I got sent this post by my friend and I have mixed thoughts. But one that struck me the quickest was why they never talk about marriage between a Dalit woman and a Brahmin man. The talking point has always been Brahmin women and Dalit men, almost like this activism is from the POV of the Dalit men and women facing caste discrimination are disregarded. 

I agree with endogamy ending caste hierarchy but only using Brahmin women as a vessel for this is reducing women to incubators who will “carry the Dalit man’s blood”. It’s not an equal footing. It might resolve casteism but misogyny lives on. 

Brahmin women are treated as property by their families, they don’t have agency to marry. But here, the fight isn’t for the agency of the Brahmin woman to marry, it’s for her to marry a Dalit man. Because at the end, he’s seeing her as being handed over to him (as property). It’s like a Brahmin man sharing/giving his property to a Dalit man as a peace treaty like kings did in historic times after wars. Woman is being used as a peace deal. 

If the talking point had been simply intercaste marriages, it would’ve lacked misogyny. But talking specifically about only women marrying men from particular castes, it does make you stop and think why the opposite wasn’t done (Brahmin man and Dalit woman). 

Someone asking white women to marry black men post-slavery times to better their relationships with each other sounds crazy because why is it on the women to break free from these social hierarchies when they have patriarchy to break free from? 

Thoughts on marriage between Brahmin women and Dalit men to overcome caste system?