Gender, identity and higher education: young Meena women in Rajasthan, India

ABSTRACT

Several communities in India have defined the contours of the extent and quality of women’s education based on the shifts in the demands of marriage within the community. The following paper traces a similar pattern in the educational trajectories of first-generation women of the Meena community across the rural and urban areas, to access the state government’s women’s college in Sawai Madhopur, Rajasthan, India. The relevant data has been collected through fieldwork conducted in Sawai Madhopur in the year 2017. The paper explores the complicity of the women’s college with the institutions of family and marriage that result in a complete elimination of the classroom as a meaningful space of learning for women. The paper focuses on these and other such costs that Meena women bear for access to education.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher educational trajectories
• rural- urban
• Meena community
• young women
• Rajasthan

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my Doctoral Supervisor Prof. Nandini Manjrekar for her valuable comments that were integral during the process of writing this paper. A special mention to Prof. Himanshu Burte and team for taking the time out to give their valuable comments during the writing retreat sponsored by Urban Studies Journal and Review of Urban Affairs Economic and Political Weekly held in June 2023. I would like to extend my gratitude to the editors of this special issue Dr. Abel Beremenyi and Dr. Judit Durst for allowing me to share my work. Finally, I am grateful to all three reviewers whose comments and suggestions were immensely helpful in shaping the paper in its current form.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Mina or Meena is interchangeably used to refer to the same community.

2. Census of India (accessed on October 10, 2021). https://www.censusindia.co.in/subdistrict/sawai-madhopur-tehsil-rajasthan-531

3. For more on the Criminal Tribes Act 1871, see Meena (2021).

4. Although there are debates regarding their identity as a tribal community or a caste group (Sharma 2008) the use of the term tribe here is deliberate as it is based on their recognition as a Tribal group by the Government of India through their inclusion in the Scheduled Tribes list.

5. This was visible in the response of the community during the Mina-Gurjar clashes in 2008 (for more see, Lodrick 2009) when the Gujar’s demands for inclusion into the Scheduled Tribe category was met with stiff resistance by the Meenas.

6. I do not intend to negate the presence of the small section of women who did come to submit their own forms, however despite this, the numbers of men had overruled their presence in college.

7. Pass books are locally available books that contain a question answer format of the topics covered by the university board. These are available for all subjects and are heavily used by students in most regional colleges offering Arts across the state. These books are released three months prior to the onset of annual examinations.

8. Findings reveal that marriages within the community are centred around what are known as ‘dowry rates’ in which an economic value is attached to a hierarchy of government professions that are popular in the community (Banerjee and Jain 2001).