Cultural Relativists: Where is the boundary drawn?

A group of Dalit women arrived here at DSK this past Saturday, March 22nd, to have a conversation with our group. They were especially interested in telling their struggles to Kimberle Crenshaw, who is currently one of the most prominent Black feminists in the US. These women came to share their stories and to take their struggles across boundaries. They left their homes during the holiday of Holi a holiday that celebrates Spring with a Festival of Colors. They chose not to have their faces covered with paint, but to open up, to undress, to tell us about what have fallen into the cracks and have made their lives a constant struggle. After initial introductions we became comfortable with each other and the women told their stories. What we heard was a compilation of absurd stories of caste and gender discrimination. As the meeting continued we have heard surreal stories of other types of stigmatization caused by unnamed sub phenomena like discrimination against families with numerous daughters, etc.

We sat there for 3 hours actively and carefully listening and trying to understand that despite the fact that many of the variables that cause these women to live these lives that are beyond oppressive and violent, we asked ourselves whether there is a point in which cultural relativism becomes extraneous.

Feminist critics of relativism often say that there is a level of suffering that is universal. Stories of physical and mental exploitation and abuse by husbands, in-laws, and the community around the women that came to DSK are exactly in that category of suffering; which has to be universally repudiated, fought back, and attract as much local and global support as possible.

Ranjan, a beautiful Dalit women of the lower sub caste, dressed in light blue, sparked, for the first time, the sentiment of sisterhood among the women in the room. She told her story pumping her fist and tearfully describing a life of subordination. Ranjan habitually carried for years 25 to 35 kilograms of grains and fennel for the cows, several times each day. This was one of her daily activities besides all household shores and besides arriving home for an abusive husband, whose role in the eyes of the society was to supervise her, make sure she remained well-behaved. Ranjan did not. She separated and remarried. In her second marriage, which was a love one instead of an arranged one, she married with a man pertaining to a different sub-caste. Now, besides all of the household shores and three children to educate, Ranjan goes out of the house to face unbearable social pressure, stigmatization, and discrimination.

Ranjan is one of the many Dalit women who joined the movement to find a space where she can be comfortable, where she can wear comfortable salwars and uncover her face (instead of the sari and veil—the only accepted attire for married women,) where she can speak out and inspire others, where she can identify with the many women with similar stories. Unfortunately, most of these stories remain untold, buried within a patriarchal system that seems to be impossible to overcome. Ranjan is one of the women who joined us looking for certain basic rights that we (and here I am referring to our research group formed by an Indian American, two African Americans, and one white Brazilian woman.) have taken for granted. Ranjan and her friends joined us more with the objective to build a forum where women can tell their stories in the language that women around the world can learn, the language of suffering.