SPECIAL ARTICLE
Dalit Feminist Voices on Reproductive Rights and
Reproductive Justice
Johanna Gondouin, Suruchi Thapar-Bjorkert, Mohan Rao
Previous research has addressed questions of
reproductive justice and the stratifications of Indian
women’s reproductive lives in terms of class position and
economic status. However, the question of caste has
received little attention in the literature and there has
been a lack of research on assisted reproductive
technologies and caste along with the absence of Dalit
feminists speaking out on reproductive technologies.
This paper attempts to begin exploring the significance
of caste by drawing on in-depth interviews with Dalit
feminists who challenge dominant understandings of
surrogacy in both international and national debates on
reproductive technologies. It highlights how an
insistence on the wider socio-economic context of
women’s lives challenges notions of reproductive rights,
replacing them by reproductive justice.
This research has been funded by the Swedish Research Council
(2016–01644).
Johanna Gondouin (johanna.gondouin@liu.se) is research fellow,
gender studies, Department of Thematic Studies, Linköping University,
Sweden. Suruchi Thapar-Bjorkert (suruchi.thapar-bj@statsvet.uu.se)
teaches at the Department of Government, University of Uppsala,
Sweden. Mohan Rao (mohanrao2008@gmail.com) is former professor,
Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru
University, New Delhi.
38
T
ransnational commercial surrogacy and the outsourc-
ing of reproductive labour to women of the global
South is arguably the most controversial practice in an
expanding market in body parts and reproductive labour. The
central role of India in this market represents a particularly
challenging example, given the historical symbiosis between
reproductive policies and population control in the country.
For roughly a decade, India was a hub for commercial surro-
gacy and “biocrossings,’’ facilitated through the global as-
semblages of a liberalised capitalist economy (Bharadwaj
2008). Within this transnational fertility circuit, bodies of
underprivileged Indian women, formerly seen as “waste”
and their reproduction as something to be “controlled” by
the post-independence Indian state and policymakers in the
first world, were transformed into sites of profit generation
within the reproductive industry of the neo-liberal Indian
state (Rao 2010).
While previous research on surrogacy has addressed the
“stratified reproduction” (Colen 1995) of Indian women in
terms of class and economic status (Pande 2014; Rudappa
2015; Vora 2015; Deomampo 2016), the question of caste has
received little attention (Madge 2015). Responding to the lack
of research on assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) and
caste, the aim of this article is to explore the significance of
this intersection to ARTs in general and commercial surrogacy
and egg donation in particular. We draw on in-depth inter-
views with Dalit feminists whose perspectives on ARTs are
uncharted.1 Our analysis explicates the need to connect these
issues with broader questions of social justice that we theorise
through the framework of reproductive justice. This under-
standing challenges dominant articulations of ARTs centred on
reproductive rights.
Trends and Transitions in Surrogacy in India
A world-leading destination for medical tourism (Pande 2011;
Deomampo 2016), surrogacy was legalised in India in 2002
and benefited from the active promotion by the Indian govern-
ment (Rudrappa 2015; Deompampo 2016). As Amrita Pande
(2014: 13) notes, “[c]linics in India (...), not only operate
without state interference but often benefit from explicit
state support for clinics catering to medical and reproductive
travelers.” In 2012, a study conducted by the Confederation
of Indian Industry (CII) estimated the fertility industry to
$2 billion, with 600 clinics registered with the government,
and another 400 under the official radar (Bhatia 2012). Nearly
october 3, 2020 vol lV no 40 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

10,000 foreign clients, of which 30% were single parents or
identified as queer, travelled to India for reproductive pro-
cedures during that year (Rudrappa 2015: 39). Low costs, the
availability of highly qualified English-speaking medical
doctors, women willing to work as surrogates, and the lack of
legal regulation surrounding surrogacy arrangements are
factors that contributed to India’s flourishing fertility industry.
In 2005, the National Guidelines for the Accreditation,
Supervision and Regulation of ART Clinics in India, developed
by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the
Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), were
published (ICMR 2005). However, through cases such as Baby
Manji Yamada v Union of India (2008) and the Jan Balaz case
in 2008, insufficient guidelines regarding citizenship of chil-
dren born through surrogacy or parentage were brought to
public attention (Saravanan 2018). Responding to the growing
pressure on the Indian government from stakeholders within
the ART industry to provide a legal framework, the ICMR and
the MoHFW outlined the Draft Assisted Reproductive Technolo-
gies (Regulation) Bill and Rules in 2008, which was
revised in 2010 and 2013. Both the 2008 and 2010 versions of
the draft were criticised for harbouring a bias towards the
private sector and for promoting the interests of the industry,
while failing to address the vulnerability of surrogate
mothers (Sama 2012). The 2013 draft restricted the issuing of
surrogacy visas to married couples, thus excluding single and
gay parents. As a consequence, parts of the business moved
to Nepal. However, since Nepal banned its female citizens
from being hired as surrogates, but permitted foreign wom-
en, Indian and Bangladeshi women were taken to Nepal. A
number of highly mediatised cases contributed to the present
Indian regulation of surrogacy. One pertains to the 2015
earthquake in Nepal, when the Israeli government arranged
to bring back Israeli gay couples and their babies from Kath-
mandu while the surrogate mothers were left to fend for them-
selves. Thailand, another hub for transnational surrogacy
arrangements, banned commercial surrogacy for foreigners
in 2015, in the aftermath of the Baby Gammy case and the
Mitsutoki Shigeta case in 2014.
In 2016, the Indian Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill was approved
by the union cabinet,2 which banned all commercial surroga-
cy, and prohibited foreigners from accessing surrogacy in the
country, while permitting altruistic surrogacy for married
couples with documented infertility, provided they use a close
relative for the procedure. In August 2019, a revised version of
the 2016 bill was passed by the Lok Sabha. Arguably, the intent
of this bill was to prevent the oppression embedded in the idea
of “rent a womb,” while simultaneously strengthening cultural
nationalism. This was evident in the statements made by the
external affairs minister, the late Sushma Swaraj, who claimed
that the bill hadan “Indian ethos,” “aligned with our [Hindu]
values” (Hindu 2016). Nonetheless, within the ambit of
economic globalisation and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s
nationalist ideology, Indian women’s responsibilities remain
bracketed as reproducers—shifting marginally from (re)pro-
ducers for the global bioeconomies (within the logics of
Economic & Political Weekly EPW october 3, 2020 vol lV no 40
SPECIAL ARTICLE
outsourcing) to procreators for the Indian nation (as mothers
of the nation).
Reproductive Rights vs Reproductive Justice
Western feminist discourses on reproductive rights have been
centred around values, such as choice and bodily autonomy
and have primarily concerned the right to access birth control.
This discourse has been criticised by feminists of colour for
not addressing the ways in which socio-economic contexts and
geopolitical locations shape women’s reproductive realities
(Twine 2015). They draw attention to how childbearing by
privileged women is encouraged and bolstered through the
use of advanced technological interventions, while poor women
of colour are subject to public policy measures that include
invasive and abusive medical procedures, or forced child
removal that prohibit motherhood (Roberts 1996: 944).
Challenging Western liberal notions of reproductive rights,
the concept of “reproductive justice” was coined in the early
1990s. Merging reproductive rights with social justice, this
concept addresses “how race- and class-based histories of
population control, sterilisation abuse, high-risk contraception,
poverty, and the effects of environmental pollution on fertility
and maternal health shaped the reproductive lives of the third
world (as well as women of colour in the first world)” (Bailey
2011: 727; Ross and Solinger 2017; Mohapatra 2012). It decentres
abortion and contraception to emphasise how issues, such as
incarceration, immigration, racism, housing, and adoption
policies affect biological and social reproduction. The political
dimension of reproduction is visible in current geopolitical
conflicts, exemplified by the implementation of the United
States (US) “zero-tolerance policy” at the Mexican border in
2018, and the coerced abortion and sterilisation of Muslim
Uyghurss, Kazakhs and other minority groups of women by
the Chinese state in 2020 (Briggs 2012).
A reproductive justice perspective is particularly relevant
in the Indian setting given the symbiosis between reproduc-
tive politics, eugenics and neo-Malthusian ideologies, which
have shaped the ideas of “over-population” during the early
20th century. Neo-Malthusian concerns were transformed
into upper-caste anxieties about the lower castes. Upper-class
neo-Malthusian agenda interweaved with the upper-caste
agenda of Brahminical Hinduism to reduce women to merely
reproductive bodies requiring male control, in a reimbrica-
tion of patriarchy (Anandhi 1998). In the initial debates on
birth control, the seamless welding of “Hindu” with upper
castes, and the conflation of upper-caste practices and
norms as Hindu was achieved (Rao 2004: 3602). Central
arguments concerned the reproductive excesses of the
lower castes and religious minorities, in particular Muslims.
Anandhi points out that several political groups articulated
the opposition bet ween “desexualised” reproductive bodies
as the ideal norm of “respectable” female sexuality and
“sexual bodies” as representing “immoral” and “disreputable”
sexuality (Anandhi 1998: 145). From an international perspec-
tive, growing populations in China and India were increas-
ingly seen as geopolitical threats and third world women’s
39
SPECIAL ARTICLE
sexual behaviour was specifically targeted (Wilson 2018: 92;
Briggs 2002: 117).
The post-independence Indian state and policymakers in
World War I have seen the bodies of poor women in India as
“waste” and their reproduction as something to be “controlled”
(Rao 2010; Wilson 2018). Negative eugenics has been aggres-
sively practised in India and targeted towards vulnerable
communities. The widespread use and abuse of sterilisation is
a case in point, as exemplified by the Chhattisgarh sterilisation
scandal in 2014 (Ghose 2018). With the exception of a short
period of forced mass vasectomies between 1975 and 1977,
female sterilisation has been the main instrument of India’s
population policies and has been the most common form of
contraception available since the late 1970s (Deomampo 2016:
40). We wish to draw attention to the way in which what was
formerly considered as waste is transformed into sites of profit
generation within the reproductive industry of the neo-liberal
Indian state.
Colonial Legacies of the Indian Reproductive Industry
In 2011, Alison Bailey argued for a reproductive justice
approach to Indian surrogacy, as a response to what she
described as an “ethnographic turn,” replacing earlier studies
focused on the normative and ethical dimensions of surrogacy
arrangements: either claiming moral legitimacy by using a
liberal discourse, which emphasises women’s right to decide
over their own bodies, or a Marxist understanding, which
perceives surrogacy as exploitation and the ultimate human
commodification. By focusing on women’s agency and lived
experiences, it avoids the “Eurocentric fallacy” of previous
scholarship—the taken for granted of a particular set of moral
concerns—that runs the risk of distorting the realities of
women in the global South:
The single-pointed focus on “choice” occidentalises Indian surrogacy
work: it makes it difficult to raise questions about the kind of life a
woman has to lead to make this work count as a “good choice.” It
obscures the injustice behind these choices: the reality that, for many
women, contract pregnancy is one of the few routes to attaining basic
social goods such as housing, food, clean water, education and
medical care. (Bailey 2011: 722)
Bailey sees Amrita Pande’s work as emblematic of this ethno-
graphic turn, as it evades the “discursive colonialism” of early
writings on surrogacy by giving priority to the surrogate
mothers’ own narratives (Mohanty 2003). Pande observes
that these women explicitly reject the category of choice,
speaking instead of majboori (a compulsion) and loyalty with
their families. Her ethnographic accounts add a complexity
that makes it impossible to see surrogacy as either a win-win
situation or one that transforms surrogate mothers into pas-
sive victims of exploitation.
However, Bailey is critical of what she perceives as a lack of
a normative perspective; a “weak moral absenteeism,” noting
that “[i]nterviews are oddly de-politicised, as if documenting
surrogacy workers’ agency and then properly contextualising
their choices is sufficient” (Bailey 2011: 725–26). Departing from
the narratives of the surrogate mothers enables the scholar to
40
address the problematics articulated by the women engaging
in these practices (Bailey 2011). Reproductive justice, she argues,
provides a theoretical framework capable of encompassing
both the surrogates’ “local moral worlds” and reflections on
the morality of a practice that builds on the labour of women
living under abject conditions. Such a perspective is attentive
to the acute intersectionality at work in practices of ARTs.
Jyotsna Agnihotri Gupta (2006) responds to a similar
understanding of intersectionality and inequality when she
argues for a transnational feminist response to ARTs. As their
impact varies significantly between different groups of women,
Gupta perceives ARTs as a testing ground for transnational
feminism. Her proposal is a framework based on human
dignity: “a moral framework that values individuals as ends in
themselves and not as tools [and] which encompass(es) indi-
vidual rights claims but go(es) beyond the narrow focus of
individualism and autonomy for the protection of women’s
self-respect and human dignity’’ (Gupta 2006: 35).
Gupta’s proposal is critically assessed by Michal Nahman
(2008), who agrees with the need for a common feminist
stance on ARTs, but rejects turning to a universal notion of
dignity and the human right’s discourse that this notion is
based on. Modelled on Western conceptions of the human,
dignity was used as a tool during colonialism and capitalism to
dehumanise and instrumentalise colonised people. Instead,
Nahman foregrounds the logic of the marketplace by recognis-
ing how “one may attempt to gain a sense of dignity within
global capitalism by doing precisely what will perpetuate the
system, buying and selling” (Nahman 2008: 76). Nahman’s
approach includes a critical recognition of neo-liberal capitalism’s
capacity to assimilate and live off the very attempts aimed at
resisting it. She advocates a shift of focus to the neo-liberal
global forces that position women in situations where they feel
a need to commodify their bodies at all. This includes being
attentive to how certain bodies are perceived as potential
biological material: “[W]ho is positioned as more appropriate
to sell a bit of their body’’ (Nahman 2008: 77).
Kalindi Vora’s (2008, 2009, 2012) work offers the kind of
account that Nahman argues for. Whilst Black feminists
(Roberts 1996; Twine 2015; Weinbaum 2019) have drawn at-
tention to how the current market in reproductive labour is
prefigured by the US slave economy, Vora draws parallels
between surrogacy and Indian indentured labour that replaced
slave labour after 1807, when the trade in slaves was abolished
within the British Empire (Vora 2009; Lowe 2015). She argues
that the colonial past offers the conditions of possibility for
the present international division of reproductive labour, that
is, why some bodies and not others are seen as the possible
sources of commodification.
Others note connections between surrogacy and colonialism
tangentially, through India’s history of reproductive politics,
leading scholars like Bailey (2011) to argue for a reproductive
justice approach. Pande (2014) and Sharmila Rudrappa (2015)
address India’s history of population control and coercive
reproductive policies targeted against marginalised com-
munities. While Pande acknowledges the paradox of an
october 3, 2020 vol lV no 40 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

aggressively anti-natalist state becoming a global hub for ART
procedures, Rudrappa explicitly rejects the relevance of a re-
productive rights approach to address the distinct stratifica-
tions of Indian society. Instead, she argues for a reproductive
justice framework that accounts for “the endemic social, polit-
ical and economic inequalities among different communities
which shape individual’s abilities to access a good life”
(Rudrappa 2015: 170).
Intersectionality of Dalit Feminism
The assertions by Dalit feminists in the 1990s have been part
of a discourse of dissent to both mainstream women’s move-
ments and male-dominated Dalit movement. Sharmila Rege
(2018) argues that middle class, upper-caste women’s experience,
or alternatively Dalit male experience became universalised,
resulting in “a masculinisation of dalithood and a savarnisation
of womanhood” (Rege 1998, 2018: 1–2). Akin to these articula-
tions, one of our research participants, an activist from Ben-
galuru, stated:
One of the things that I have been doing a lot is critiquing Indian femi-
nists: there is a lack of connect [ion] with real life issues of marginal-
ised women. But the fact is that they are the ones who set the agenda
and basically define the issues which feminists talk about in India.
Dalit feminism implies an interrogation of privilege and dis-
crimination embedded within the Ambedkarian notion of
“Brahminical patriarchy,” “a specific modality of patriarchy”
governed by “a set of discriminatory levels constituting a hier-
archical organisation of society based on caste, which is quite
unique to the Indian subcontinent” (Arya and Rathore 2020: 8).
This “graded inequality’’ determines the location of all individuals
according to caste and gender, with upper-caste men and lower-
caste women at the beginning and end of the spectrum. The
Ambedkarian understanding of caste positions endogamy as its
grounding principle, which makes the control of women’s sexual-
ity central to caste ideology (Rege 1998: 165; Velayudhan 2018).
While both Dalit women and caste Hindu women are dis-
empowered by patriarchal practices, Dalit and lower caste
women are more prone to violence as they face oppression at
three levels (i) caste, (ii) class, and (iii) gender (Dutt 2019; Moon
2000; Malik 1999), that is, the triple burden of economic
marginalisation (low wage labourers working for upper-caste
landowners as most of the land is owned by upper caste or
upwardly mobile castes), caste discrimination, and gender subor-
dination. Our research participants would commonly refer to
this “intersectionality of oppression.” Thus, engaging with a Dalit
feminist perspective demonstrates the importance of intersec-
tionality for grasping gender inequality in India. However,
prominent feminists, such as Nivedita Menon oppose its rele-
vance to Indian feminism, which Dalit feminists have perceived
as a reluctance on the part of mainstream feminists to acknowl-
edge and address their own caste privilege (Menon 2020).
Towards a Dalit Feminist Standpoint Theory
A Dalit feminist standpoint, as elaborated by Rege (2018) and
Kanchana Mahadevan (2020), has significant parallels to other
feminist standpoint theories (Collins 2009; Harding 2004;
Economic & Political Weekly EPW october 3, 2020 vol lV no 40
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Haraway 1988). Standpoint theory designates the epistemo-
logical shift that occurs when marginalised communities gain
public voice, and foregrounds the concept of experience. The
location of the subject affects the experience and thus the
knowledge that it generates. From a Dalit feminist perspec-
tive, experience is the origin of knowledge, and like standpoint
theories, power is seen as integral to epistemology. The failure
of dominant groups to critically interrogate their advantaged
situation makes their social position a disadvantaged one for
generating knowledge. As stated by one of our research par-
ticipants, a Dalit journalist: “we need to articulate women’s
experience and theory from the perspective of the marginal-
ised sections, which mainstream feminists clearly are not do-
ing. Indian feminists lack an insight or an experience (...) the
entire perspective that we would bring to the table.” In the
same vein, a social activist among our research participants
describes the importance of having worked in the slums: “my
feminist theory sprung from there you know, and my under-
standing of caste, class, gender came from the slums that I work
[in].” What is emphasised in these narratives is the importance
of lived experience, a kind of knowledge that has been omitted
from traditional epistemologies, which spans over a register
that includes feelings and more elusive elements, what Linda
Martín Alcoff (1996, 2008: 294) describes as “textures.”
Grounding knowledge in experience is democratic and pro-
vides an alternative to normative understandings. However,
this does not imply a belief in unmediated “authentic” experi-
ence. Rather than a subject merely registering the imprint
of reality which then qualifies as knowledge, experience is
regarded as a dialectical process of collective articulation by
persons belonging to conflicting social locations. As Alcoff
elaborates
the oppressed do not have an epistemic privilege over understanding
oppression generally; they are not more likely, for example, to know
the causes of their oppression. However they are more likely to know
the lived reality of the oppression, its emotional costs, its subtler mani-
festations, what it is like to live it. (Alcoff 2008: 294)
Claiming one’s experience as the foundation of knowledge
and theory is particularly audacious in the Indian context,
where a divide has been instituted between theory (“theoretical
Brahmins’’) and experience (“empirical shudras’’) (Patil 2020:
219; Guru 2020). As Cynthia Stephens (2009) suggests, Dalit
feminist theoretical claim “is a conscious effort to break the
existing stereotype of Dalit women as mainly activists (doers)
who have little to contribute (as thinkers) to ideological dis-
courses in society, politics, governance, ethics, economics,
and development.”
There is a risk of subsuming Dalit feminism within domi-
nant feminist discourse through a mere acknowledgement of
difference, and making room for “different voices” from non-
hegemonic locations within mainstream feminism (Harding
2008: 158). If that was sufficient, caste discrimination would
be a concern only for Dalit and other lower-caste women, just
as feminists of colour reject seeing race as something only they
should attend to. Instead, seriously engaging with Dalit feminist
perspectives entails challenging the dominant paradigm of
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thought. The goal is not difference in itself, but the relations of
power that it legitimates. In Rege’s words, the aim is “to ad-
dress the social relations that convert difference into oppres-
sion” (Rege 1998: 157). Here, there are significant parallels to
Black feminist standpoint theory which challenges what
counts as knowledge. Constructing new knowledge is crucial
for empowerment because it provides alternatives to the way
things are supposed to be (Collins 2009: 286). Rege’s idea of
“oppositional Dalit feminist pedagogies” resonates with Black
feminist thought when she describes that the importance of
Dalit women’s narratives lies in the potential to destabilise
received truths and locate debates in the complexities and con-
tradictions of historical life (Rege 1998: 133).
Importantly, standpoint theory’s rethinking of experience
is not an excluding gesture. The “we” designated by Dalit
feminism is an acquired community. Although it may not be
possible to “speak as’’ or “for’’ Dalit women, it is possible
to “reinvent” oneself as a Dalit feminist, which entails reject-
ing the Brahminical, middle-class outlook that structures
mainstream Indian feminism, and become sensitive to the
specific disempowerment created by the intersection of
caste, class and gender. Furthermore, as Gopal Guru (2020)
points out, the subject of a Dalit feminist standpoint is not
homogenous but multiple, heterogeneous, and sometimes
even contradictory.
Caste, Sexuality and Reproductive Labour
Gender and caste are inseparable in both their material and
cultural dimensions. Our analysis demonstrates how these
intersections and interactions shape the choices Dalit women
make in terms of labour and sexuality, not the least in the
area of sexual labour. A characteristic way that our research
participants approached commercial surrogacy was through
the lens of sex work. Prabha Kotiswaran (2011) speaks of two
international agendas having shaped perceptions on sex work
in India during the last decades: the abolitionist movement
and the anti HIV/AIDS prevention efforts. The abolitionist
movement has gained force from the United Nations Global
Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UN GIFT) launched in 2007.
Through media representations, such as the Oscar-winning
documentary Born into Brothels directed by Zana Briski and shot
in 2004, set in Kolkata’s red-light districts, “third world enslaved
sex workers” have become pre-eminent examples of human
trafficking (Kotiswaran 2011: 4). The Immoral Traffic (Prevention)
Act (ITPA) conflates trafficking and sex work, which defines
the discursive space for conversations on sex work in India.
Sex work is commonly referred to as “forced labour” or
“sexual slavery” by our research participants; coercion and not
choice is emphasised, and there are those among our partici-
pants that adhered to the abolitionist view, as the journalist
who spoke of all commodification as problematic per se:
“anything that commercialises (…) the body (…) has to be
seriously questioned.” However, rather than radical feminist
understandings of sex work, most of our participants high-
lighted the socio-economic conditions that make women turn
to sex work as a livelihood. Entering the surrogacy industry is
42
described as shaped by the same forces. As one of the Dalit
academics and social activists with the experience of working
with women in prostitution explained:
[R]ural women like X, sex work, forced by the husband, by the family
and also absence of work at the agricultural sector. All this made
them ... it is not their choice. I feel no women will get into this kind of
selling sex, also selling their wombs for surrogacy. And the ... the
whole economic conditions forces them to get into this. And I blame
the society which has the purity–impurity concept in everyone’s mind
which is also the sexual purity. Where they don’t bother about the
purity–impurity and they have the sexuality aspect. The most ex-
ploited women are the Dalit women […]. Surrogacy is another thing
that we cannot accept […]. One woman in our area she received
` 30,000 only.
The same academic/social activist said she knew of rural
women forced into sex work as a result of cuts in educational
budgets, which makes unaffordable private schooling the only
remaining option. Lack of jobs and collapsing farm prices trap
families who seek ways out through “self-exploitation.” In
combating commercial surrogacy and sex work—“modern
kinds of slavery”—the rejuvenation of the agricultural sector
is key, she argues.
The traditional hierarchical political economy of labour on
which caste reproduces itself and Dalit demands for dignity of
life and labour have to some extent been addressed by consti-
tutional provisions. The government has tried to aid the
empowerment of marginalised communities, especially women,
Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) through
large anti-poverty alleviation programmes, such as the one
under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment
Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). But, the same social activist sug-
gests that the government measures are not always sufficient:
they are getting very poor wages, now this uh ... hundred days work ...
MGNREGA work. It also comes once in a while, and then one job for one
family, not all the family members are ... and uh how do you expect
Dalit women to depend on this.
More specifically addressing reproductive issues, she reflects
on the increasing “medicalisation of childbirth” and the rapid
growth in ART clinics in her city. She also brings up the ways
in which exposure to pollution and other environmental is-
sues disproportionately affect marginalised communities, not
the least in their reproductive lives: “The implication of
chemical fertilisers on reproductive health systems of wom-
en, they keep on talking about. So I feel somewhere that is
also an issue.” In bringing unequal access to essential re-
sources, such as clean water to the conversation on ARTs, she
demonstrates an understanding of reproductive justice as in-
timately connected to social justice. Ultimately, she argues
that sex work and surrogacy is a question of the economic re-
alities that Dalit women are confronted with: “We are ques-
tioning the failure of (the) economic system. So you know
like, what is happening to agriculture? What is happening to
the economics?”
Surrogacy and sex work are seen as parallel social pheno-
mena not only in relation to how social locations shape
women’s “choice” of becoming surrogate mothers, but also
the conditions in which they find themselves once within
october 3, 2020 vol lV no 40 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

the industry. As one of the Dalit academics/social activists
stated:
[F]or instance this `30,000 paid to a Dalit woman may not be the case
for the non-Dalit woman who may bargain better. With her colour, with
her sort of you know social capital. She may bargain, she may have a choice
of going into surrogacy and bargaining for better allowance, better
kind of conditions of gestation, etc. That may not exist for the Dalit.
The narratives suggest that economic and other exploita-
tive conditions of Dalit surrogates within the reproductive
industry parallels the vulnerability of Dalits working in the
sex industry. Furthermore, many of our participants referred
to the historical exploitation of Dalit women’s sexuality, and
the practices of devadasis and joginis as contributing to the
coercive forces surrounding womens’ labour. As stated by one
of the journalists:
We have experienced sexual slavery for ... for simply centuries,
whereas mainstream feminists haven’t had this experience. So they
should hardly be the ones, you know, wanting to talk about it. I feel
we as a society have failed if women have to sell their vaginas or rent
their wombs to survive. You see the question is not of reproductive
freedom or choice. Where is the choice when they have no choice?.
[our emphasis]”
One of the academics specified, “Dalit devadasis have noth-
ing to do with the art of dancing at all, they never had temple
inheritance (…) Dalit devadasis were performing a kind of
temple prostitution.” Following this historical pattern, lower
caste women constitute the majority of sex workers in contem-
porary India. This academic drew attention to the embedded-
ness of prostitution in caste and class, which, as she points out,
was referred to as slavery by B R Ambedkar in 1936.
These intersecting levels of gender, caste and class reveal
inherent contradictions in the practices of untouchability, as
Aloysius et al (2020: 177) notice,
no more apparent than in dominant caste’s physical or sexual violence
against Dalit women, where an undisputed claim is assumed [on]
their bodies. Moreover, the touch of the women’s agricultural labour
in the dominant caste’s fields and their domestic work in the dominant
caste’s houses are interpreted as essential services that preclude the
strict practice of untouchability.
Detailing the vulnerability of Dalit women working in upper-
caste families, one of our academic research participants
spoke about the endemic problem of sexual harassment:
“[T]here is a caste link there where the man of the house and
the women of the house believe in some way that this woman
is sexually available.’’ As Suruchi Thapar-Björkert (2006: 782)
argues, “the ideological construction of purity/pollution are
conveniently forgotten when ‘pure’ upper caste men are en-
gaged in sexual encounters with ‘impure’ lower caste women.”
This is not to deny patriarchal inequalities in Dalit house-
holds. In fact, as one of our academic participants said, “a lot
of Dalit women in my own circles are treated very objectively,
like objects in their own relationships. For example, in their
families, the man is only educated because of the poverty. So
all those things disable the women to talk about the next level
of you know … rights. So the first thing is to … survive. To
get food on her table, the second thing is to educate herself if
Economic & Political Weekly EPW october 3, 2020 vol lV no 40
SPECIAL ARTICLE
possible, the third thing is to enter a healthy relationship
where she is not you know insecure or unsafe.”
What Dalit women are capable of pursuing as labour de-
pends on these limiting circumstances of income-generation.
One of the journalist participants explains that a framework of
choice is uncommon among sex workers from Dalit and lower-
caste communities: “this is stigmatised, this is despised … and
yet they do it, exposed to constant violence.” One of the aca-
demic participants elaborates on the notions of respect and
dignity introduced by the journalist:
They don’t have the choice. Precisely the kind of structural condition
which Dalit women are embedded, the question is not to ask about
the agency of Dalit women or to talk about the rhetoric of sex work
being dignified, to convert it into a dignified work does not arise
given the fact that it’s an extremely embedded kind of condition
in which Dalit women go into sex work (…) So it’s not a question of
you know sex work being a taboo, here the question [is] of “who is
performing the work?” And this is where Dalit women are saying
that “inevitably all said and done despite all this kind of talk about
giving dignity and self-respect, eventually it is our women who are
performing it.”
The research participant’s emphasis on the particular
vulnerability of Dalit women and the exposure to violence
that a life in prostitution often entails, articulates with the
Dalit movement’s understanding of prostitution as caste
exploitation: caste privilege sexually exploits women of lower
castes and destroys their self-respect thereby preserving the
unequal power relations of a caste-based society (Tambe
2008). While economic desperation and social marginalisa-
tion is a recurrent reason for entering into sex work and
surrogacy, our research participants simultaneously empha-
sised how this counteracts the equally important struggle
for dignity, as both sex work and surrogacy are stigmatised
occupations in the Indian context. As reiterated by one of the
social activists: “money is not a matter, recognition in the
society is the matter. Dignity! ... they are not recognised
even by the family.” The acute need for survival and the
equally pressing struggle for respect become irreconcilable
realities; seizing economic opportunity simultaneously enhances
social vulnerability.
Dismissing the framework of choice and insisting on the
importance of structural conditions resonate with debates on
sexuality and labour in which Dalit feminists have become a
divergent voice. The legislative ban on bar dancing, critiqued
by mainstream feminists as “moral policing” and an attack
on women’s right to exercise agency, and stances on sex
work, are cases in point (Makhija 2010). Partly as a de-excep-
tionalising and destigmatising move, and with reference to
the first national survey of sex work in India,3 sex work has
been conceptualised by dominant feminists through the lib-
eral framework of bodily autonomy, rights and choice (Menon
2020), whereas reports by the National Federation of Dalit
Women (NFDW) and National Campaign on Dalit Human
Rights (NCDHR) —emphasising that a majority of sex workers
come from lower caste backgrounds—point to the caste-
ordained linkage between sexuality and labour. Thus, the
social position of the women choosing sex work needs to be
43
SPECIAL ARTICLE

acknowledged, in addition to their economic status (Rege
1998: 44).
Brahminisation of Surrogacy
Female reproductive biology is a main generative site in the
growing global biomarkets, including emerging stem cell ind-
ustries that are dependent on high volumes of human embryos,
oocytes, fetal tissue and umbilical cord blood (Cooper and
Waldby 2008, 2014). The gaining ascendancy of oocyte econo-
mies in the aftermath of the new regulatory framework on sur-
rogacy was an important revelation during the course of our
interviews. The commercialisation of ova, in particular, sur-
faced when our research participants addressed LGBTQIA+
(lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersexed, and
agender) communities’ acute lack of livelihood choices. Sever-
al of our research participants spoke of an expanding bio-
economy in which lesbians and transgender persons sell their
eggs and sperms as a mode of survival. As one of our research
participants detailed, “transmen and lesbians have very diffi-
cult time continuing their education because of family, they
run away from home or because they have tough lives. So they
are outside, they need money. They are running you know,
running scared.”
Our research participants give us reason to believe that these
practices are inflected by gender, class and caste dynamics, as
is surrogacy. One of the journalists shared the following account:
[T]he doctors I have discussed with at that time have told me […] they
want fair looking babies, they want intelligent babies so they openly
ask for Brahmin eggs. Some doctors have told me that people openly
ask for some Brahmin eggs, or Brahmin sperm. So for uterus they are
hiring lower caste people ... women … They won’t opt [for] their eggs
(…) but for eggs and sperm they only seek upper caste [donors].
“Brahmin eggs” and “Brahmin sperm” are juxtaposed with
the womb of the lower-caste woman, whose defiled and impure
sexuality makes their own eggs undesirable. As earlier studies
suggest, intended parents would ideally prefer a higher caste
or Brahmin surrogate, with the expectation that they would
produce “healthy and good-looking babies” (Dhar 2012).
Nonetheless, both these cases reinstate the ideology of purity/
pollution, whereby the institutionalised inequalities of the
Brahminical system are fortified. We suggest that these repro-
ductive practices assist in building “caste capital,’’ which con-
fers benefits comparable to those accrued from social capital.
As “embodied in relations among persons’’ (Coleman 1988:
118), social capital is productive and enables the achievement
of certain ends while conferring power and profit to its holders
(Skeggs 1998)—in this case upper-caste women and men—
whose caste capital protect them from economic and social
vulnerability. We conceptualise this assemblage of practices as
the Brahminisation of Surrogacy; creating new roles for lower
caste women while confining them within the frame of “non-
valuable breeders” for the embryos of “valuable” women
(Corea 1985: 276). Significantly, such practices articulate with
earlier Indian eugenic discourses and more recent Hindu
nationalist arguments on caste supremacy, which construct
oppressed castes as unfit to reproduce.
In conclusion, we reinstate the central purpose of our article
which was to analyse caste as a significant parameter for
understanding ARTs, in particular surrogacy and egg dona-
tion. By incorporating Dalit feminist perspectives, that have
been marginalised in mainstream debates, we demonstrate
the relevance of bringing caste and social justice centre stage,
and how this is crucial for forging new conversations.

Notes
1 Semi-structured qualitative in-depth qualitative
interviews were conducted by the third author
with 11 research participants, all of whom
identified as women, who work in areas of
reproductive health—as activists, journalists
and academics —and who are from the Dalit
caste. The respondents are based in Bengaluru
(Karnataka) and Chennai (Tamil Nadu).
Karnataka and Tamil Nadu share a trajectory
of strong Dalit movements, and more impor-
tantly, Dalit women’s movements in which our
research participants are involved. Not all the
participants identified as primarily Dalits.
Some of them, especially the academics, em-
phasised that they were feminists who were
also Dalits. The interviews were conducted in
locations suggested by the participants: in
their offices, homes and in cafes.
2 The Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016. The Min-
istry of Health and Welfare, Government of In-
dia, New Delhi, Bill No 257, https://dhr.gov.in/
document/acts-circulars/surrogacy-regula-
tion-bill-2016.
3 The survey was published in 2012, and indi-
cates that approximately 71% of female sex-
workers have chosen sex-work ahead of other
occupations (www.plri.org).
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