I

The Dravidian region that today comprises Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh is believed by many commentators to retain elements of a more ancient and traditional worldview. Although the naive observer might think that this part of India would be less susceptible to some Western notions of what is constitutive of progress, in general this has not been the case. Partly because of its differing history, Dravidian India has long felt a pull away from the central government in New Delhi, and this has led to a number of local and state governments that were decidedly leftist, if not outright Marxist. Kerala, in particular, was one of the first states to establish such a government not long after independence, and the government put an emphasis on education, health and at least a moderate redistributive effort. The upshot has been that the educational level of women in Kerala has been far above the national average.

In a region noted for its traditional respect for female power, or shakti, the education of women has meant that some of the professions have long had female practitioners. Growing literacy – providing access to newspapers, magazines and newsletters – has taken place in an atmosphere where young girls can actually participate. This represents a genuine alteration from the circumstances in most parts of the developing world, and is attested to by commentators on the general South Asian scene.

Richard Franke and Barbara Chasin, in a work titled Kerala: Radical Reform as Development in an Indian State (Reference Franke and Chasin1994), offer the following comments about gender and development in that region:

There are probably a number of reasons for the comparative strength of women in the Dravidian cultures. As indicated at an earlier point, the goddess tradition is particularly strong in the South, even affecting versions of the Hindu epics, such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. In addition, there is a strong tradition of polyandry – where a woman has more than one husband – and this phenomenon is not known to any such degree in other parts of India. For purposes of contrast, it might be instructive to read the comments of the recent critic Nita Kumar, who has written extensively on education in India as a whole. On the topic of education as a construct within Indian society, she remarks:

If we are inclined to try to come to grips with the seeming disparity between Kerala and the rest of India, we should probably focus on what Kumar here mentions: the legacy of colonialism. The plain fact of the matter is that not only is it the case that Kerala has a social structure different historically from the rest of India, but the South, on the whole, did not suffer nearly as severely from the effects of British rule. The British did, in fact, establish a university system that was particularly strong in the North, and that was centred, at least during its origins, in Calcutta – it is probably for this reason both that Bengal also prides itself on its literary traditions, and that, as Kumar notes, formal education is associated with colonialism. But the stronger traditions surrounding women in the South, the predominance of parties with a redistributive bent, and another sort of tradition that has a great deal to do with trading, and thus empowerment, means that Kerala and the surrounding regions have taken the lead in women’s education.

If we can learn anything about the importance of education for women in a society, and how education ties into other changes, Kerala provides examples. As Franke and Chasin point out:

In sports, Kerala women stand out among all the Indian states. They have set athletic records at international events.

In other words, one of the social factors that changes with alterations in women’s education is development in other arenas throughout society – and this type of change filters down and moves out, creating more egalitarianism. A naive viewer might think that change in women’s participation in sports, for example, is not significant, but remember that this type of activity occurs on the international stage, and in that sense is very significant indeed. The history of women having slightly or somewhat different patterns of participation in Kerala has resulted in Kerala having a better-educated population on the whole, with women playing much more significant roles in the larger spheres. Since education for girls is something that begins with children as young as five and six, other Indian states should begin to look at the Kerala example. Another corollary, as I explain below, is that we might think of the changes in Kerala as having some relationship to feminist epistemology.

II

In contrast to Kerala and other parts of the South, the North of India has an extensive pattern of practices widely considered damaging to women. The reporting of these practices in the developed world has angered many, and recent events have brought considerable attention to the plight of women there. As the political pattern of Kerala has shown, the improvement of conditions for women seems to require at least two things. One is that there needs to be at least some attention to the status of women in the local culture. The combination of respect for shakti in the South and the local practices of polyandry have a great deal to do with Dravidian traditions. The second characteristic appears to be leftist, or at least progressive, government. Again, Kerala has been in the forefront.

Although some might prefer to skirt around the issue, the influence of religious beliefs in the North of India – fundamentalist Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism – has probably had a pronounced effect on the comparative lack of education for women and resulting social ills. Where women might be able to use cultural tropes for their own benefit, it has often not been possible for them to do so. It is in this part of India that most of the recent sexual assaults have been reported, and, in addition, there were at least one or two instances of attempted sati, or ritual immolation after the death of a male spouse, in the 1990s. The North of India, according to legend and at least some empirical accounts, was settled two or three millennia back by groups of invaders from the regions west of Afghanistan, and possibly even Persia. The point is that these individuals spoke a variant of an Indo-Aryan language, and were not related to the indigenous Dravidian people. Their worldview, at least insofar as it can be gleaned from Sanskrit literature and other indices, has long been intensely patriarchal, and it is a matter of historical record that women have had difficulty functioning in the North Indian cultures.

In other words, lack of education for women in the North tends to encourage many behaviours within those cultures that are discriminatory against women and counterproductive. The comparative lack of literacy means that women often do not have access to written work that might enable them to see other worldviews, or to at least become acquainted – in however limited a sense – with other ways of living. In contrast to all this, Kerala stands out as a shining example of what can be accomplished when women and girls attend school regularly from an early age, and when women participate in the government, on both local and national levels. On the local level, it is clear that the participation means still further educational opportunities.

With respect to the greater diversity of religions in the North of India, part of what makes the situation a difficult one for women is that, as is also the case in Bangladesh, mullahs have a great deal of influence on some village cultures and on some of the aspects of city life in a variety of cities. As Martha Chen observed in her work on Bangladesh decades back, the tendency in some circles has been to try to tell young women that they cannot participate in activities outside the home because to do so brings disrespect to the family (Chen Reference Chen1983). Chen observed that, at least in the Bengali situation, women were learning how to struggle on their own, and were using the precepts of qiya (reasoning by analogy) and other traditionally Islamic forms to argue that they, too, could become literate. Although a variety of precepts from a variety of religions – including Hinduism, Sikhism and other forms – might be brought to bear on the situation in the North of India, the more purely Hindu and Dravidian cultures of the South have probably, in their own way, made education for women possible.

What might we think about the efforts to establish elementary education in areas that did not previously have it, and how is this related to the educational strategies in Kerala? In that state, there had originally been a history of some Christian proselytizing, and this may have had something to do with the formation of schools. But the plain fact is that the sight of young schoolgirls in uniform on their way to class – a common sight in Kerala – seems to indicate to one and all that women can participate in the life of the state, and that statement alone is a powerful one. In a sense, the modelling of education is very important – the more children see of individuals their age attending school, the more influence it will have.

The Philosopher Martha Nussbaum has written about the importance of Westerners obtaining narratives about the lives of women in developing nations (see her Frontiers of Justice). As it happens, one of the few narratives that Nussbaum herself uses at any length is the narrative of a woman of Kerala. As Nussbaum writes:

Although Nussbaum does not specifically state it in this passage, much of what goes on in Kerala could itself provide a model for her interests, because it is that far ahead of a great deal that takes place in other regions of India. Kerala has been in the forefront not only of education, but also of the fruits that adhere to it. In other words, when we expect women to be able to form their own groups, at least some of which might be able to meet with local municipal and state government ministers, for example, we are examining a model that has already been instantiated in Kerala. And although Nussbaum does not mention it, it must have been easier for her to find someone who would serve as an informant in Kerala, since women there are not only better educated but better able to articulate specific goals.

III

Writing in her edited anthology The Sexism of Social and Political Theory, Lorenne M. G. Clark notes in an article on Locke:

This ‘natural inequality’ is, of course, inscribed in some societies more so than in others, and traditional Hindu social structure, with its reliance on the confluence of myths, sutras and epics, may perhaps have a greater degree than most. This is why it is so important to cite the comparatively rare cases of movement forward in the South Asian societies. Even Buddhist societies in the region have great difficulty, because, although Buddhism does have a history of a few women holy persons, on the whole it harks back to its Hindu origins.

The self-sacrificing Sita of the Ramayana is but one figure in this Hindu tradition of the natural inequality of women, but her presence, metaphorically, is felt throughout India. In fact, in parts of northern India today where the fundamentalist BJP party holds sway, advertence to the sacrifice of women for family and nation has grown to the point that occasional cases of sati (sometimes spelled ‘suttee’) have been reported (sati is the custom of a wife killing herself either on the funeral pyre of her dead husband or in some other fashion soon after his death). How can a society retain some of its reliance on a Hindu overview and still provide for the notion that women’s lot can be improved? There are a number of ways we might look at the changing fortunes of women in the Dravidian South. At least one has to do with the historical role of shakti in the southern cultures, and of women as a traditional focal point for energy. Some scholars involved in the southern region have noticed, if anything, a recent increase in the respect shown to those who claim to be local followers or focal points of the goddess. Susan Egnor, in an important anthropological study of the lives of five women who believe that shakti has affected their lives, is at pains to point out that one of the features of strong belief in shakti is that it is accumulated through female suffering – and female suffering, of course, often comes at the hands of men. But that force can be used to push a woman in a new direction, and, in many cases, women have either gone on to further education, established their own shops, or in some cases set themselves up as experts largely on the basis of their very realization of the hierarchies involved in daily life. In other words, they have appropriated this traditional construct in new and empowering ways.

In contrast to Kerala, or even other parts of India, whatever difficulties they may have, it is important to note that religion and ethnicity have comparatively little to do with forward-movements for women, unless (as we have seen with the use of the notion of shakti) there is a demonstrable history of ties. One might think that Nepal, with its largely Buddhist culture (only the capital has much of a Hindu population), has been more progressive in its attitudes towards women and women’s education, but that is far from the case. In this land-locked nation that did not receive Westerners on a regular basis until the 1960s, comparatively little progress has been made. Although the traditions in Kathmandu tend to be a mix of Hindu and Buddhist images, some of what goes on is positively detrimental to women, in the same way that the tolerance of dowry-deaths is and has recently been the subject of international controversy. Nepal is the home of one of the best-known instances of hierodulic slavery still extant – that is, ritual incarceration of women for religious purposes, completely curtailing their freedom. Every few years or so the local population is subjected to a search for a young girl who will become ‘Kumari’, the Living Goddess – she is confined to a room in a building near one of Kathmandu’s main temples, and for years receives no formal education, can appear in public only on special occasions, and, in general, is held prisoner. (Recent Kumaris, more aware of international standards, are leading an organized movement against the practice.) The young girl moves out of the position at puberty, but then – by tradition – cannot marry, even though she lives in a society in which marriage for women is extremely important. In contrast, even parts of India appear to have fewer problems in this regard.

Franke and Chasin are very straightforward about the magnitude of the problems facing India overall, and about the pathbreaking work in Kerala that, ultimately, affects all its citizens. They write:

In other words, although Franke and Chasin are writing well before the new work that takes the ‘capabilities’ approach, they are acknowledging that where women are educated, they can bring to bear notions of reform on a populace to a surprisingly strong degree – and even in circumstances where one would not expect it, namely a state in India. Although there are no doubt historical circumstances that push this line forward (such as the originally polyandrous structure of Dravidian societies), the feat of Kerala is an outstanding one.

IV

I have been arguing that more attention should be paid to the model of development in Kerala, with its focus on the education of women, and its appropriation of some cultural tropes from the past, such as shakti, to achieve that goal. In the spirit of global feminist epistemology, this use of the notion of power for contemporary semi-Western empowerment is important. Because the education of women tends to affect other sectors of society, the combination of a general improvement for the poor in that state – achieved partly by left-wing governments – and the changes in roles for women is of paramount importance. The startling story about Kerala is that much of the rest of India does not have this standard and perhaps will be able to attain it only after decades, if then. But in Kerala the standard for much of the developing nations is more or less set today, and the focus is not only on the education of women but on starting that process at a very early age, with elementary school.

Some would say that Kerala’s development is largely due to factors that cannot be specified, but this is not the case. Kerala represents a formidable attempt – both consciously and unconsciously – to use feminist epistemology for purposes that are beyond the purview of Eurocentric thinking, and that coincide with an intuitive notion of justice as a whole. In other words, if we think of standpoint epistemology, with its focus on women as immersed in the material world and in the world of labour, it is obvious why whatever it is that women can do is something that should be transferred into a way of knowing that would be helpful to feminist purposes. But in Dravidian India, in addition to all of the other tropes and varieties of feminist epistemology, we also have the fact that shakti, or goddess power, is a much bigger focus of worship and devotion in the local cultures than it is in the North. Thus the confluence of the recognition that women have something to offer, both as seen in Western terms and as seen in the traditional cultures, has propelled individuals into moving down a path of further education for women and of seeing women as contributors to the local governmental structure.

I have been arguing that Kerala represents an unparalleled success story for women, at least in South Asian terms, and as Franke and others have claimed, this is now internationally recognized. But, as I have also argued, it is too simplistic just to think of the standard growth patterns, criticized by Okin and others, as telling the full story here. Rather, as has been argued in a number of places, Kerala and other sites of achievement for women usually attempt to tie portions of the local cultures, at least insofar as they involve women both historically and metaphorically, into the development for the future. Part of what it means to speak of global feminist epistemology is to make sure that, where women have taken cultural forms that have been traditionally male-dominated (such as ritual forms of Hinduism) and made them their own, they receive credit. Kerala is a case of women engaged in just such behaviour.