Visiting Prof. Smita Tewari Jassal (ANTH) spoke about the historical social injustice of agrarian women in northern India and the cultural phenomenon of the labor songs that these women sing to cope with their lives during her lecture "Women as Producers: Culture and Agriculture in North India" last Thursday. The Anthropology Department, the South Asian Studies Department and the Office of Global Affairs co-sponsored the event.

Jassal spoke of the mires of the Indian caste system and gender patriarchy. She also shed light upon the injustices and lack of accreditation and resources received by women who comprised the driving force of Indian agriculture throughout India's history.

"[The women's] contribution in agriculture has largely been invisible in official records and documents," Jassal said, though women conducted 80 percent of agricultural tasks such as planting, grinding, winnowing and tilling.

Because men operated the plow, which is the most physically intensive agricultural task, they received all of the credit for agricultural production. Meanwhile, the contributions of agrarian women, who are responsible for the vast remainder of agrarian activities, have been marginalized, and their tribulations have been seen as an extension of their household duties.

Jassal said that women received fewer resources than men, an imbalance that persists in some parts of India, where women receive 25 percent less income than men for the same jobs.

Jassal said that from the depths of generations of injustice, these female agrarian untouchables created their own dialect and distinct rhythmic songs, rich in cultural content and tailored to specific agricultural tasks, so that there are distinct songs for such activities as grinding produce and transplanting rice.

The songs illuminated the women's experience, Jassal said, and resisted the prejudicial system that oppressed them by voicing the rights they wished to attain, such as a greater share in resources and sexual freedom, as well as questioning patriarchal domination. One song speaks of a daughter confronting her father about why he sold her "like a cow first to a groom so aged, then to a home impoverished, then to a magician."

Jassal analyzed a number of the women's songs to demonstrate how their lyrics open up a distinct window into the gender constructs of traditional Indian society, as well as the collective consciousness of these lower-class agrarian women. Several of the songs emphasized that the role of women, as dictated by the men, was that of passivity, compliance, unquestioning loyalty and labor. Through these songs, older women transmitted their values to the younger women and warned them of the punishment for defiance and the reward for compliance.

Several of the audience members reacted to Jassal's unveiling of this topic. "I've seen this oppression, and I've heard the songs, but I've never actually thought of them as a weapon for resistance, and I think that it was very interesting to understand the meanings of these songs," said Sanjay Pranesh '10 of Karnataka, India after the lecture.