It is an extremely sad occasion that we have to think of Prof. Sharmila Rege’s contribution in her absence. I got to know of Sharmila due to her essay Dalit Women’s Standpoint when I was doing my Ph.D. I met her twice, first in 2001 during a conference of CWDS on gender and social science where she spoke about the ways in which new groups of students – Dalit, OBC were changing the face of research in sociology in Maharastra. She was hale and hearty. When I met her again in 2010, briefly during a workshop on research methodology, she looked ill. I wondered why she looked so ill but I did not have the temerity to ask anyone. I wish I had.

For me, Prof Sharmila Rege’s contribution has been important in three registers – feminism, women’s studies and women’s movement. They are close, overlapping arenas but it is better to keep them separate to understand the significance of her contribution.

Let us begin with feminism. After 1990, questions of gender inequality and critiques of patriarchy could no longer be innocent of questions of caste and religion. Even though, questions of caste and gender have often been raised together at many points in Indian history, within modern Indian feminist thinking, these two questions have become separated, due to the legacy of the anti-colonial nationalism and Gandhi, in particular. Sharmila Rege belongs to the minority of Indian feminists who questioned this separation. She belongs to those who have begun to firmly characterize Indian patriarchy as Brahmanical patriarchy, specifically shaped in the context of caste system. And, for me, her singular contribution in this domain is her latest book, Against the Madness of Manu, where she argues forcefully that Ambedkar should be read as a classic in Indian feminism. She re-introduces Ambedkar, by selecting, interpreting and placing the siginificance of a few of his writings and speeches on patriarchy and caste – Castes in India, Fall of Hindu Women, Riddles on Rama and Krishna, and his speeches during the non-passage of the Hindu Code Bill. I have just finished reading the book and am immensely grateful for what she has done for all those non-dalit scholars who are keen to read Dr. B.R. Ambedkar but require mediation. Ambedkar’s scholarship and corpus of writing are formidable and their full force comes alive with some mediation by scholars, who place in them in the context of the contemporary debates. Phule’s and Periyar’s writings and intervention on questions of gender and caste have been mediated to us, and for me, Sharmila’s introduction to B.R. Ambedkar’s writings on gender and caste stands alongside such crucial s

Let us come to her practice of women’s studies. Women’s Studies is structurally different from feminism. It is bound by disciplinary protocols where students also need to be nurtured into scholarship on gender. However, even according to UGC’s own admission, most of the women’s studies centres in the country are not doing what they are supposed to do – mentoring and research – but are engaged in working in the register of reform – teaching women students in the art of managing home or making money out of the same or reforming the nearby slum areas or sometimes nothing. There are less than ten thriving UGC women’s studies centres in the country – among which Savitribai Phule Centre is one. Such centres are characterized by some features – they do rigorous research; they nurture dedicated and committed scholarship and students; they are collective in functioning, rather than being individualistic; they have thriving connections with other women’s studies scholars as well as different political movements.

She represents the best of women’s studies traditions – where the practice is oriented towards political resonance/significance of work, without ever losing sight of the rigour;  where the practice is consciously cross-disciplinary – she consciously straddles disciplines of sociology, history and literature; where the questions for study of gender are to be found in the empirical, grounded investigations and not through government policy or laws or already arrived at, prescriptive notions about patriarchy and gender – her work on Dalit women’s testimonies is the best example of such work.

For me, Sharmila’s institution building vision and effort is something that we need to remember, which is almost as important as her scholarship. To any visitor to the Savitribai Phule centre in Pune these features are strikingly visible. She not only did all of the above, but introduced new pedagogical practices such as teaching in two languages, framing syllabus to bring down the inequality between vernacular medium students and English medium students.

Coming to the third register in which we should take note of her contribution, it is the women’s movement. Women’s movements, work with-in specific goals – short term and long-term; among the people one can find some who work in register of reform, some work towards better laws and some work to improve the realm of policy. There are those few who recognize the politically contentious issues and seek to understand them and make conscious efforts to go beyond what is currently feasible. Sharmila was one of those who recognized the impasse over caste within the women’s movement and consciously sought to work with the dalit women’s movement in Maharastra. She sought to understand; articulate what they were saying to non-dalit women’s movements. Her work in this register has been extremely valuable in helping orient non-dalit women’s movements to register their caste-blindness in addressing issues.

Let me end by saluting Sharmila. Her spirit and her work will remain an inspiration to many of us!