Paper short abstract:

This study explores how social positionality in India is employed as an instrument of backlash against the #MeToo movement. The findings of the study reveal that the two categories of conventional and alternate understandings of backlash emerging from existing backlash literature overlap.

Paper long abstract:

This study investigates how the social positionality (caste and class) of female students in university campuses in Kolkata, India is employed as an instrument of backlash to dismiss their efforts at making progressive changes with regard to sexual harassment within such spaces in the light of the #MeToo movement. There is a strong anti-caste critique of the #MeToo movement in India posited by Dalit- Bahujan- Adivasi (DBA) feminists. I argue that leftist male dominated political organisations in university campuses in Kolkata use these critiques to their advantage as tools of backlash against gender equality to uphold established power structures in the campuses removing both categories of women from spaces of power and rendering their demands for redressal and justice against sexual harassment redundant. Piscopo and Walsh group the different understandings of backlash into two categories, as an immediate reaction to progressive change demanded by women (conventional understanding) and inherent oppression present within powerful structures which make the experience of backlash different for different groups of women (alternate understanding). I employ the existing and emerging body of backlash literature, primarily written in European and South American contexts to the Indian context arguing that conventional and alternate understandings of backlash are not independent of each other but are interlinked. I present lived experiences of politically active young women in University spaces with caste and class backlash using semi structed interviews and secondary literature review to show how it hampers feminist organising and negatively impacts the agency of female activists.