ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the term 'Brahmanical patriarchy'; it is a term that some anti-caste feminist scholars have found useful, but others find it annoying. It argues that labour practices were a crucial determinant of sexual and reproductive practices that differed according to the place a caste group occupied in the caste hierarchy. In one sense, however, the term 'Brahmanical patriarchy' remains valid, because it allows us to identify the conjoint ideology of caste and gender as legitimated by Brahmanism as a core element in the institutionalization of patriarchy in India. The relationship between caste-class and gender has become an important aspect of author's formal 'academic' work, as well as the activism that has been a part of author's life since the early 1980s in the broad areas of movements for democratic rights and for women's rights. Given author's 'democratic rights' understanding, this shocking discovery has been a further way to understand the conjointness of caste and gender structures in India.
