Women Archers Open Fire on Indian Caste

After traveling along dusty roads for about 100 kilometers on a steamy morning, we reach Damdama, a small village in the state of Haryana. In an open yard between a schoolhouse and grazing water buffalo, a group of young women are doing their warm-up exercises before target practice. Drawing back the string on their long wooden bows, the women fire arrows at a wooden plank with a paper bull’s eye.

Along with their love for the sport, these young archers from Damdama share something else, something that is invisible to the western eye. They are Dalits.

While caste-based discrimination was officially outlawed in India by post-colonial leaders at the ratification of the nation’s constitution in 1949, the caste system’s social, cultural and economic effects are very much alive today. Caste restricts professional opportunity and influences the decisions of the privileged regarding which enterprises to patronize, and this in turn shapes the success, or privation, of each new generation, restricting many from venturing beyond their societally predestined roles. Caste influences one’s education, aesthetics, accent, appearance, values, nutrition and life expectancy — in short, everything.

“People often taunt us, saying we are from a lower caste and we should focus on doing what other women do — keep their heads low and engage in either household chores or do menial jobs,” said archer Laxmi, 19, who lives with her siblings and mother in a single-storeyed mud house. (Women in Haryana do not use surnames, and go only by their first names.) Her father passed away a few years ago.

Laxmi’s home lies at the end of a tapered pathway filled with muck and cow dung. Inside the house, the walls are painted yellow, with bright green flowers.

Shraddha Kumbhojkar is a professor of history at Savitribai Phule Pune University. She explained that caste and gender act as a double plight for Dalit women athletes.

“A higher caste girl trying to make a career in sports will experience patriarchal tensions and pressures, while a Dalit girl trying to be a sportsperson will not only face discrimination due to the patriarchal attitudes, but an additional pressure of being Dalit,” she said.

Laxmi and her friends are no strangers to this double oppression. Along with constant remarks on how they dress or comport themselves, caste slurs are common. They can experience discrimination in an act as simple as seeking water from a public tap.

“No one here teaches women to become strong and attain leadership roles,” she told us. “However, once a woman achieves success and represents the village in the world, everyone feels that pride. That day will come in my life, too.”

Sapna, 19, lives a few meters from Laxmi on the same narrow street. She began practicing archery at age 10 and, with a great deal of patience and hard work, grew steadily more skilled. In three national games she has taken home two gold medals and a silver.

“People do talk ill about my daughter,” said Sapna’s father, Shyam Veer, a farmer. “This is how things are in villages, girls are targeted for everything. My daughter plays well, studies well. I focus on her development instead of listening to the villagers.” He showed us her medals, strung from handsome red, orange and green ribbon, that the family has displayed on a parapet.

Sapna and Laxmi have been training with coach Joginder Panwar for six years.

“They work for survival,” said Panwar, referring to the young athletes’ families. “Their fathers and grandfathers worked for the upper caste families of the village. Even Dalit women were often only employed to clean the big houses. All of this leaves a mark on the students.”

If these women can carve out a name for themselves in archery, he says, “it will not only help them but will encourage many girls in the village to play and change their lives.”

It can be hard for people outside South Asia to understand the extent to which caste shapes the lives of those from India’s lower echelons. Yet, Shafey Anwarul Haque, a research scholar at Aligarh Muslim University, says that today, those at the top of the hierarchy have the same state of mind as a hundred years ago.

He acknowledged that Dalits sometimes gain the chance to study in premier institutions and work in reputed public or private organizations. “But they can’t dissociate [from] the stigma of being ‘untouchable,’” he said.

Haque described an incident last year when two upper caste men in Haridwar, Uttarakhand went to the home of Olympic hockey player Vandana Katariya and screamed casteist abuse at her family after the Indian women’s team lost in the semi-finals. The same year, Katariya had become the first Indian woman hockey player to score an Olympic hat-trick.

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Today many experts see affirmative action as the only means to create genuine opportunity for Dalits. “There are scholarships and special schools to support their education, and these provisions have, to some extent, helped them,” said Haque. But he said that few Dalits have been able to find upward mobility, including in sports competition, without outside financial assistance.

Damdama village sarpanch, or elected leader, Santosh, concurred. She said that funds from the state government will be necessary for women archers like Sapna and Laxmi to advance in national, never mind international, competition.

“To get trained in an academy and to play at international levels, a lot of funds and guidance is required,” she told us. “Only the government can help on that scale. We have taken up the matter with the state government, and the file is with them.”

While sharing their ups and downs with OZY, these young women seemed full of hope. They send out a collective message to all the girls and women who want to excel in life despite difficult situations: “Don’t be discouraged. Don’t give up. Our beliefs, ideas and opinions matter, and know that you are not alone.”

For her part, Laxmi feels fortunate to have had a good education. Poised, she told us, “Apart from practicing sport, I read, and have the good luck to have a mother who helped me become who I wanted to be by allowing me to figure it out on my own.”

“If we stop playing, nothing will change. But if we keep on playing,” she said, brushing the hair from her eyes, “probably, things will change.”

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