Question

Read the section on Sanskritisation very carefully. Do you think that this process is gendered, i.e., it affects women differently from men? Do you think that even if it does lead to positional change among men, the reverse may be true about women?

Answer 1

Yes, the process of Sanskritisation is deeply gendered and affects women in a fundamentally different, often regressive manner compared to men. While a lower caste group attempts to elevate its social status by adopting the rituals, dietary habits, and lifestyles of dominant upper castes, this upward mobility is almost always accompanied by the adoption of upper-caste patriarchal norms. Consequently, as a community becomes Sanskritised, women experience a significant loss of freedom, autonomy, and public visibility. For instance, practices like bride-price, which give women a degree of economic value within egalitarian communities, are replaced by the exploitative system of dowry, and women’s participation in agricultural or outdoor labour is restricted in favour of domestic confinement to signal higher social respectability.

Therefore, even if Sanskritisation leads to a positive positional change or higher ritual purity for the men of a community, the exact reverse is true for women, whose social position deteriorates. In many lower-caste communities, women historically enjoyed greater social freedoms, such as the right to seek divorce, remarry as widows, and move freely without veiling. However, in the rush to mimic upper-caste orthodoxies to climb the social ladder, the community enforces strict control over women’s sexuality, imposes bans on widow remarriage, and institutes rigid purity taboos. This paradoxical shift demonstrates that the collective status advancement achieved by men through Sanskritisation is built directly upon the increased subjugation, surveillance, and loss of independence of the women within their own families.