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The electoral decline of the organised Left in West Bengal politics has given rise to intellectual speculation about the increasing possibility of caste politics. In this context, this article investigates whether there is any merit in the claim that the electoral decline of the Left Front has paved the way for the rise of caste at the centre stage of mainstream electoral politics in West Bengal. It asks whether lower castes have started to mobilise politically in West Bengal in the same way as in many other states. The article argues against the claim of 'a new politics of caste' in West Bengal by showing that the electoral decline of the Left Front has not been accompanied by any rise in lower caste representation. In this context, the article also attempts to understand the reasons for the continuing non-politicisation of caste in West Bengal, revealing many factors relating to demography and political economy which don't augur well for caste politics in West Bengal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The religiously sanctioned Devadasi system in India exemplifies intersectional oppression of gender, caste, and sexuality. Historically, Devadasis, or "servants of God," were women wedded to God who performed temple duties and were considered sacral women with ritual powers. As part of her duties, the Devadasis offer sexual services to her patrons, invariably the economically and socially powerful patriarch/s in society. The Devadasis were not a monolithic community; there were caste-based segregations within the Devadasi community which delineated their social positions. Devadasis were drawn from castes lower in the hierarchy (non-Brahmins) and the Scheduled castes (Dalits). To distinguish the two categories, the Devadasis from the non-Brahmin castes were referred to as Kalavantin/Isai Vellalar/Kalavantulu and those from the Dalit castes were referred to as Jogini/Mathamma; their social and economic status were entirely different. The Devadasis from the non-Brahmin communities performed classical music and dance, while the Dalit Devadasis performed folk dances during temple festivals. Though the Devadasi system was outlawed in 1988, the practice of dedicating young girls as Devadasis continues to be prevalent among the Scheduled castes. This paper argues that the activists who fought for the liberation of the Devadasis from the oppressive system focused mostly on the Devadasis from the non-Brahmin castes, excluding the Devadasis from the Scheduled castes. This paper contextualizes the prevalence of the Devadasi system within the interconnected matrices of caste and gender structures in Hindu society. Drawing on the socio-historical trajectory of the emancipation of Devadasis in Goa, a state in Western India, this paper analyzes the caste hierarchies and social inequities embedded within the Devadasi system. Apart from discussing the legal interventions initiated by the State to abolish the Devadasi system, this paper also analyses the role of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in the emancipation and empowerment of Dalit Devadasis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper undertakes indigenous caste monography of the Gaduliya Lohars (Blacksmiths with carts) of Rajasthan, in light of their historical origin and the present state, they are living in. They are named according to the nomadic lifestyle they have acquired historically, leaving the courts with their patron king. Post-Independent democratic India accorded the community with their association with the legendary past of the nation, during All India Gadi Lohar Sammelan held in 1955, thus glorifying their semi-nomadic existence that followed their self-imposed exile from Chittorgarh. It was an attempt, diligent yet fruitless, to settle this community as 'Ironworkers' of the new Industrial nation; a honeytrap of mobilizing such nomadic communities to use as potential vote banks. Presently, they are considered as 'illegal migrant settlers' in the western and northern states of India; as they can be found residing on the pavements alongside highways. Since Independence, they have been switching between multifarious caste attributions such as Scheduled tribe, OBC (Other Backward Caste), SBC (Special Backward Caste). The paper explores how to confer to space, which is illegal to dwell, is a fundamental development of Settlement that hinders 'Migration', negatively affecting the existence of a community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a plethora of research on North Korea, understanding and managing the challenges posed by the country have long been complicated with no simple solution to put an end to this decades-long security and economic predicament on the Korean Peninsula. With the potential for international conflict, attention must be given to the converging messages emerging from the scholarly works reviewed in this article: Glyn Ford, Talking to North Korea: Ending the Nuclear Standoff, Van Jackson, On the Brink: Trump, Kim, and the Threat of Nuclear War and William Overholt's collection North Korea: Peace? Nuclear War? These works speak to the need to: take seriously the risk of nuclear war; consider the connectedness of the North's decades-long security and economic reform dilemmas; and to acknowledge that the mistrust that is deeply rooted on all sides must be mitigated to bring peace. These books are published at a critical juncture of increased tensions following a highly publicised but remarkably short-lived effort at a breakthrough on the Korean nuclear issue, Pyongyang's rapidly evolving security posture and its perennial domestic challenges. Each of these volumes provides valuable insights on these challenges for North Korea and internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we introduce the special issue through framing the debate on the role of caste in India's current land wars. We draw attention to how caste consistently mediates land transfers in present day India by pre-empting, undermining, or fuelling processes of social contestation, as well as the ways in which land claims in turn shape realigned or reimagined caste identities. Based on this, we make three main arguments. The first and most obvious one is that in contemporary conflicts over land, caste matters in evolving ways that deserve attention. Second, we argue that caste and land are recursively linked categories that are produced and reproduced in continuous interaction, even as multi-scalar political economies (re)shape them. And third, that different registers of caste are articulated by different social groups in more or less overt ways as they stake often competing claims to land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2014, the state of Andhra Pradesh was bifurcated by the Indian government, leaving the truncated state without a capital city. A period of political uncertainty before bifurcation and the announcement of the new capital city created possibilities for land speculation and for the acceleration of the commodification of real estate in different parts of the state. Concentrating on Guntur-Vijayawada in the Coastal Andhra region and Donakonda town close to the Rayalaseema region, this article explores how speculative investments based on political calculations by members of regional elite castes translated into the emergence of competing regional investment zones as possible future choices of the capital city. Through an extended and largely ethnographic study, this article shows how caste politics and regional processes of land speculation led to land transfers without violent struggles between different groups. Rather, the cultural politics of regional differentiation and the economy of anticipation allowed a pragmatic convergence of interests to emerge, where acquisition of agricultural land was followed by silent dispossession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the caste and class dimensions of the local resource politics of conservation displacement. Through long-term study of a conservation displacement site in central India, it interrogates how alliances and rivalries contoured along historical class-caste contestations result in differential patterns of recovery from "green grabbing" and exclusionary conservation. It is argued that contestations within and between subaltern social groups, traditional dominant castes and newly upwardly mobile peasant castes are geared towards cornering resource flows associated with the local welfare/developmental state. Given severely limited avenues of gainful employment for the rural poor in the neo-liberal era, access to the local gatekeeping economy shapes trajectories of accumulation and decline in the context of India's new land wars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the political narratives around a two-decade -old process of land acquisition and development in the "global city" Rajarhat, a former rural settlement in the Indian state of West Bengal. These narratives are built against the backdrop of a neoliberal state acting as a corporate facilitator, particularly in matters of land, and the concomitant dispossession. The multifaceted politics of Rajarhat took shape during the erstwhile communist regime in West Bengal, the dichotomy of a self-identified Left state engaged in forceful and violent land acquisition thus forming an interesting paradox. The article also presents evidence against the long -held political myth of caste relations being irrelevant in Bengali politics, by examining the upper-caste -dominated social relations in Rajarhat and the formation of low-level cartels or "syndicates" in the area. In conclusion, the article points to the reinvention and redeployment of caste relations – even in increasingly urban spaces where "hierarchical" caste practices are usually taken to be on the decline – rooted in the duality between land struggles and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adivasi population represents a special case in India's new land wars. Strong individual and community rights to agricultural and forest lands have been enacted for this group based on notions of adivasi identities as primeval, but without linking these to economic and political influence. This article interrogates the adivasi land question seen through a caste lens. It does so via case studies in two states to understand the ways in which adivasi identity can be mobilised for its instrumental value and used to demand land rights. In Andhra Pradesh, the Supreme Court's Samatha Judgement has prevented virtually all private mining activities. In Jharkhand, however, similar legislation is seen to be trumped by the national Coal Bearing Areas Act, as well as by former and current land acquisition acts that allow industrial land claims to take precedence over identity-based ones. Available evidence indicates the challenges involved in bringing support for land rights that are premised on a supposedly unchanging adivasi identity when these rights go against dominant interests. This circumstance serves to highlight the possibilities present in caste analysis to understand the plight of adivasis, despite their usually distinct treatment in scholarly analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anti-Special Economic Zone (SEZ) mobilisation in Haryana failed to generate a mass movement. This is despite the political strength of farmers and their deep resentment of the government's policy to build up land reserves for industrial purposes. This article argues that there are two main reasons for this outcome. First, the state government put in place a series of significant policies to compensate landowners and give them a stake in the industrial project, primarily through payment of an "annuity." Second, the main anti-SEZ movements were led by dominant landowning castes who did not incorporate the concerns of landless labourers and tenant farmers who faced equally or even more dire consequences from the government's land acquisition policy. Moreover, mobilisation relied on traditional caste institutions such as khap panchayats and farmer unions strongly associated with Jats, rather than adopting a more broad-based approach. Entrenched caste animosity and pre-existing conflicts of interest between landed Jats and Dalits, who have traditionally worked as agricultural labourers, further explain the limited scope of the mobilisation among rural groups. The analysis underscores how hierarchical relations shape social movements, define the claims they make and ultimately impact their effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses the concepts of orchestration and spectacle to analyse the work of leaders of an anti-dispossession movement in rural West Bengal. It examines what being a movement leader entails and argues for the importance of connections and social relations in the production of both movement leadership and movement spectacles. By introducing a Dalit perspective on a movement that was otherwise led by the local middle-caste peasantry, the article shows how local caste and class relations have been important in defining access to positions of movement leadership; in disconnecting specific Dalit interests from the movement's larger political agenda; and in giving rise to certain forms of internal policing of caste boundaries within the movement. The fact that the ability to cultivate and "connect" to the new political spaces opened by the anti-dispossession movement correlates strongly with historically produced caste and class inequalities calls for greater attention to the internal caste politics of anti-dispossession movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Widespread "land wars" in contemporary India have rekindled older debates over the implications of capitalism for caste, with some arguing that land dispossession for new economy projects may be liberating for Dalits. We assess this argument through comparative ethnographic and survey research into the consequences of dispossession for Dalits in the cases of two Special Economic Zones built during the 2000s. We advance three arguments. The first, methodological, is that approaching this question requires systematically comparing the outcomes of dispossession for Dalits relative to upper castes. The second, based on such an assessment, is that the interaction between exclusionary growth and caste-based agrarian inequalities has in both cases expanded socio-economic inequalities between upper and lower castes and left most dispossessed Dalits worse off in absolute terms. Third, the cases demonstrate important qualitative differences across generally bad outcomes for Dalits, which derive from the combination of project characteristics and pre-existing agrarian inequalities. While demonstrating how the exclusionary growth driving dispossession in contemporary India is generally unpromising for Dalits, we underscore the importance of comparative ethnographic research into the interaction between different forms of dispossession and specific agrarian social structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the northern regions of India, the rising popularity of alternative religious sects, prominently Deras, has sparked much interest in explaining this phenomenon. Current literature, based on case studies of specific Dalit Deras, relates the emergence of these religious sects to caste-based social discrimination and exclusion of lower castes by the mainstream Sikh religion. This article presents a case study of a small town, Patran, in the state of Punjab. Confirming the popularity of these alternative religious sects for upper and lower castes in the town, the article argues that the contemporary attractiveness of Deras needs to be understood also as a result of localised agrarian dynamics and related social pressures engendered by the process of rural to urban and agrarian to non-agrarian transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores mobilization to reduce the deepest inequalities in the two largest democracies, those along caste lines in India and racial lines in the United States. I compare how the groups at the bottom of these ethnic hierarchies—India's former untouchable castes (Dalits) and African Americans—mobilized from the 1940s to the 1970s in pursuit of full citizenship: the franchise, representation, civil rights, and social rights. Experiences in two regions of historically high inequality (the Kaveri and Mississippi Deltas) are compared in their national contexts. Similarities in demographic patterns, group boundaries, socioeconomic relations, regimes, and enfranchisement timing facilitate comparison. Important differences in nationalist and civic discourse, official and popular social classification, and stratification patterns influenced the two groups' mobilizations, enfranchisement, representation, alliances, and relationships with political parties. The nation was imagined to clearly include Dalits earlier in India than to encompass African Americans in the United States. Race was the primary and bipolar official and popular identity axis in the United States, unlike caste in India. African Americans responded by emphasizing racial discourses while Dalit mobilizations foregrounded more porously bordered community visions. These different circumstances enabled more widespread African American mobilization, but offered Dalits more favorable interethnic alliances, party incorporation, and policy accommodation, particularly in historically highly unequal regions. Therefore, group representation and policy benefits increased sooner and more in India than in the United States, especially in regions of historically high group inequality such as the Kaveri and other major river Deltas relative to the Deep South, including Mississippi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

May 2015 witnessed the Dangawas massacre in Rajasthan's Nagaur district, one of the most brutal caste atrocities in recent Indian history, which resulted in the death of five Dalits of the Meghwal caste at the hands of a Jat mob. Across Rajasthan, the violence of Dangawas, which marked the culmination of a decades-long land conflict, has become synonymous with the continuing reality of caste-based violence and the law that is meant to address it: The 1989 SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act. However, Meghwal survivors in Dangawas often articulate scepticism about the ability of law to provide them with a true sense of restitution. Emphasising a desire for social space (jagah), which they map onto the land at the root of the bloodshed, Dangawas' Meghwal survivors are caught in a post-traumatic moment marked by fear of further suffering. The memory of inconceivable violence, which has left them alienated in a divided village, has not only made renewed attempts of assertion, and demands for radical justice temporarily inconceivable, but has also led Dangawas' survivors to ask questions about their own agency and the meaning of sociality in an environment where members of a dominant caste still see themselves as guarantors of economic and social belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The solidarity between socially marginalized groups in India is often compromised, directly or indirectly, by their own internecine complicity with structures and histories of systematic social violence. We look at this problem through a close analysis of the graphic novel Bhimayana, which brings together key events from the life of B. R. Ambedkar—the architect of the Indian Constitution who was born into the "untouchable" Mahar caste—and the artwork of the Gond tribal artists Durgabai and Subhash Vyam. While there is considerable affinity in terms of socioeconomic disadvantages between the tribes and the lower castes of India, these affinities are strained by contradictions that problematize the principle of solidarity. We argue that the intrusion of complicity and guilt into performances of solidarity finally serves to strengthen the political empowerment of these groups by making it possible to acknowledge their implication in the history of social harm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers Ambedkar's ideas about the implementation of democracy in India, in the context of the linguistic reorganization of provincial administrative boundaries. In doing so, it looks to emphasize the importance of territorial configurations to Dalit politics during this period and, in particular, the consequences of 'provincialization', which has received little attention within the existing literature. Rethinking space by redrawing administrative territory provided Ambedkar with one potential avenue through which to escape the strictures of Dalits' minority status. In this vision, linguistic reorganization (and partition) were harbingers of greater democratization and potential palliatives to the threat of Hindu majority rule at the centre. In turn, however, Ambedkar simultaneously came to perceive the creation of these new administrative spaces as marking a new form of provincial majoritarianism, despite his best efforts to form alliances with those making such demands. In this sense, the article also seeks to address some of the shared processes behind linguistic reorganization and partition as two related forms of territorial redrawing. In the face of these demands, and the failures of both commensuration and coalition politics, Ambedkar turned to the idea of separate settlements for Dalits, whereby they might themselves come to constitute a majority. Whilst such a novel attempt at separation and resettlement was not ultimately realized, its emergence within Ambedkar's thought at this time points towards its significance in any history of caste and untouchability in twentieth-century South Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article brings to light the comparison of Dalit writing in Tamil and Marathi. India being one of the fastest developing countries in the world, yet well known for its rigid caste system. This paper will pitch the dark side of history of suppression and how the writers help to heal the scars of subjugation of the Dalit community with special reference to the writers Bama and Urmila. Urmila Pawar, a writer and activist, is a noticeable personality in the Dalit and feminist movements in Marathi language. Her works exhibit social discrimination and the plight of women in the subjugated community. Bama Soosairaj, a teacher and a novelist, identified, as Tamil Dalit feminist is known for her writing on the sufferings of the underprivileged community and the struggle they undergo to shed that identity. The paper also separates the unambiguous realities of dalits, specially the lives of Dalit women and their commendable attempts to upraise socially. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to resolve the present impasse within Dalit theology generated by an overreliance on and undertheorizing of the question of Dalit identity. It argues that the implicit location of Dalit theology as a theology of identity does a disservice to Dalit theology itself. Rather, what is needed is to nuance the question of Dalit identity and then flesh out what we mean when we speak of "the Dalit perspective." Key to doing this is to reconceptualize Dalit identity as a fluid identity: that is, an identity that both destabilizes and allows for the assemblage of alliances among all afflicted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dalit literature is a kind of literature that evolved after independence. The beginning of Dalit literature has a great historical relevance. Similar literature exploring the lives and the pathetic existence of the marginalised and downtrodden sections exist in other parts of the world as well. Arjun Dangle has defined Dalit literature as one whichfamiliarises the readers 'with the age old caste system and untouchability in India. As we know, Dalits have always been relegated to the marginalised 'other' side of the Indian society; in other words they were completely excluded from the social mainstream. So when they began protesting after centuries of silence, a new kind of literature came to thefore that depicted an assertion of human rights, self esteem, revolt against social oppression, stories of personal and collective suffering, and putforth a vision of a new society sans any discrimination. The word Dalit is not new; it was in use in the 1930s as the Hindi and Marathi translation of 'Depressed classes', a term the British used for the present day Scheduled Castes. The main aim of Dalit literature is the emancipation of the Dalit community. Sharan Kumar Limbale has said: "Dalit literature is exactly that literature which aesthetically captures the trauma, sorrow, embarrassment, humiliation, ridicule and sufferings confronted by the Dalits". Some of the important Dalit writers -whose -writings willfind a place in the resistance literature the world over are: Mahasweta Devi, Namdeo Dhasal, Daya Pawar, Arjun Dangle, Perumal Murugan, D.Gopi, Neerave Patel, Poomani, Basudev Sunani, SachiRautray andMangalRathod. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India 'nature writing' has traditionally encompassed ecology, geography and sacrality, and has often missed Dalit literary traditions. In the last few decades, environment literature has expanded its horizons to consider intersections between ecology, society and culture. However, the question still remains: why is there no recognition of ecological underpinnings in the writings of subordinate castes by the wider canon of the environmental literary sphere? This article addresses this exclusion and explores the relationship between caste, nature, Dalits and environmental imagination. It takes Dalit autobiographies from different regions and languages to highlight an unexplored aspect of Dalit writings, thus widening the scope and perspective of environment literature and providing a distinct perspective from the margins. Through the lens of eco-literature, eco-criticism and eco-justice, the article underlines how nature's beauty and caste burden, space and identity, land and bondage, social injustice and environmental 'othering' are significant features of these life narratives. It weaves certain select themes like nature's beauty, caste exploitation, labour and animals to explore the pain and stigmatisation, along with a vibrancy and dynamism, in Dalit eco-narrations of the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on phenomenological perspectivism that seek to balance pessimism and positivity and also discusses the challenges of Afro-Pessimists. The author explores the understanding of anti-blackness as an intrinsic part of European modernity. The topics include comparison between ontological/epistemological pessimism and political pessimism, Orientalism, racialized Oriental and Dalit under the Hindu caste system.

In India marrying across the caste kindles strong community resentment, leading to the extent of honor killing, yet few couples dare to defy this stringent social norm. Analysis of large-scale survey (India Human Development Survey 2011–12) data exhibits an inconsequential rise in this social incongruity since 1951 to attain 4.5% in 2012. It is most prevalent in the northeastern region (11.6%), but least prevalent in caste-ridden central India (1.8%). Multi-variate statistics exhibit that if women are allowed to choose their life-partner, caste takes a rear-seat in marriage contemplation. It is quite prominent among the women who selected the husband by themselves and knew the husband at least one year before the marriage. Contrary to general notion, education is not able to promote inter-caste marriage. Odds of inter-caste marriage taking place in Dalit (lowest social standing) households is much lesser than the higher caste. Resilient targeted efforts are necessary to promote inter-caste marriage, which may loosen the noose of the caste system in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reservation policy stands for the representative nature of the Indian democracy as well as to guarantee equality as envisioned in the preamble of the constitution to every Indian citizen. This paper wouldlook into how the reservationi debates arepmceedingin theonlinemedia andnetworkingplaiforms, with emphasis given to the caste equations that underlie Anti-Reservation trolls that are shared online. Tmlls have become a means to respond to anythingand everything that is happening a round. With regards to the increasing impact of trolls, the paper would be looking at cyber public sphere, a seemingly democratic space for its potential to be an agent of majoritarian hegemony. This paper uses the methodology of discourse analysis to analyse the biased portrayal ofdalits in the anti-reservation trolls which denies theprevalenceof castebaseddiscrimination and poverty of the community actvss India. This paper uses the framework of llabermas' theory of public sphere to analyse the do it participation online. By analysing varied facets of reservation debates online, this paper would be looking at politics of exclusion thai'marks cyber public spherein India, with special' reference to daitmarginalization online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Bedia, a Scheduled Tribe (ST) community found mainly in eastern India, contains a group of performers within it who live by performing bahurūpī--referring to one who can take many forms--which has been termed as the "chameleon art" in some government documents. Bahurūpī performance is referenced in many of India's historical texts, some of which date back to the pre-Christian era. The present study was conducted among an entire troupe of bahurūpī Bedias living together in a single village. The Bedias constitute a mosaic of groups living according to different economic persuasions, and they can arguably be said to have multiple origins. They present an interesting case on the tribe/caste continuum on the one hand; on the other, they bring before us a unique case of cultural adjustment through occupational specialization. They have gradually transitioned from a nomadic style of life to a semi-nomadic or sedentary lifestyle. In the present article, the performing tradition of bahurūpī has been socio-historically contextualized along with the description of the nature of their performance, performers, training of performers, audience, patronization, and recent changes. The example of the bahurūpī provides us with valuable data concerning the nature of survival among small communities in the Indian context, since they display multiple layers of identities at the economic, social, and political or administrative levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores a global and existential problem—how ordinary people live and contend with historically deep subordination, humiliation, and exclusion—through an examination of the everyday lives of formerly untouchable caste Dalit communities in Kerala, India. I look at this through the lens of neighborliness: how people discuss how they live together with other castes and classes in small town and rural Kerala. Their continuing struggles with and experiences of humiliation and subordination must be placed within the historical context of Kerala, where deep inequality previously constituted every social relationship, and where the communist movement and other important social and political transformations have radically transformed living conditions and provided new languages and possibilities of equality within the official public sphere, if not the household. Drawing from the anthropology of ethics and engaging with philosophical discussions of living with others, I scrutinize neighborliness as an ethical landscape for Dalits living in new kinds of neighborhoods produced by political and social transformation. In doing so, I also reflect upon the ongoing conversations and interactions within which, for Dalits, respect, dignity, and worth are at stake. The essay also suggests new ways of understanding publics that are neither private nor part of the official public, but rather are networks of houses within rural neighborhoods—what I call " private-publics ," which are constituted through gendered caste relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that taking territory into account is essential to understand the change in the scale and nature of caste dominance in contemporary India. The demonstration is based on an analysis of the socio-spatial trajectories of the Kammas—a dominant caste from Coastal Andhra, where they continue to own most of the land, even though they have migrated in large numbers towards the interior and southern regions of the Indian peninsula, both to newly irrigated areas and to the cities. The key positions they occupy in the politics and economy of Andhra Pradesh confer upon them a hegemonic character. However, this hegemony is threatened by the growing resistance of Dalits to caste and class oppression, while Kamma cultural domination, long contested in Telangana, is now challenged by the formation of the new state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article, the author discusses the anti-caste activism of Bahujan girls on the social media platform TikTok in India. Also cited are the strategies of the girls like assertion of Bahujan pride and celebrations of Doctor Ambedkar Jayanti, the use of anti-caste icons like anti-caste group Bhim Army head Chandrashekhar Azad, and the promotion of Dalit identity.

This article explains why caste has not become part of the international approach to eliminate racial discrimination by examining a paradigmatic debate in India on the relevance of caste at the 2001 World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa (WCAR) and its ‘Review Process’. In 2001, the NGO-led organisation, National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, made an attempt to include caste-based discrimination in the Durban Declaration; however, the Government of India prevented this development on the grounds that caste was irrelevant in international law. Caste and race became contested political concepts, and the rationale of the Dalit campaign was challenged. Furthermore, the Indian government’s diplomatic opposition to include caste in the WCAR was consolidated by adopting a strict concept of race to create a political frontier against an international human rights regime. The ‘Durban process’ thus reactivated a hegemonic discourse in India concerning race to avoid international scrutiny of caste discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based mainly on printed sources in Tamil, as well as interviews with Dalit activists, this article seeks to map current divergent attitudes of Dalits towards folklore and especially towards the drum. While most activists argue for the rejection of drumming as a symbol of oppression and untouchability, some try to use it as a means of mobilisation. Others speak in favour of the resignification of the instrument and its protection and preservation as a part of their cultural legacy, which they consider to be different from the mainstream. The article also sets out to correlate these attitudes with the ideology of the eradication of caste and points to the ensuing dilemmas connected with emphasising caste-based identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The caste based discrimination does not only affect the spheres of education, work and employment but also the wide Horizons of life, which can be detrimental for the country's future. This paper concentrates on the detailed analysis of occupation segregation or should we say the discrimination and lower footing of the scheduled castes in India. The paper in its analysis focuses not only on the SCs but also the Other Backward castes, because both of these groups have been subjected to centuries' long discrimination. Therefore it is imperative that the paper dwells on lowers caste discrimination in a holistic manner. There is ample use of graphical, literary and explanatory techniques, the paper provides a widely spanning depiction of the situation, right from the 1992-93 to the 2014. Various aspects have been portrayed of caste based segregation in the sphere of employment in the modern India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Undoubtedly, education is the pedestal of progress and also a source of employments which decrease the gender inequality in society and increase the standard of living. It is compulsory for people of a nation for defense from unawareness and backwardness. So the significance of education has been continuously increasing yet it varies at different stages. The present study has been carried out to access the literacy and gender gap in learning of rural scheduled caste population in state of Haryana on the basis of secondary data obtained from Primary Census Abstract, Haryana, 2001 and 2011. The gender disparity of literacy has been calculated by using modified (Kundu and Rao, 1986) Sopher's disparity index. The inter-district analysis reveals a wide variance between male-female literacy rates of scheduled caste rural population in the state and male literacy is found higher as compared to female because women learning is restricted by less awareness and accessibility to educational chances as well as a number of baseless social fences or impediments. So there is a need of intensive as well as widespread preparation with effective implementation to make assure to people about long term reimbursement education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, based on original research in 75 villages in the North Indian state of Haryana, examines long-distance marriages of its dominant-peasant caste men with low-caste (Dalit) women from other parts of India. The male marriage squeeze caused by the female deficit in Haryana has led to this breach in the rules of caste endogamy in matrimony. These marriages and the gender status of such Dalit brides are situated within the context of polarized caste relations, caste contestations, and caste violence against local Dalits in Haryana. Long-distance alliances, through fabricated, high-caste identities of the brides, tactically circumvent prohibitions on local inter-caste marriages and provide legitimacy to continued, local, unequal hierarchies of caste relations. Intersecting oppressions of caste, gender, and patriarchy exacerbate gender subordination within both the home and community for Dalit cross-region brides. Caste-exclusionary behaviours and discriminations are strategically employed to assert caste supremacy and subdue women's resistance. The caste stigmatization of these brides carries over to their children who face inter-generational discrimination in daily interactions and marriage prospects because of their ‘diluted’ Jat identity and low-caste status. The article provides examples of Dalit brides’ agency through resistance strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on relations between caste ideology, organization of space, and sense perception. The author talks about his ethnographic and archival research in the cities of Lucknow and Benares in Uttar Pradesh, India on Dalit religious history. It also cites reference of the book "Joothan: A Dalit's Life" by Omprakash Valmiki.

This special issue of Contemporary South Asia seeks to capture the diversity and situatedness of the caste experience and deepen our understanding of caste dynamics and lives in the twenty-first century. In this Introduction, we highlight the continuing salience of caste, offer an overview of theoretical understandings of caste and foreground the importance of analysing caste in the present as a dynamic form of human relations, rather than a remnant of tradition. Following on from this, we highlight the increasingly global spread of caste and reflect on what happens to caste-based social relations when they traverse continents. In conclusion, we introduce the papers that make up this special issue. Taken together, they speak to changes in attitudes towards caste, but also the persistence of caste-based identities and dynamics in India and Britain. Even though the papers presented in this special issue work with the assumption of caste being a reality in and among the Indians, caste-like status hierarchies have existed in most, if not all, societies, and they continue to persist and intersect with other forms of differences/inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the development and early politics of theDalit Panther Iyakkam(DPI), or Dalit Panther Movement, of Tamil Nadu, India. Established in 1982, the DPI advanced a political programme that petitioned state authoritiesquademocratic citizens. By submitting written appeals through formal institutional channels, DPI organisers lobbied officials to perform their professional duties and advocated the delivery of rights, impartial administration of law, and equitable access to social and economic development. This article explores the initial phase of Dalit Panther politics in Tamil Nadu through its own documentary evidence, drawing upon DPI Chairman A. Malaichamy’s personal letters, written appeals, and received correspondence, as well as original pamphlets and handbills distributed at political rallies. Countering interpretations of Dalit assertion that accentuate ‘illiberal’ techniques as its natural form and state welfare as its principle target, the article shows that legal advocacy served as an integral feature of early DPI politics. But, when state institutions proved unresponsive and the movement developed a grassroots presence, DPI activists expanded their programme to encompass contentious street politics as a complementary means to make claims on state authority, amplify their voices to centres of power, and demand recognition as democratic citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent caste conflicts have revolved around discourses of honour, caste pride and shame. Although Dalit movements have been at the receiving end of the violence and have condemned the casteism underpinning it, they operate within a society in which questions of honour are highly significant. Dalit women activists are trapped in an unenviable position within the twin structures of caste and patriarchy, both of which speak to debates about group boundaries and honour. Taking the recent violence as its starting point, this paper draws on interviews with and observations of Dalit women in the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (Liberation Panther Party) in Tamil Nadu to chart how discourses of honour both facilitate and constrain their capacity to act. For all the party’s emphasis on women’s rights, women activists face an uphill struggle to secure recognition, respect and responsiveness both within the party as well as wider society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In India, primarily because of the caste system, there are multiple conceptions of masculinity, and they are based on the position a man occupies within the caste hierarchy. Dalit masculinity is one of them. But from the upper-caste point of view, an "untouchable" man is dispossessed of masculinity and rendered a social eunuch, and therefore he should not even attempt to demonstrate his masculinity by, for example, establishing sexual relations with an upper-caste woman. Arundhati Roy's novel The God of Small Things features a dalit young man called Velutha who becomes the object of upper-caste men's victimizing masculinist power and an upper-caste woman's gaze. The woman in question is a Syrian Christian divorcee called Ammu. Taking advantage of the asymmetrical social order of India that privileges upper-caste men as well as women over lowercaste men, especially the dalits, Ammu too exploits and victimizes Velutha. He ultimately pays with his life for being a dalit, for being a man, and for being a dalit man who unwittingly challenges the hypermasculinist upper-caste establishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The early phase of Dalitsahitya(literature) drew quite centrally on descriptive and critical practices associated with both anti-caste thought and Marxism to produce an urban literature which foregrounded the Dalit subaltern as an agent of social transformation. This article gives a prehistory of the 1950s and 1960s Dalitsahityaand argues that Dalit writing is a form of immanent critique that addresses the changing relationship of caste, capital and Bombay’s distinctive urbanity. Rather than focus on the “literariness” of Dalitsahitya, the article argues that one should bracket the question of the literariness of Dalit literature, and focus instead on those forms of linguistic concreteness, or practices of naming and description that politicized key aspects of subaltern life. Herein lies the prehistory of a recognizable Dalit poetics, one that relates writing to urbanity, and Dalit Bombay to Bombay modern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India adopted a democratic parliamentary constitution in January 1950. This constitution enumerates all fundamental civil and political rights irrespective of religion, caste, language or region. However, in practice these rights are denied to religious minorities and low caste and out caste Hindus called Dalits. The Muslims being the largest religious minority have faced more discrimination than any other minority. Their religious cultural identity has been under pressure and they are underrepresented in the parliament or state assembly. The rise of Hindu revivalist movements under the BJP has made the Muslims more vulnerable to Hindu extremism and intolerance. Pakistan has raised the issue of India's atrocities in Kashmiri at the international level. It supports the Kashmiri struggle for political and civil rights and their right to decide on their own about their political future. The UN and the international community must restrain India from resorting to "state terrorism in Kashmir". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizenship for dalits has been historically defined with relation to the demand for equality. However, this demand has witnessed a change in the last few decades where the agency of the dalits has manifested itself in the demand for a differential citizenship, where differentiation, and not homogeneity, has become the basis for the demand for equality. The study with the help of the textual analysis of Aravind Malagatti’sGovernment Brahmanaand Omprakash Valmiki’sJoothanargues that the demand for equal citizenship through the recognition of difference has created a paradoxical situation where the recognition of difference has not led to an equal treatment, but has opened up newer avenues for discrimination instead. The study proposes to accomplish this by providing an insight into the manner in which differential citizenship has become the reason for denial of performative citizenship to the dalits in rural and urban public spaces. Some of the key questions that the study addresses are: How is the performativity of differential citizenship in the public spaces foregrounded by the dalits? Why does this foregrounding evoke violent retribution from the upper caste? And does the continued violation of the imposition of dalit citizenship point to the dysfunctionality of the differential citizenship status accorded to the dalits? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Bama, originally called Faustina Mary Fathima Rani is a Paraiyar, Christian Dalit activist. Her novels focus on caste and gender discrimination. They portray caste-discrimination practised in Christianity and Hinduism. Bama's works are seen as embodying Dalit feminism and are famed for celebrating the inner strength of the subaltern woman. Bama rose to fame with her autobiographical novel Karukku (1992), which chronicles the joys and sorrows experienced by Dalit Christian women in Tamilnadu. Bama's Karukku (1992) and Sangati (1994) narrate the painful and tormented life history of a sensitive, insightful and perceptive Dalit woman. The word 'sangati' means 'events' and thus the novel, through individual stories, anecdotes and memoirs, portrays the events that take place in the life of women in the Paraiyar community. The novel also reveals how the Paraiyar women are doubly oppressed. Bama's Karukku and Sangati show various aspects of caste discrimination and gender discrimination. These novels show the sufferings of Dalit community in the hands of "upper-caste" communities in church, places of education and society. These also show the sufferings of the Dalit women in the hands of the upper caste men and also in the hands of their own husbands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

History of Modern India is ripe with examples of marginalization of Dalits', which is against empowerment / Self-respect. There are various factors that contribute towards the marginalization of these people some of them include Exclusion, globalization, displacements, disasters etc. In India, films started making an appearance around 1900s. As the films drifted from its close kin "stage play", a different set of grammar was established and the hermeneutics of films started to evolve later. The new form struck the caste system, let in the oppressed people into theater and allowed for an equal treatment without discrimination. This started to irk the influential and pushed them to enter into the film industry. After which, films took a new form of stereotypical representation, glorification of caste and caste based differentiations, denigrations of the lower communities, portraying them as powerless etc. This study attempted to elicit the arbitrary meanings of both Dalit and Non Dalit filmmakers' texts and establish that they significantly contradict with constitutive meaning. A Semiotics analysis of Dalit and non-Dalit films underpins this study. In many instances the work of dalits seemingly fuel the campaigns being initiated by political parties, which instigate socio-political movement against Dalit instead of counter these movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dalit women in colonial Western India shaped and were in turn transformed by the "interlocking technologies" of education, caste, community, gender, sexuality, and family. Two radical men--Jotirao Phide and Dr. B. R. Ambedkar--and Dalit women engaged with the "woman question," produced arguments for the empowerment of women, and emphasized their indispensable role in the political organization of the community. In so doing, Phule, Ambedkar, and Dalit women reimagined the "generative" power of gender and the political realm and practiced "feminist technologies," which sought to not only restructure women's roles and establish an egalitarian relationship between women and men, but also explicate how political projects of constructing the nation and community were entangled with Dalit's sense of self, rights, self-respect, affect, anxiety, desire, and everyday life. Yet there were complications because these male-centered efforts were also contradictory and ambiguous. On the whole, these historically contingent discourses nevertheless enabled Dalit women's individual and collective agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rising cultural consciousness among Dalits in Punjab underpins recent endeavours to construct a distinct identity and cultural heritage. The article examines how this renovation of identity and culture, centred on claiming and gaining social esteem and self-respect, is visibly expressed in heritage construction, with important support through transnational diasporic connections. This article shows specifically how monetary and ideational inputs for construction of two Ad Dharmi jathera shrines have created an impressive monumental heritage that promotes and reflects rising cultural confidence among the Dalits in Punjab and generates enthusiasm in the whole community. This provides them assurances of a more respectable life, both at home and abroad, yet also introduces new divisions and diversities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This editorial article covers much more than Dalits and untouchability, because ‘caste’ itself is about life, similar to the inevitably related human constructs of ‘law’, ‘religion’, ‘society’, ‘culture’ and also ‘race’ and ‘gender’. This article and the contributions in this Special Issue will not resolve the ongoing turbulences over caste, but may be useful tools to identify avenues for more constructive debates, rather than acrimonious exchanges. The key argument of the present article is that while difference is part of the human experience everywhere, ‘caste’, however disagreeable, remains an ancient culture-specific component of the intensely plural current identity of South Asia and South Asians, wherever they may be in the world today. It seems impossible to deny, ban or abolish this entity, which continues to serve as an identity marker, often in efforts to resist ongoing discriminations. Academic debates thus need to develop more constructive and sophisticated methods in various current attempts to acknowledge the multivocal stances on ‘caste’ and to negotiate better justice rather than falling into traps of all kinds of phobias, old and new. Approaches which simply deny that caste still exists, posit that it can just be abolished or claim that it cannot ever be adequately debated are unhelpful and just increase the heat in existing chaotic and largely self-righteous discourses. The article suggests that ancient Indians seem to have known much more about diversity management than we care to admit, while messiness and chaos remain prominent all around us today. This is not idolising a glorious past, but critiquing the present chaos while searching for justice-conscious remedies in diversity management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the politics of lower castes and their struggles for social equality and political representation cannot be effectively subsumed under a homogenous non-Brahmin category. Contesting the argument that the mobilisation of the lower castes/non-Brahmins in southern India was organised around the ideology of Dravidianism, this research examines what is today called Dalit activism in the Telugu country, related to the ideology of Adi-Dravida/Adi-Hindu. It also identifies discrimination of Dalits as well as between Dalits, in times before Gandhi and Ambedkar appeared on the scene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the life of the noted Chindu Yakshagana performer, Yellamma, this article presents the lived experience of caste through the lens of India’s Dalits, as narrated by the Chindus, a dependent caste of Madigas of Telangana. This provides a glimpse into the inner world of caste-based relationships through analysis of a satellite caste system that remains inaccessible to the dominant Hindu Brahmanical world and most scholarship on caste. Satellite castes function as preservers of social memory and act as cultural archives, enacting caste histories and origin myths, while critiquing and inverting dominant perceptions and weaving positive stories. The article argues that there may well be much more to this performative protest than merely social subversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]