 Hello. Thank you. We are ten minutes late, so we'll try and catch up. My name is Murali Shanmugavellan and I'm with SOAS. I'm a PhD student, but I'm also attached to Billage Services Trust, so I'm going to do a very quick PR plugin. There's a small brochure here, so you can just have a look at it and read what the organization does, and if you need more information. Tony Huckle, can you please raise your hand, Tony? Tony's here. You can speak to him. So that's just about BST, one of the organizers of the event. Thank you. As you know, this session is on cost meets gender, and I deliberately decided not to read bios of the speakers, because you have one with you. So I did ask the speakers how I'd like to introduce them. Oh, by the way, there's an interesting anecdote. That post is really good, and I think Asha Kovtol can speak more about it, because she's in that picture. She's the woman. So that explains who my first speaker is, and when I asked her how well should I introduce you, Asha, she said, Dalit women, we are not flowers. We are flames of resistance. Asha, please. Good morning, and Jaybeem to you all. I greet you in the name of Dr. Ambedkar, because I think that without him and his contribution to our lives, I wouldn't be here, and I don't think we would be organizing this very large conference. First of all, I would really like to appreciate SOWAS and all the other co-organizers for organizing this cast out of the shadows conference. I believe this is a very relevant time in history that this conference is being organized, particularly here in the UK. As you all know that our Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi, has been on his world tour and with his rock show kind of presentations in the stadiums all across the world, and I think coming very soon to your country as well. And I think very important, I say that because we're here on a session to discuss cast meeting gender, I think I must really thank the organizers for making this session one of the core sessions of this conference. As many of you would agree with me that in the presentations done earlier this morning, a lot of data was presented, a lot of quantitative analysis, which very much lacked the data and disaggregated data on cast and gender. Like where do Dalit women actually figure out within this whole statistical analysis is a huge question for us today. Also, I would also want to add that when we are looking at all of this data, my struggle as an activist, as a practitioner has been really to look at the politics behind this data that is being churned out. And you know the authenticity itself of this data that is a huge challenge that we are facing as Dalit women in India. Also my sincere appreciation to all of you who have come here for this conference. To me this actually signifies that all of you have had that interest to know more, to understand probably to even challenge our own mindsets and maybe in some way contribute to this movement to end cast and patriarchy and find our unique ways of making some contribution. So really thank you all for that. Intersectionality, I don't think is a very new term or a new concept. A lot has been said, a lot has been written, a lot has been studied about it. In fact, Dalit women activists for a long time have been talking about this violent nexus of cast and gender, patriarchy and this whole cast hegemony and what it means to our lives, social, economic, political, culturally and otherwise. We have organized ourselves to face this kind of structural violence and discrimination at various levels, words like multiple forms of discrimination, layers of oppression, caste class, gender, you know, gendered analysis within the structure of poverty. So many words and terminologies have been used. In fact, now I feel this whole victimization analysis within this intersectionality framework sometimes very often gets loosely used also without really getting at the core of what it means to be born as a Dalit woman in extremely poor conditions of family and community. I think a very quick cross section, when we look at the perpetrators of these crimes or this violence against Dalit women will give us a very clear picture. Now who are these perpetrators? Very often dominant cast men, groups of men, mixed cast sometimes includes even men from our own communities. Perpetrators also include women from the dominant cast who are in hand in hand with these crimes that are being perpetrated on us Dalit women. So when we look at this cross section of perpetrators, really then we can understand what is this intersectionality and in this whole web of violence and untouchability and discrimination who is playing what kind of role and where are the Dalit women actually placed in this intersectionality lens. The spectrum of violence I need not say, I think many of us in this room have read a lot of cases, have been on the field, have seen different research data and heinous crimes even as a stand and speak before you there's a lot of pain, there's a lot of anger, there's a lot of struggle when we look at the kind of violence that is inflicted on our girls and on our women. But the point that I want to make in this whole analysis of violence against Dalit women is actually the targeted kind of violence which we're actually subject to particularly because the assertion where there is greater assertion there there is much more backlash or violence that is actually silencing our voices. Very often the assertion is for economic rights. Very often the assertion is for access to land, access to resources, access to governance and access to actually spaces of decision making. And I think that is a trend that we are actually seeing so much more. It's not a new thing. I think Professor Thorat had very clearly given the whole history of how caste came into being and it's all its ramifications in different spheres. But over the time sufficient analysis is being done. A lot of research is being there right now where at a stage where there is really no dearth of evidence to say that the violence, discrimination and untouchability faced by Dalit women is very different from the women who are definitely not a homogeneous group. I think the relevant discussion for us this morning is to really look at the changing contours of impunity. Impunity at every level, right from the site of violence up to the state of until the stage of conviction and what goes wrong at every step. That's why I said like even the National Crime Records Bureau which actually puts the figure at four Dalit women being raped every day. I just cannot accept that data because just in a period of 45 days in two or three districts of a small state like Haryana, we ourselves a group of five or six activists recorded more than 45 cases of sexual violence. Just last week we got all the data from the different states that we're working, sitting with over 100 cases of sexual violence which we as a small team have recorded. The point I'm trying to make is that the National Crime Records Bureau only records the cases that actually reach the police station and if at all those sections were put under this particular act of the SCST prevention of atrocities act. Very often it is like okay when there's a crime against anybody the first stop of justice is the police station. For us friends actually it is crossing that upper caste or the dominant caste neighborhood to actually reach that police station. That's where most of our cases are either compromised forcefully with threat intimidation and with a lot of money that exchange hands at that at that moment. That's why I'm saying the changing contours of impunity. The nexus between the doctors, the medical officers, the investigation officers, the political parties and everybody involved in that crime. It is so dirty and really so poisonous. Today in a country that is really obsessed with growth, obsessed with economic development and I would say very much a right wing capitalist kind of a model that is being you know piloted in my country. The question that we are asking is at whose cost is all this happening and really the brazenness of impunity that we have actually experienced in the last year or last year and a half. Impunity has always been there. I do not like say that when the previous government was there everything was fine for us the little women know. But I would like to I would really like to say that the brazenness of the crimes and the way in which perpetrators are getting away scot-free is really something else. I think with this whole you know very much hetero patriarchal Hindu identity which is being thrown at our faces every day that you know if you're your nationality of being an Indian and your identity of being a Hindu and so then you can live in this country and then probably access justice or not that is something that is being thrown at us every single day and actually that leaves really very less space for alternative politics leave alone articulations voices and discourse of Dalit women who are really at the bottom bottom of this whole hegemony or you know this whole caste order. I would like to actually take a pause right now and show you one small video clip of I think two and a half minutes and then I'll just continue to say what I have to say. There comes a point when you can't take one more headline when you are sick of the violence and you are tired of being afraid. I said I will beat you up, but when he started to do this, he turned around and he was completely shot. Dalit women's bodies are used as a battleground for the caste war. The attacks on our bodies are used to teach our blessing to the larger community. In 2014, a courageous band of women came together to take on the caste system and to say enough is enough. Really the question is why is it that a group of 15, 20 young Dalit youth women from the community have to take out a plan something like the Dalit women's self respect march, travel from one district to another district, go and meet with the survivors, organize the community, come and then fight with the police, fight with the district collectors, actually get thrown out of their offices, actually further further victimization. If everything was well and if everything was okay, why should we be doing something like this at a great risk? Why is it that today like whatever few Dalit women we are, we have to come to the Human Rights Council every year to plead with the international human rights mechanisms to recognize caste and particularly caste based violence on women as a global human rights concern. Why do we run to CEDAW? Why do we run to the commission status of women? Every instrument from the local to the global level we have been trying to use. Yet there is this extreme form of silencing our voices. Always there is a silence when this bad word of caste is being talked and every declaration that we worked with, every mechanism that we worked with find every ways to actually delete that five letter word from the entire human rights discourse. So really the question is when we as a small group of Dalit women have to challenge and fight against this mighty Indian state, where does that leave us as Dalit women who are actually formulating our own articulations and our own discourse. Today in India there is no dearth of policies, there is no dearth of legislations. You name it and you get it. Whether you like say education then you will get a right to education. You say employment you will get a right to employment. You say access to justice there will be something for that. But really it's almost like handed to you in a silver plate. But the real question is what do we do with all of these? The Prime Minister Modi announced a beti parao, beti bachao. Basically it means educate your girl child and you know make her to grow into somebody. The question we are again and again asking is whose girl child you want to save? Whose girl child you want to educate? When you are just ignoring this whole structural hegemony of caste, you cannot separate. These two will be just fooling ourselves. So actually the question for us Dalit women that we are raising today is intersectionality of these laws. Intersectionality of the schemes. Now you all must have heard about Nirbhaya, the unfortunate incident where this girl was raped and murdered in the moving bus in Delhi. After which a lot of agitations took place, amendments to the criminal laws were made. There are other legislations called as POCSO which looks at child sexual offences act. There's also the SCST prevention of atrocities act more than 25 years old. But in all of these intersections of all of these laws, where do we as Dalit women form that is not there in the lens of the policymakers? Already mentioned was made about the special component plan and tribal sub-plan which actually allocates a percentage of money for development schemes for our communities. Does those laws actually have anything specific for us? Any targeted schemes for us Dalit women that is also absent in the eyes of the policymakers today. So whether we fit in or we don't fit in or actually are we being forcefully fit into some existing policies and legislations is really what the Dalit women are asking to the policymakers and also to members of civil society. We have a very revolutionary constitution in place. We have truckloads of legislations, policies, development schemes in our country. But sometimes like we as Dalit women we are asking should we keep going back again and again to these institutions mandated to give us justice but actually denying it to us at every step. What is it that when there is a system where are these institutions with such deep seated institutional mindsets which are so biased on caste and patriarchy including the judiciary, including the legislature, including the media, including civil society. Why are we going back to these same institutions which are not delivering anything for us or will they ever deliver anything for us? Is it time that as Dalit women we create our own institutions? Do we need to have our own spaces to create our own history and our own voices of articulation? Is something then how do we fight this kind of a very strong hegemonical power? I don't know whether we reject them at this point because caste is everywhere very much within the judiciary itself. Lastly, I want to quickly come to looking at what kind of challenges we are facing. Already a lot has been said about the changing political landscape in the country. Lot of changes are being made into the policies, shrinking spaces for civil society organizations, particularly activists organizations where we are facing lot of digital security issues as well as physical security issues. And also at a time that Dalit women are actually challenging this whole appropriation of our own history of our own voices by other groups. A time has come that we are building our own narratives from our own history and where is that space for that? So as we are moving forward friends what the Dalit women's movement is asking is not merely for funding or not merely for financial resources but we are actually really seeking genuine allyship and solidarity which means we all have to undertake that very difficult task of unpacking our own privilege. And how will we stand by in allyship or in solidarity enabling us as Dalit women to build our own narratives, rewrite our own histories and take forward this movement for justice. Because I think without escalating this into a very large global campaign we will not be able to end impunity and India will continuously get away scot-free. But I really think everyone in this room now that we know we cannot like not do something and I think it's a call really call for action for all of us to be involved in this movement. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks Harsha. And next comes Dr. Deshri Mangubai and this is what she had to say. When I started my PhD in Southern Tamil Nadu villages among Dalit women the first thing women would tell me is what can I tell you? We are only illiterate and low-caste women. And then they started to share how they had successfully struggled against all odds for four years to obtain housing land for over 50 families and how they had overcome discrimination, threats and even violence. That to me Dalit women's power and potential. Dr. Deshri Mangubai. Okay. Thank you. To pick up from Harsha's powerful talk you might be wondering well what is the Indian government doing about? How does it look and treat Dalit women? You've heard in the morning we have the privilege of having a rights-based constitution in India that prohibits and discrimination based on caste and gender. We have affirmative action provisions. We also have in local governance we actually have a specific quota for schedule cast women. In addition to quotas for schedule cast as well as quotas for women. We also have from the 11th plan onwards there's been actually a focus on what the government says inclusive growth and within that there's actually been specific mentions. So for the last 10 years of talking about Dalit women as a specific vulnerable and marginalised category of women calling for the implementation of protective laws for them and also distinct provisions for Dalit women in programme planning, financial allocations and distribution of reservations in education employment. And that's actually there in the plan. That was there for the 11th plan. The 12th plan has similar provisions at least on looking at Dalit women. And yet you've listened to what Ash has been saying about the reality. And one of the things that I want to look at is on one hand you have gaps in terms of the implementation of these laws, these policies for programmes. So you actually have violence or violations of the rights of Dalit women are trivialised often. They're often questioned as whether they're genuine or not. So if when a lot of rape cases take place, there have been number of counter discourses that I've heard from judges down to police officials saying, yeah, but you know what, a lot of them just make up these cases. So we had those kind of discourses. You had the under enforcement of laws and policies and schemes. And if you look at it across the board, what you're seeing is that it operates to institutionalise a hierarchy of social groups on the basis of the extent to which groups, caste groups enjoy informal rights and entitlements in reality. And always across the board you see that Dalit women enjoy the least rights and entitlements. And on the other hand what Ash had touched upon is that in the very design of government measures, you see that in India we have a plethora of measures for Dalits, schedule cast or for women. What the government often is unable to do is to recognise how do you look at both of these identities together and the ways that they intersect. So you often see that Dalit women fall within the gaps. So there are a number of issues where you see that say in terms of budgets, as Asha mentioned, where are the programmes for Dalit women? The same in terms of benefits that at least a few benefits that are supposed to derive to schedule cast and there are huge issues in the delivery of those benefits. But even those often end up in the hands of men rather than women. So whether it be land title for men or alternative livelihood provisions often don't reach Dalit women. So even if you look at quotas and the way that quotas work, on the one hand you have this strong pushback at the moment and it's been going for a long time against reserved quotas. So all on the basis of merit which ignores the fact that merit has also been something that's historically constructed on the basis of unequal access to resources, to social capital, to knowledge on the basis of cast. And on the other hand when you look at the way that work and employment quotas sometimes work in practice is that often Dalit women are told well you're a woman, you can't apply for the schedule cast quota. And then the flip side is then they say well no you're a Dalit, you can't apply for the women's quota. And then on top of that you get this idea that quotas is a form of rationing. So the idea is that then you're not allowed to access the general quotas based on merit which to me is to me an absolute counter of the whole merit versus reservations debate. And all of that is then compounded by the fact that if you look at the data we still have for this small tiny portion of reserved seats, you have a lot of unfilled seats, you also have a lack of emphasis then on giving Dalit women the quality education that is required for them to access reservations. On the other hand you've got, so what I'm looking at is then a lot of the very little space that really exists in reality for Dalit women to claim resources through existing institutions and the types of glass ceilings on the choices and opportunities that de facto operate. Despite the fact that we have equal opportunity laws, we have a plethora of schemes and programs in place. And yet issues of gender difference often when looking at them and to link with caste are often ignored in terms of explanations of social change for example occurring in the market economy today. So we've heard about discussions in the morning but for me what's quite interesting is that at least there's a little bit of anecdotal evidence and they're not solid in terms of the fact that how as say for example agriculture we're talking about gets increasingly mechanized as Dalit men in some way or the other have, there's been a little bit, it's not, I wouldn't call it social mobility but at least a moving out of traditional occupations like agricultural labor to find if not, it's small non-farm labor occupations in cities. But then what you see is that Dalit women assume de facto responsibility for continuing caste occupations. So you look at them in terms of agriculture today, there are huge percentage of the agricultural workforce. Again you look at cleaning, you look at a number of sectors that have been traditionally allocated for Dalits on the basis of their caste. You see that women are the ones that are performing those occupations together. You also have evidence very clearly that's emerging that how non-Dalit women are moving into higher level occupations than Dalit women. So sorry, how more dominant caste women are moving into higher level occupations than Dalit women and those disparities are increasingly widening. So what to me it signals very clearly is a lack of investment to build the knowledge and skills of Dalit women to be able to compete with other caste women when it comes to accessing market resources. At the same time you might be asking well then what are development actors and social movements doing to respond. And it has been very catchy, there's been fairly limited recognition or understanding of the different needs and situation of Dalit women. Though I think that is certainly changing because of people like Asha, Dalit women's activists who have become more and more vocal explaining what is their situation, the changes that are happening. And you also see very much and this is something that constantly have issues in India is the silence of the women's movement and even development actors that focus on gender equality. Because there's a lot of gender projects that happen in India on the needs for example to address caste based discrimination against Dalit women. So there's often this thing of well we should be talking about domestic violence against Dalit women and what Dalit men to do to Dalit women. Without recognizing that all of us in an Indian society we are both gendered and caste constructed. And our positions the way that we react means that you have to understand that as a continuum of violence from domestic violence all the way to caste violence, the atrocities that Ramesh and Asha shared. So one has been this failure or this non-willingness to look beyond what's happening in the community, recognize that external caste relations also impact on community dynamics. And also to understand that the strategies that Dalit women may have may be very different when you have to deal with a hostile caste context. So how do you reconcile that and continue to protect and preserve these rights of these women and the priorities they set for themselves. So that has been one aspect the other the other one that to me would be an hardship I will share in the afternoon is the failure to take up manual scavenging. A lot of work that actually gets done by a disproportionate number of Dalits and disproportionate of Dalit women. And yet is this seen as a gender equality or a gender justice issue? No. Nor have mainstream development actors understood how dominant caste have gained power in the market economy while maintaining these kinds of caste and gender boundaries that then deny a Dalit women access to equal access to productive resources. And on the other hand you've seen a lot of Dalit women also challenging the exclusions from the Dalit movements. They've often failed to acknowledge the interest the leadership of Dalit women. And that I think has been in some ways a bit more successful in terms of widening the spaces within the Dalit movements today. Also widening the Dalit rights discourse which in the last 20 years has become stronger and stronger. But is often given primarily to caste violence and other issues but not really looked at patriarchy and caste and how they intersect. So I think there are lots of opportunities and those opportunities to me today are coming from grassroots Dalit women activists villages who are increasingly mobilizing to often reinterpret to reimagine to change Dalit rights activism. So as to address their gender specific priorities. So I'm talking about women that are looking at access to land title access to housing for their families access to alternative jobs. Looking at fights against the destructive development practices like shrimp farming for example I've looked at it happening in coastal areas of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. And you also have women that have themselves faced violence. I remember a few years ago I met a woman who I'm Moini Devi from Bihar and she herself was a victim of sexual assault. She had been raped. She had fought unsuccessfully through a bias system to try and get justice. But then she transformed that into with the support of local activists. She transformed that to say turn around to her own community and say just put up your hand any one of you who has not been raped in this village in the last 10 years by a dominant caste man. And not one of those women could put up their hand. And from that she has started to organize women in her village to look at protection issues to start to raise more and more voice when there is harassment of young Dalit women. So I think that those are to me are the inspiring voices. Those are the voices that we need to capitalize to build upon. And one of the arguments that these women are using is because women have traditionally played a greater economic role in their households than other women. So they are putting forward that they have a right to almost priority as well in the way that we address issues of caste discrimination and violence in the country. And what's interesting to me about all of these struggles and things I think that we need to look at is the fact that all of these struggles allow well required women to negotiate complex power relations at multiple levels. So at the level of their family, sometimes at the level of their community, the wider dominant caste society as well as the state in order to access resources for their development and security. And only by understanding those kinds of distinct experiences that they face of subordination exclusion, can you understand how Dalit activism often becomes gendered. So my own research that I've done I was actually looking at just grassroots level movements of Dalit women. And it was to me very interesting to see that even the political spaces in which these women maneuvered are very different from what Dalit men maneuver. Because of the fact that because of their intersection of their caste and gender identity, not only are they more socially isolated, but they're also more marginalized from the formal arena of politics. So in terms of being separated from say dominant caste male politics from the local governance politics that happens around them, they are quite isolated. And it actually enables them sometimes to more effectively pursue claims for land, for resources through means of that void confrontation and conflict. One minute? Okay, right. So to me these different spaces actually signal the need for development strategies that build on Dalit women's multiple identities and the times of spaces they create. And also to recognize that if you only build in a strategy or an intervention around one identity, you can often disempower these women on the basis of another identity. And I've got examples but I'm not going to share them, but a lot of the partners that we are working with are doing fantastic work out there. They are young Dalit women leaders who are emerging, who are taking up, building thousands of collectors of Dalit women across their own states to take up cases of violence, to build women's knowledge and capacity and recognize that knowledge and capacity to act, give power to the women. They're also a colleague in Gujarat, for example, who's mobilizing Dalit women's leadership in the villages. But then by mobilizing their leadership in the villages in the panchats, they've actually been able to spearhead a campaign on violence against women that cuts across caste and communal lines. But with the very idea that you keep Dalit women's leadership at the center in order to get others to acknowledge or to gain recognition and respect for these women and their qualities. So I will perhaps leave it at that, but my last two things, if I may, would be if I look at... Very quickly. Very quickly. Yeah, yeah, no. It's going to be forwards. Okay, if I was to look at interventions, where do I think key interventions are required, I would say in terms of livelihoods, knowledge and skills in terms of production. And I mean not only production in terms of economic production, but also in terms of production of knowledge. Because as most of you know that Dalits and particularly Dalit women under the caste system have traditionally been denied knowledge and knowledge is power. So to me it's about that. And it's also about making them asset owners, which means that you have to confront both caste as well as gender and the way that it plays out in terms of denying property or assets to women. If I can end on one quote because it is the 125th anniversary of Dr. Ambedkar. I just want to end with one quote, which you said, I'm conscious of the fact that if women are conscientized, the untouchable community will progress. I believe women should organize and this will play a major part in bringing an end to social evils. The progress of the Dalit community should be measured in terms of the progress made by its women. Thank you. Thanks to both speakers and we just have about 12 to 13 minutes. So may I request you to stick to questions? You're more than welcome to share your comments with speakers during lunchtime. So just questions please and go straight to your questions. Can we take three questions? One, two, yeah, one, two, three. Okay, please introduce yourself. Hi, my name is Ciaran Buar from the Karuna Trust. It's a question for Asha. You spoke about attacks on women's bodies as a way of perpetrators teaching a community a lesson. I was just very interested that you mentioned three varieties. You talked about dominant caste men, which I assume most of us will understand the relationship between dominant caste men and women from a so-called lower caste background. But mixed caste men and women from other castes joining in seems like a very, just a very interesting area. And I wonder if you could say a little bit more about those categories. Just back there. Thank you. My name is Aditi Thorat and this is a question for Asha. Asha, you talked about rejecting or considering rejecting the dominant structures of hegemony and creating and developing your own institutions and own spaces for politics. What would this look like? What does this mean? It would be great if you could unpack this a little bit. Thank you. My name is Srikanth Borkar from the University of Sussex. On the line of the last speaker's suggestion to devise strategies of empowerment and development of women and also on the line of what Asha says, that the women have to, sorry to use this word, I don't really subscribe this word and I don't really like this word. What the untouchables, first while untouchable women, they have to find their own institutions. On the line, I would like to request and I would like to ask the budding expert on South Asian society as well as the senior experts, senior scholars, what are the possibilities of forming, forging ways on the lines of the militant anthropology and applied anthropology to form such interfaces between the activist and academia so as to include not only from the academics from the perpetrator caste, but also the representatives of the victim caste. And then they could be added to find a solution on this ongoing plight in the context of this rape campaign which is going on in India, especially when it comes to women as a weapon to discipline the political assertion of the Dalits or law of us. Thank you. This is the last question for the first time. This is not a question but information and if you can comment because both of you haven't touched on that. The problem of religious prostitution which is on a large scale in Karnataka and bordering Maharashtra, what is called Deodasi, it's a very, very serious problem and it comes to religious traditions and customs. To answer the first question, when I said that very often caste violence is used to silence the assertions and actually to reinforce the caste hegemony, there are so many cases which speak true to this fact, whether you look at Kailanji, whether you look at Chanduru or Lakshmanpur Bhate and the cases which were already shared in the earlier presentation. All of those signify that wherever we were asking for greater wages or we moved forward in terms of getting some gainful employment or maybe getting an access to maybe a governance at the village council level. Backlash violence was used to silence, violence against women was used to silence our men and our whole community. In that process and some of the cases that we have worked, we have seen the perpetrators being predominantly dominant caste men. Many times we have seen that men from our own community were used again as what you call it, what is the word, but used as a stooge, is that it? Actually used to perpetrate that violence and also used to get away from the crime. Again many times we have seen for example where cases of violence against women were reported. Very quickly the system will work in a way where they bring the investigation officer who is also a Dalit and then make him to not file our case or make him to not push this case investigation in the right way. So it's again how this larger system is actually using people and particularly our men to actually evade justice from us. Many cases we have seen where women also were involved in mass violence where they actually took part in preparation for an attack on the community. Or also many times where they actually stood in defense of their boys or their men who actually committed the crimes to protect their own sons or their own men from their own families. So I said that based on the experience of cases that we have actually been dealing with. The second question about whether we just reject this whole crazy system which is not giving us anything or what should we do. To be very honest we don't know what that will look like but this is a question that many of us within the collective have been continuously struggling with. Because every time we go to the police officer who is not willing to even register our cases. These officers actually something like this goes on in their mind that you are so called lower caste and so for the lack of better word you are a low character and so you are meant to be used anyway. So why have you come here for compensation or why have you come here. So in that way they that's the kind of feeling that we get every time we encounter with the system. So we've been starting to think like should we have our own media where we record our own stories. Should we build our own skills where we have our own institutions of building our own knowledge writing our own history. Many of these survivor support programs we don't have anything exclusive for us. Should we have our own shelters where we have a you know counseling and care for us. So we've been thinking really been thinking and we don't know how it's going to look like. But that is an emerging thought within the collective. And yes what Thorat sir has said about whole Dave Darcy and religious prostitution again it stems from this fact that you know any way your body was meant for my use. So you might as well like you know be dedicated to some goddess and then actually end up being a prostitute. Or that is actually taking new forms now because those pockets where religious prostitution was going on. Those are actually the sites where women are being trafficked and it's actually moving from the old religious prostitution to actually trafficking. And all the many villages in those pockets of North Karnataka and parts of Andhra Pradesh are actually empty. And the girls are in actually in the brothels. Just two things I thought to add to the first question. One was actually professor Thorat's work that he is done on looking at untouchability in Levin states. And what was very interesting was the fact that it was looking at all different types of untouchability practices and the percentage of occurrence. And what was to me very interesting was that it showed that when it came to Dalit women they faced a higher percentage of villagers reported that they faced more discrimination untouchability practices from dominant caste women. Then after that then it was from dominant caste men. So I thought that is to me one very interesting. There's been very interesting analysis of the Keralanji massacre that happened in Maharashtra a few years ago where you actively saw dominant caste women inciting men to gang rape and murder these women. And part of the explanation or the trying to understand the rationale for that is the way that caste as an organizing structure for identity in many way trumps ideas of gender solidarity and that we need to understand how that plays out. Maybe another aspect I'd look at when you're looking at not only the way that Dalit men also sometimes get used in terms of violence to evade the law particularly the atrocities act because it only punishes Dalit or non Dalit. I mean violence by non Dalits on Dalits. But another aspect is to look at some of the research I've done is on Panchati Raj institutions a few years ago and looking at Dalit women's experiences of Panchati Raj. Because again in a number of areas you see that there's so little research and there's so little information about for example how Dalit women experienced quotas. Because there is a separate S.C. women's quota in Panchati Raj institutions and what was to me very interesting because I looked at some of the research and there was very little research. The only research I could find gave the traditional explanations a very gendered view that Dalit women were being proxy representatives primarily for their men. And then when looked at that and then we started to talk to women in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu what we found is that for the majority of cases you had around a third of women that struggled against incredible odds and incredible discrimination to participate in the The other two thirds were in our sample of 200 women were Benamis or proxy representatives. But they were, okay 30 seconds, they were proxies primarily for dominant caste men who would often use their husbands because they are engaged in a power relationship in the villages. They are employed by dominant caste men and that way they would ensure that the husbands were the figureheads of the figureheads but who ultimately controlled the resources that were going out of the panchak it was the dominant caste. The time is up but since we started late I'm going to take two more questions and then just round it up with your final remarks since two questions. One, two, yeah that's it. Thank you just please be brief. My name is Sanjukta and I work on minority rights. I'm interested in looking at how identity questions can be located in the private sphere and and to me the whole domestic issue and the domestic sphere where Dalit women are systematically abused and on the basis of how they look or what they are supposed to do. That is the domestic made sector and the interesting thing is that they are being institutionalized. There are domestic made agencies that are coming up in India now and I wonder if there is any research that sort of systematically looks at how they are discriminated in this area. Please be brief. Yeah, Kavita Kelsey, Care International UK. And just for the second speaker you talked about some of the survival tactics that Dalit women might use after a sexual attack or other kind of attack that might be different from other women's tactics. I wonder if you could talk a bit more about that. So you need to have two minutes for the closing remark. Okay, who wants to go first? All right, very quickly. I would say in terms of the domestic made question, I at least I don't know of any info. I've seen sort of newspaper reports that looks at the fact that a lot of domestic work is done by Dalits and Adivasis under extremely exploitative conditions. I have not seen, I mean, I don't know of any research as such that has been done as to the other one. Sorry, just say it again. It was looking at survival strategies. Okay, in what ways do you think that they're different to that case that you said? Okay, I mean, to me, one is to look at in this context where we have no support services in any case for survivors of sexual violence. But to look at in terms of Dalit women's cases, often it is, and again this comes back often it is a reliance on family and community because you know that there is little aspect of getting access to justice. Which in some ways, and I'm very hesitant to generalize because I don't think you can completely say that the experiences are completely different. But in general, when you look at statistics, you look at women's experiences, Dalit women's experiences, they have lesser access to justice, lesser access to any kind of outside community support in order to survive and to continue. And so part of the work is then of Dalit right activists, Dalit women's activists in terms of organizing these women in terms of bringing forth their voices as a way to encourage protection mechanisms in villages, which isn't flawed because of the caste context in which they may live, but at least give some hope that, okay, their voices will be heard that there is a strength of collective mobilization to protect them. Sorry. Sorry, I had that job to do. Thank you for doing that. Well, I'll just end by saying that there's a lot going on in my country and it's not looking very good for us and we have, as Dalit women collective really stuck out our heads in challenging, you know, a lot of issues, both nationally as well as internationally. We've been really challenging the domains of privilege that have actually represented us thus far. You all know that most of the South Asian studies departments across the globe are not represented by our voices. So if we want to really have Dalit women's narratives and articulations in creating and rewriting our history and also challenging the whole Hindu dominant diaspora that has actually brought in this government in my country. All of us have a role to play to really think and also what he said was like what will be those spaces where activists, human rights campaigners, researchers, scholars, students and international NGOs and otherwise to come together and build that collective strength. Otherwise, then we will be actually fighting a losing battle. Thank you. Thank you very much. Just to say that there will be a gender breakout session in the afternoon and these speakers will continue to be there. So if you want to pick up those points, please. You should be there. Okay, so thank you very much. Could you please join me in actually thanking the speakers.