By Matters India Reporter
Nagpur, October 14, 2019: Women, particularly from Dalit community, need to organize themselves and affirm leadership skills to transform India with the ideals of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, says Cynthia Stephen, social activist and researcher.
Dalit women are to work to bring Babasaheb’s dream of an equal and egalitarian society to fruition, she told a national conference in Nagpur.
Stephen’s study was on “Dalit Women’s Organising: Movements and their Role in empowering Dalit Women: A 21st Century Appraisal.”
She was one of the presenters of research paper during the national conference on “Babasaheb Ambedkar and Democracy,” October 9-10.
“One of the most remarkable contributions of Babasaheb to this country was his vision to empower women socially, economically and politically. He was the first to organize women mill workers into union, hold special conclaves for women, and otherwise acknowledge their full and equal partnership in the work of annihilating caste and developing the poorest and most backward sections in Indian society, which included the women,” said Stephen, who is also a journalist.
Ambedkar’s pro-women labor policies and his championing the property and legal rights of women are an important if less known part of his legacy, she stressed.
Her paper traced the trajectory of Dalit women’s movements and organizing, their resistance, institution building, and empowerment in the immediate pre and post-independent period and appraised the situation of the movements at the present day.
India needs “a new politics and a new language to shape Dalit women movements, and for the country in general and the Dalit community, in particular, to recognize and affirm the leadership capabilities and skills of the women, especially those from the grassroots, and to encourage, accept and collaboratively work to bring Babasaheb’s dream of an equal and egalitarian society to fruition,” said Stephen, former consultant, Government and Community Relations at International Justice Mission.
In Sanskrit, the word ‘Dalit’ means ‘trampled upon’ and refers to all marginalized people outside the four-tier rigid Hindu caste system.
India has 201 million Dalits or socially disadvantaged group out of 1.2 billion people, according to government data.
India is home to more than 80 million Dalit women, who form about 17 percent of India’s female population.
More than 100 scholars, academics, philosophers, activists and Buddhist practitioners and others attended the conference and 54 papers connected with the overall subject of “Dr. Ambedkar and democracy” were presented.
The sub-topics covered broad thematic domains: roots of Dr. Ambedkar’s vision and practice of democracy, Ambedkar and democratic movement in India: historical assessment, philosophy and scope of democracy in Ambedkar’s thoughts and philosophy, Buddhism and deep democracy, annihilation of caste and democracy, democratic movement in India and its global significance and democracy and cultural transformation.