Resisting the Destruction of Social Reproduction: Dalit women’s Struggle in South India

Abstract

This chapter is about a women-led struggle against a particular form of destruction of social reproduction. For more than three decades, Dalit rural women, most of them landless, fought to maintain the possibility of making their livelihood, and more broadly sustaining life, on their own territory. We describe how a common identity around the preservation of their livelihood on their territory and more broadly on the will to fight has emerged. We analyse the embeddedness of the struggle into caste, class, gender, space and time. We analyse the multiple ways through which women have slowly constructed themselves as political subjects, and the key role of emotions in this. We also analyse the contradictions of the State, both main supporter and main opponent of women’s struggles.