Decolonizing life skills education for girls in Brahmanical India: a Dalitbahujan perspective

ABSTRACT

Life skills have become the foci of many girls’ education initiatives because they are assumed to empower girls to negotiate oppressive gender norms constraining their lives. Often these programmes give a singular attention to gender norms, despite other interlocking oppressive structures and norms. Although postcolonial feminist perspectives in education have often stressed on intersectional analyses, little attention has been given to caste in such scholarship in India. In this paper, we draw on data from a three-year qualitative study of a girls’ life skills programme in Rajasthan, India, employing a postcolonial feminist framework. We engage with Dalitbahujan feminist perspectives in education (Paik, S. 2014. Dalit Women's Education in Modern India: Double Discrimination. London: Routledge.) to decolonize our frameworks and illustrate how the life skills programme produced contradictory outcomes to address gender oppression, such as ensuring girls' bodily integrity, while re-inscribing caste norms. This intersectional analysis of caste, gender, and modernity expands on a postcolonial feminist critique of life skills

KEYWORDS:

• Postcolonial theory
• intersectionality
• caste, girls' education
• India

Acknowledgments

We thank our colleagues from JPAL South Asia and American University, as well as the research assistants and translators in the conduct of this research. We also thank the participants in this study, the young girls and women as well as the local, national, and international staff from the nongovernmental organization for their cooperation during the conduct of this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Aditi Arur designs programs in citizenship education and has evaluated girls' education programs in India.

Joan DeJaeghere is a Professor of Comparative and International Development Education, and has conducted research and evaluations in gender, life skills, and education in various countries including India.

Notes

1. Savarna ideology or Brahmanism is the dominant interpretation of Hinduism which recognizes a social hierarchy called the caste system where Brahmans are considered the most superior followed by Kshatriyas, and Vaishyas together referred to as savarnas, and lastly, the Sudras. The ‘untouchables’ or asavarna are those people who have been denied a place in this system. Adivasis are the indigenous people of India who are also outside of the caste system following indigenous belief systems. However, Brahmanism has historically appropriated these indigenous belief systems and anti-caste struggles within the all-encompassing ‘Hinduism’ with claims to indigeneity.

Additional information

Funding

The research study discussed in this paper was funded by the U.S. Department of Labor.