Ambedkar, Periyar, and Feminisms in India

Abstract

As all feminist trajectories branch from epistemological intersectionalities, feminist movements in India also find themselves battling a regressive patriarchal force with layered variables. Studying these movements in India poses several challenges, one of the foremost being the absence of a single vantage point and a single trajectory that captures the underlying pluralities. However, to conceptualize feminisms in India is to contextualize Brahmanical patriarchy to a considerable extent. India's pernicious history of regressive norms, customs, superstitions, and institutionalized oppression makes conceptualizing feminism in India difficult and outrightly implies the need to do away with the predominantly western phraseology of feminism. This work aims to bring to light how an emphatic movement was realized and acknowledged as not only a sociological outcome of multi-layered prolonged oppression but also as a legal battle under intellectual pioneers such as Ambedkar and Periyar. This thesis is a dynamic study of myths, struggles, battles, losses, and accounts of people who were victims of the kind of patriarchy unique to India. Elaboratively, the work also reviews the adoption of an intersectional framework for Indian feminisms ever since the inception of Ambedkarite and Periyar feminisms in the 20th century. Owing to their vast palette of ideas and knowledge, an attempt to augment Ambedkar and Periyar thought to queer theory is also made. The methodologies for this study include in-depth textual and comparative analysis, and archival studies examining the genealogical outcomes of such movements.