism on internet and around me talk
about the upper caste women problems like how in corporate workplace especially there is so
much male domination and sexism. It never came across my mind that not all women even
reach that place so why is it seen as the mainstream issue in feminism ? Before this I also didn’t
know and understand the term ‘intersectionality’ completely. Even if I would have heard this term
before, I am sure I would have thought it to be a very good concept and assumed that it can
capture all the complexities of identity and feminism. I wouldn’t have criticized it or looked at it
the way I look at it now.