Self-Making of Young Dalit Women: Becoming the Cultured and Mobile Ravidassia

Keywords: Youth, Mobility, Gender, Religion, Caste
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 67

Abstract

Much of the work on religion and Dalits has examined religion as an important tool for claiming respectability among lower caste communities. But how young Dalits are using religion to engage in processes of self-making and mobility that moves beyond the goals of respectability to claim social distinction is relatively unexplored. In this paper, I examine how young Dalit women in Punjab are using religion and specifically, the idioms of a lower caste religious movement to cultivate mobile identities. These young women belong to the upwardly mobile Dalit community of Punjabi Chamars or Ravidassias. The economic mobility of this community is complemented by religious and social assertions of the Chamar identity through the transnational Ravidassia movement. I draw on the narratives of young women residing in a predominantly Dalit village, Chaheru in the Doaba region of Punjab. Chaheru has a strong migration culture and young women from upwardly mobile families pursue a college education with the aim of study-based or marriage migration. But, despite the prevalence of mobility imaginaries linked with migration to Europe and North America, young women are rarely able to move away from the village. In response to their immobility, as young Ravidassia women wait to move away, they construct mobile identities by establishing their distinction from the rural space and affinity to the urban middle classes. An important aspect of cultivating these mobile and urban identities is claiming cultural sophistication by drawing on awareness and knowledge of the Ravidassia movement.