Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 37:3 (Summer 2023)
Article: Caste And Gender In India: The Bakht Singh Assemblies And Egalitarianism
Author: Ziv Reuben

PP 37:3 (Summer 2023) p. 12

Caste And Gender In India: The Bakht Singh Assemblies And Egalitarianism

Ziv Reuben

Ziv Reuben is a writer and researcher based in Bangalore, India. He holds an MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies from the University of Cambridge (UK) and is currently completing an MA in Biblical Studies from the South Asia Institute of Advanced Christian Studies.

The position of women in India is marked by contradictions. Drawing on Hindu mythology, the mother goddess is a recurrent archetype called up in veneration of Indian women.1 This, however, is in stark contrast with the lived female experience in the country, where gender discrimination and targeted violence are widespread in both private and public spaces.

Appeals to tradition are often instrumentalized to undermine mutuality in man-woman relationships, and the Indian church is no different. Efforts to empower women, both within the church and in Indian society at large, do not always achieve their desired effect. To some extent, this is a consequence of the larger failure of empowerment campaigns, well-intentioned as they are, to account for the complex web of factors that undergird and amplify gender discrimination. Most prominent among these is the caste system, which has a critical influence on determining the social location of women in the country.

Through a study of the intersectionality between caste and gender, this article examines the work of the Bakht Singh Assemblies, an Indian indigenous denomination established in the mid-twentieth century. As we shall see, this movement’s push toward gender egalitarianism came about somewhat inadvertently, almost as a byproduct of its engagement with the caste question.

Caste And Gender: The Need For An Intersectional Lens

Sanctioned in the ancient Vedic scriptures, Hinduism’s caste system has formed the bedrock of social stratification in South Asia for millennia. It remains a crucial identity marker, even to this day, thriving on socio-religious hierarchies of power. Broadly speaking, it mandates that society be divided into four “varnas” or categories: the Brahmins (priestly class), Kshatriyas (warrior class), Vaishyas (merchant class), and the Shudras (labor class). This classification is intrinsically tied to one’s profession. Each varna category is further divided into thousands of “jatis,” sub-units that reinforce the fatalistic notion that an individual is born into their caste group.2

The caste system has perpetuated centuries of exploitation and social exclusion. Among the most severely affected by these forms of marginalization are communities that do not belong to any o...