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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]

Caste plays a role at every stage of an Indian's economic life, in school, university, the labor market, and into old age. The influence of caste extends beyond private economic activity into the public sphere, where caste politics determines access to public resources. The aggregate evidence indicates that there has been convergence in education, occupations, income, and access to public resources across caste groups in the decades after independence. Some of this convergence is likely due to affirmative action, but caste-based networks could also have played an equalizing role by exploiting the opportunities that became available in a globalizing economy. Ethnic networks were once active in many advanced economies but ceased to be salient once markets developed. With economic development, it is possible that caste networks will cease to be salient in India. The affirmative action programs may also be rolled back and (statistical) discrimination in urban labor markets may come to an end if and when there is convergence across caste groups. In the interim period, however, it is important to understand the positive and negative consequences of caste involvement across a variety of spheres in the Indian economy. (JEL G22, J15, J71, O15, O17, Z13) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a study of the micropolitics of dispossession for a proposed medium‐sized irrigation project in an Adivasi region of Central India. The article explores the complex micropolitics of dispossession and collective action in the project planning stage, long before the formal processes of land acquisition actually begin. It highlights the importance of training the researchers' gaze on the functioning of the local state in the pre‐acquisition phase. It shows how the local state uses various powers of exclusion to fracture emerging cross‐class, multi‐caste alliances, while maintaining formal compliance with a range of social safeguard policies aimed at protecting vulnerable groups and fragile landscapes. The 'everyday' decisions of local state actors during the project planning stage produce site‐specific, differentiated and shifting matrices of risks and opportunities for the local people, who are already divided along class and caste lines. This, in turn, is likely to inform their political responses at the actual moment of enclosure. Thus the durability and success of anti‐dispossession collective action is likely to vary depending on the dynamic interactions of local state and non‐state actors, mediated by regional electoral politics and the overall safeguard policy regime governing land acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Erode Venkatappa Ramasamy (1879-1973) is well known as Periyar, the great man. He is also referred to as Thanthai Periyar, the great fatherly man. He was an activist and politician who started the Self-Respect Movement and Dravidar Kazhagam. He is known as the 'Father of the Dravidian Movement'. He has spoken against caste prevalence and women oppression in Tamil Nadu. This paper aims at studying seminal concepts of Thanthai Periyar on caste system in India. It brings in the thought processes of Socrates and Plato linking them to the concept of justice for which Thanthai Periyar spoke across the State of Tamil Nadu. It also brings in the argument of Max Weber's remarks on the caste system in India. Periyar's thoughts are analyzed in the context of the works of Socrates and Max Weber in this paper. [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.

Caste as an important aspect of Indian society continues to shape and mould India's socio-political history from the ancient to the present age. It has always been a subject of debate and discussion in the Indian socio-polity. Jawaharlal Nehru, as a man of letters, as an eminent statesman and a dexterous writer, happens to be one of the chiefarchitects of modern India. Significantly both caste and Nehru played a vital role in developmen t of Indian politics since the time of independence. Several works have examin ed Nehru's role in national and international histoiy and politics from different perspectives. Nehru's prose writings have also been examined to find out howfar his socio-political views are reflected in these works, though Nehru's views on the system of caste have not been properly studied. So it becomes imperative to know Nehru's insights on caste as reflected in The Discovery of India. This paper attempts to study the representation of caste in his masterpiece The Discoveiy of India and explore his approach and reaction to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on intracaste councils and caste politics in India. Topics discussed include information on role of intracaste councils which enforce loyalty in India; impact of social and political change in India like emergence of the political institutions, legal constitutional developments around formal democracy, and the increasing development of secularized education on caste loyalty; and writing of scientist Rajni Kothari on political aspects of caste in a context of the emergence of late colonial political institutions and postcolonial secular political developments;.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in rural Uttar Pradesh, this article contributes to debates on married women's relations with their natal kin. It compares women in 'regional' marriages (which conform to caste and community norms with a relatively small marriage distance) with women in 'cross-regional' marriages (those that cross caste, linguistic, and state boundaries, and entail long-distance migration). A focus on cross-regional marriage demonstrates how geographic distance cuts women off from vital structures of support. At the same time, even for regional brides, natal kin support is complicated and relative proximity does not guarantee support. Factors such as caste, class, poverty, the gender of children, notions of honour and shame, and stage in the life-course work together in complex ways to determine the duration and kind of support available. By focusing on marital violence, marital breakdown, and widowhood, the article demonstrates both the presence and the limits of natal kin support. The opportunities to draw on natal kin support vary for women, but its significance must not be understated as it alone provides women with the possibility of leaving their marriages, even if only temporarily. The article focuses on one form of women's agency, one that is constrained and highly dependent on relationships with others (mainly male kin). In such a context of economic and social dependency, natal kin support is an important—and perhaps the only—resource available in situations of marital crisis, and its absence leaves women in a particularly vulnerable position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws together two studies: one that explores the intimate relationships of young slum-dwelling Dalit women in Mumbai and the other of young middle-class women in Baroda, Gujarat. Using an intersectional lens, we trace the ways that gendered ideals of respectability shape women's freedom of movement and relationships. The comparison produces new insights into the ways that class, caste, and location cut across gender to shape young women's lives in India. We argue that the distinctive positionings of the women structure the ways in which they react to gender norms and the means with which they strategize around them. Middle-class young women strike a 'passive bargain', upholding ideals of respectability by shoring up symbolic capital for a 'good' marriage and class privilege. The Dalit women show more active resistance to an ideal that they struggle to achieve, despite heavy control and surveillance over their movement and relationships. However, contrary to previous research, we show that both groups are beholden and lay claim to similar gendered and intimate ideals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines caste-based differences in farmers' access to bank loans in rural India. We investigate whether banks practice taste-based discrimination on the basis of caste. In order to identify potential discrimination, we consider loan applications and approval decisions separately. We find significant inter-caste differences in application rates, and evidence of discrimination against Scheduled Tribe borrowers at the approval stage. To rule out the role of statistical discrimination, we simulate unobserved credit histories with various distributions. Evidence for taste-based discrimination persists despite accounting for unobservables. However, we find that this discrimination does not affect small farmers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uniquely widespread and persistent open defecation in rural India has emerged as an important policy challenge and puzzle about behavioral choice in economic development. One candidate explanation is the culture of purity and pollution that reinforces and has its origins in the caste system. Although such a cultural account is inherently difficult to quantitatively test, we provide support for this explanation by comparing open defecation rates across places in India where untouchability is more and less intensely practiced. In particular, we exploit a novel question in the 2012 India Human Development Survey that asked households whether they practice untouchability, meaning whether they enforce norms of purity and pollution in their interactions with lower castes. We find an association between local practice of untouchability and open defecation that is robust; is not explained by economic, educational, or other observable differences; and is specific to open defecation rather than other health behavior or human capital investments more generally. We verify that practicing untouchability is not associated with general disadvantage in health knowledge or access to medical professionals. We interpret this as evidence that the culture of purity, pollution, untouchability, and caste contributes to the exceptional prevalence of open defecation in rural India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Highlights • Traditional caste hierarchies continue to be salient in contemporary India. • Caste gaps between caste groups have either widened or remained the same on most indicators. • Quotas at the national level had the intended impact of increasing beneficiary representation in government jobs. • Affirmative action also had an unintended positive effect: of increasing the proportion of OBCs with secondary education. Abstract We compare successive age cohorts of three broad social groups – Scheduled Castes and Tribes (SC-STs), Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and "Others" and provide the first disaggregated picture of the evolution of inter-caste disparities in India. The results show that absolute caste gaps in years of schooling and prestigious occupation of white-collar jobs have remained static, whereas log wages below the median have convergence and above the median diverged. Examining extension of job quotas to OBCs in 1993, we find positive effects of affirmative action on probability of holding government jobs, as well as on secondary schooling completion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By arguing that a new 'School' is crystallising in the study of India, Deborah Sutton (2018, "So called caste: S. N. Balagangadhara, the Ghent School and the Politics of grievance." Contemporary South Asia 26 (3): 336–349) has brought to the surface phenomena that are typical of any encounter between competing research traditions. Some difficulties of understanding are caused by conceptual change: in the dominant research tradition, 'Hinduism' and 'the caste system' refer to structures that exist in Indian society; in the research programme developed by Balagangadhara, these terms designate experiential entities embedded in a western cultural experience of India. This conceptual divide also extends to the empirical: because the study of caste and Hinduism is collapsing under the weight of accumulated anomalies, certain problems are crucial to the alternative theorising of the Ghent School, whereas they seem irrelevant to the dominant tradition. Sutton engages in the polemics characteristic of confrontations between competing research traditions. She distorts and domesticates unfamiliar ideas from this School by mapping them onto notions familiar to her. Consequently, she confuses Balagangadhara's hypotheses about colonial consciousness with hackneyed stories about 'Orientalism'. The article concludes with a puzzle: Why does Sutton recognise a group of researchers as a new School, while trying to dismiss them as 'acolytes' who reproduce the 'mantras' and 'dogmas' of an Indian thinker? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a village in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, this article focuses on cross-regional marriage (those that cross caste and linguistic boundaries and entail long-distance migration) as mixed marriage. It queries the 'acceptance' of women sought beyond traditional boundaries of caste in a context where caste endogamy is the norm and breaches are otherwise not tolerated. It argues that while the caste of the women is overlooked when the alliance is made, their caste does not cease to be a concern in the caste-bound rural communities into which they marry. A discourse of caste, centred on food transactions, derogatory remarks about skin colour and in the refusal to marry the children of cross-regional couples, serves to mark difference and make claims to status. While there has been a decline in certain exclusionary caste practices in the village, a sense of hierarchy is retained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses tension between a governmental commitment to eliminating forms of inequality in Indian political system. It explains how the upper caste subject remained the ideal citizen defined by individual merit for the judiciary. It examines the interplay between upper and lower caste claims, and between caste marking and unmarking, through a historical anthropology of Indian engineering education.

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]

Hindu faith is one of the notedreligions in the cosmosfor its extensivevariety of ritualistic notions, cultural references and traditional rules. It can. be seen that the structure of Hindu religion relates to the very structure and stratifications based on the caste system. Gender concerns are likewise dissimilar indifferent cultures and the trajectories of gender oppression can also be traced back since ancient times. In India, women's issues are distinct owing to the peculiarities of caste and cultural notions especially in Hindu religion. In the early centuries the cultural specificities were so complex and the lives of Hindu women, especially upper caste women were so confined within the religious, traditional hold. This paper tries to look at how far the structural framework of gender relations in the caste system plays the basis of the subordination of women and how does the caste system continue holding gender relations within the four walls of its institutional set up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India has advanced by leaps and bounds after getting freedom from colonialism. It has proved Its capability and charisma in thecontextofinventions, discoveries and novel theories. But do its pre-colonial social credentials of gender, caste and class domination stand up to scrutiny? Despite provgrcssive strides in the customary spheres, social disparity and caste prejudice remain deeply ingrained in the social structure of Indian subcontinent and has not deciphered into a greater benefit for the rural Indian populace. The reality cannot be known until represented. This paper scrutinizes the articulated lived experience of Dalit women in Urmila Pawar's The Weave of My Life: ADatit Woman's Memoir to look for the cultural undercurrents and power relations that repress and dehumanize Dalit female'. This exploration may also illustrate how the author develops Dalii'Feminist Standpoint? [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]

The Jatavs of western UP during the 1930s fought a long campaign to be recognised as a separate caste. In this article, the progress and eventual success of that campaign are documented and described in detail for the first time. In addition, it is suggested that the Jatav efforts to establish a separate official identity cannot be fully understood within the framework provided by the notion of Sanskritisation. It is argued here that the Jatav endeavours need to be analysed as an expression of a purposeful Dalit engagement with the emerging political framework of the period. In particular, the negotiations about constitutional reform opened up the possibility of challenging the ways in which the colonial regime had previously used the names and numbers of castes as part of its techniques of governance. Dalit groups, often in association with Dr Ambedkar, intervened in the formal investigations conducted in relation to the reforms to expose the frailty and fiction of many of the assumptions of the colonial authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does colonialism have long-term effects on political stability? This question is addressed in a study of India's Naxalite insurgency, a Maoist rebellion characterized by its left-wing proponents as having roots in the colonial period. The article highlights three mechanisms linking colonialism with contemporary Naxalite violence--land inequality, discriminatory policies toward low-caste and tribal groups, and upper-caste-dominated administrative institutions. It analyzes how the degree of British influence relates to Naxalite conflict in 589 districts from 1980 to 2011. A positive association is found between British influence and the strength of the Naxalite rebellion across all of India, within both the "Red Corridor" region and former princely states. The results are robust to a coarsened exact matching analysis and a wide array of robustness checks. The findings call into question whether the supposedly beneficial administrative and institutional legacies of colonialism can be evaluated without reference to their social costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • We study the employment entry and exit decisions of working-age women in India. • A rise in household income or wealth reduces entry and increases exit of women. • Caste, religion, and social status play a major role in women's employment dynamics. • A rural workfare program significantly reduces women's exit from labour force. • Our findings suggest that women's entry and exit decisions are not symmetric. Abstract This study analyses employment transitions of working-age women in India. The puzzling issue of low labour force participation despite substantial economic growth, strong fertility decline and expanding female education in India has been studied in the recent literature. However, no study so far has looked into the dynamics of employment in terms of labour force entry and exit in this context. Using a nationally representative panel dataset, we show that women are not only participating less in the labour force, but also dropping out at an alarming rate. We estimate an endogenous switching model that corrects for selection bias due to initial employment and panel attrition, to investigate the determinants of women's entry into and exit from employment. We find that an increase in wealth and income of other members of the household leads to lower entry and higher exit probabilities of women. Along with the effects of caste and religion, this result reveals the importance of cultural and economic factors in explaining the low workforce participation of women in India. We also explore other individual and household level determinants of women's employment transitions. Moreover, we find that a large public workfare program significantly reduces women's exit from the labour force. Our study indicates that women's entry and exit decisions are not necessarily symmetric, and it is important to consider the inter-temporal dependence of labour supply decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The city of Gorakhpur presents what may be a unique, and is certainly an unusual, configuration of religion and politics. The sitting MP from 1998 to 2017, Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu monk, had one of the safest seats in India and won five parliamentary elections in a row, a career that culminated in his appointment as the BJP Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in 2017. Adityanath was both an effective constituency MP and the head of a thriving Math (Hindu monastic temple). Gorakhpur used to be famous for its lawless image and gang warfare. We seek to explain how politics in Gorakhpur have evolved through three distinct periods: (1) Congress hegemony and Hindu-Muslim harmony at the local level; (2) intensified caste competition and the rise of muscular politics; (3) the impact of new caste politics (with the rise of caste-based parties such as the SP and BSP), with the Math as the focus of Gorakhpur's ever-stronger Hindu-based political identity. The BJP's loss of the Gorakhpur seat in 2018, in a by-election consequent on Adityanath's elevation to Chief Minister of UP, may be interpreted as a (probably temporary) rejection of the BJP, but it does not represent a loss of influence by the Math. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including consumer behavior in China; gender gap between wives and husbands with regard to time spent on unpaid housework; and the consumption inequality among different caste groups in India.

We analyze the consumption inequality in India among different caste groups namely SC, ST, OBC and Others using three rounds of Household Level Consumption Expenditure Survey Data from 1993–94 to 2009–10. Regression analysis shows disparity in consumption expenditure across various caste groups. Values of Gini coefficient, Theil's Index and overlapping index display an increasing trend in both within- and between-group inequality over time. The possibility of stratification among "Others" is identified. It is found that SCs and STs in particular bear the burden of increasing inequality, indicating possible inefficient implementation of the welfare schemes aimed at these communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Baba Bullay Shah known as "the Rumi of Punjabi Sufi poetry" is a strong voice of defiance against the caste and class system of his times. He used the voice of women to denote his divine love in the traditions of Ibne Arabi but he strongly condemns the patriarchal repressive traditions through his poetry. He raises his objection through the archetypical characters against the mal-treatment of the women. The women have the quality of the divine love and devotion towards their loved ones but the society does not acknowledge their elevated status. This research tries to find out the ways through which he determines the roles of women in his poetry, using the archetypes from the local folk lore for his mystical love. This will also discover how Baba Bullay Shah objects to the treatment of women in its class and caste system divisions. This discovery is done through Berry's (2009) matrix of deconstruction in the post structuralist manner, while using the model of "Tauheed" and categories of "Tareeqat", from Ibne Arrabi's Cosmology Model, for to reach the divine love. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the contradictory history of lower castes converting out of Hinduism yet not out of lowliness or casteism in early twentieth-century Panjab. It begins by contextualizing what B. R. Ambedkar's undelivered 1936 Lahore speech on annihilating caste might have meant to an audience of largely landless agricultural laborers. Next it examines the changing constellation of caste names and occupational designations for these groups amid the emergence of the Ad Dharm movement and its struggle to impart equality, dignity, and community to Panjabi Dalits. To situate this new sense of identity in the context of actual labor practices, the article then analyzes the fraught relationship between landholding cultivators and landless laborers working side-by-side while continuing to be separate and unequal. That a large proportion of lower castes could adopt religions other than Hinduism or even start their own and yet remain excluded and exploited reveals the limits of a politics centered on conversion, as well as a different horizon for emancipation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers a critique of performances by the street theater group Jana Natya Manch (Janam) in Delhi, India. It provides an analysis of the group's political activism and its engagement with the city's spatial history. The work of Janam has been influenced by issues such as caste, sex and gender. The impact of playwright and director Safdar Hashmi's murder in 1989 on the question of democratization of the city's public spaces is discussed.

Literary writings such as poetry, drama or novel in colonial India manifest themselves into, react or subscribe to the larger discourse of colonialism or nationalism; rarely do they hold uniformity in their articulations. As colonial experiences and larger nationalist consciousness varied from region to region, cultural articulations—chiefly dramas—not only assumed different forms but also illustrated different thematic concerns. Yet, studies on colonial drama, thus far, have paid attention to either colonialism/orientalism or nationalism. There is a greater focus on British India in such studies. However, the case of princely states demands a momentary sidestep from the dichotomy of colonialism versus nationalism to understand the colonial dramas. The slow and gradual entry of nationalism in the princely states did not have to combat the British chiefly and directly. Much before its full blossom in the princely states, it had to grapple with a range of issues such as monarchy, democratic institutions, constitutionalism, bureaucracy and other pressing issues locally. In the present article, the Kannada dramas of Devanahalli Venkataramanaiah Gundappa (DVG) in the early decades of the twentieth century are examined to throw light on the ways in which they act as political allegories which imagine and debate democracy and its repercussions in the social and political spheres of the Mysore princely state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In what is today known as Odisha and in its adjoining areas, the closing centuries of the first millennium CE and beyond were marked by the shift from usual kingdoms to larger and more complex state systems, spread over several subregions/regions (maṇḍalas). The socio-economic and cultural processes—ranging from agrarian growth and the rise of markets, merchants and towns to the shaping of a region-specific caste system and vernacular language and literature—which sustained these political developments and the new requirements such as the elaboration in the structure of administration and legitimation constitute the subject matter of this article. The transregional states under discussion are somewhat comparable with imperial formations insofar as they were conquest states and perpetuated unevenness and differences between spaces, peoples and cultures across the constituent spatial segments. However, in terms of their territorial dimensions and resources, they fell short of the empires and therefore may be seen to be located between the usual kingdoms and celebrated empires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the inseparability of sexual violence and dominant-caste privileges embedded in structures of local power, which are finally nested within the legal institutions of the State. This essay examines the court transcripts of the trial of a village lynchpin, Gobinda Nandi, on the charge of rape. The individual to bring in the charges was a 20-year-old woman by the name of Genubala. The essay lays out the internal dynamics of the low-caste Bagdi community, as its members confront the rapist who controlled most of the village sources of livelihood. The essay turns on the refusal of the aggrieved Genubala and her husband Pashupati's refusal to abide by Bagdi community's unhappy decision to opt for a compromise with Gobinda Nandi. The political economy of the village power structure marks the aggrieved couple's deliberate choice to approach legal institutions and the judicial process of the state as the crucial moment of departure from the communitarian redistributive justice and its specific life-world. But what does this choice imply for the two highly vulnerable individuals who are reluctant to be part of the Bagdi community, and who are seeking to activate the Indian State's judicial system in their favour? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural employment generation was initiated in India through the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) in 2005 and related NREGS schemes, to provide better social and food security to socially and economically depressed rural workers. By now, the implementation of this scheme is known to be not equally satisfactory throughout India, with significant variations in different states and localities. This article, based on intensive fieldwork over 1 year in remote villages of Deogarh and Bhim blocks of Rajasamand district, explores the functioning of the scheme in rural Rajasthan. It identifies three important roadblocks to effective NREGA implementation and analyses their impact: persistence of caste-based inequalities and social interactions among different groups of rural people, differential occupational interests of potential workers and lack of initiative of the respective panchayats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the social inclusiveness of agricultural extension services in India. We estimate the probability and frequency of farmers’ access to extension services and resulting changes in crop income across different caste groups. The literature suggests that caste-based social segregation manifests in various spheres of life, and perpetuates economic inequality and oppression. An econometric analysis of nationally-representative data from rural India verifies this with respect to the agricultural sector. Farmers belonging to the socially-marginalized castes are found to have a lower chance of accessing the public extension services, primarily due to their inferior resource-endowment status. Contacting extension agents at least once increased the average annual crop income by about 12 thousand Indian rupees per household, which is equivalent to 36% of the annual crop income of those without access to extension services. There exists significant impact heterogeneity. Farmers from the socially-marginalized castes hardly benefited from accessing the extension services. Based on these observations, we have developed a number of policy recommendations that could improve the social inclusiveness of agricultural development strategies in rural India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will discuss the meaning(s) of rituals among Sri Lankan Tamil Hindus in Denmark with special focus on the second generation. It will use Roy A. Rappaport's theory on ritual both as communication and as a basic social act, but it will also, in line with Jan Assmann and Hervieu Legér, understand the ritual as a storing place of collective memory. It will give a short outline of what can be called the institutionalisation but also the placemaking of the Sri Lankan Tamil Hindu tradition in Denmark, but the empirical focus will be on the chariot procession (Tēr), which attracts thousands of participants every year. The Tēr procession is an example of continuity and change. Continuity because the participants try to reproduce the ritual as they know it from Sri Lanka, however, changed so it fits into or communicates with the new setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discourse of karma (behaviour), confounded with inherent psychic and material substance of the person/group (guna), was at the heart of India’s caste ideology. This systematic and intuitive, albeit convoluted and phantasmic doctrine was critical to bridge the discrepancy between a pantheistic religious imaginary and the reality of exclusion and abjection. Although “karma” evokes an exotic orient, this ideology is near identical with the ideas of “idleness” and “instant gratification” used to make sense of racial inequities in the contemporary United States. In both cases, the idea of behavioural and moral deficiency is used to justify evident abjection and discrimination, within the frame of an encompassing ideology of social equality. Thus, this use of the notions of “work” and “discipline”, extrapolated to the moral quality of the group or individual, is no passing argument of the “new racism”. It is a proven ploy of assigning blame on the victim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the important question of how “upper”-caste power is reproduced in contemporary India, in the face of organized challenges from below. It argues that this process turns on the reproduction of castelessness. A long-standing site for the cultivation of castelessness has been the postcolonial census, which has limited the enumeration of caste to certain nonelites for the purposes of affirmative action reservations. However, in the aftermath of an intensive campaign to include a full castewise enumeration in Census 2011, the political leadership of the Indian National Congress Party conceded and reversed seventy years of census policy on caste. This article examines the institutional pushback within the executive bureaucracy in the year following the public concession to change census policy on caste. In doing so, it shows how bureaucratic actions and inactions reproduce both castelessness and upper-caste power in contemporary India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through bringing history into conversation with ethnography, this paper re-examines scholarly understandings of Hindu nationalism and the practice of seva (service). Whereas much scholarship addresses Hindu nationalist service through a secular-liberal register, this paper considers what this language excludes. Giving critical attention to elite activists within the Hindu nationalist-led Vanavasi Kalyan Kendra (Tribal Welfare Centre), in Jharkhand, India, my research demonstrates how elite activists translate service into a religious language of somatic representation. This constructs marginal agents as passive subjects of a heavily moralistic ethical-self making project. This critical analysis opens up for study the differing ritual-politics of caste and gender which underlie the participation of marginal actors, practices which are not reducible to a discourse of religion or a universal category of acts. In order to grasp these more complex models, this paper gives importance to the ways in which its ethical discourses are inhabited in manifold ways. This tells a story of how Western models of religion are parochialized, and challenges the relationship between authority and agency which permeate our imagination of non-liberal discourses like those invoked by Hindu nationalist service projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of vernacularization involves more than literary language, but also invokes social ethics and an investment in the idioms of everyday life. Vernacularization can reach beyond texts to enact its force upon biographies as well, altering the ethics and quotidian memory of sacred figures. The paper examines how texts and biographical memory identified with the medieval Marathi "saint" (sant) Jñāndev (about thirteenth century) underwent a process of vernacularization that altered the social ethics of texts associated with Jñāndev and with the public memory of the saint himself. In particular, issues of caste and gender as subjects of the process of vernacularization are discussed, and especially in the context of producing bhakti publics—social spheres of devotion—that merge with the Vārkarī religious tradition in Maharashtra. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of poverty is multi-dimensional in nature and its occurrence in society reveals various complexities in many ways. These multidimensional characteristics are more complex and acute in case of social ecology. The social formation as phenomenon on space has great significance in geographical studies which became a challenging task for poverty analysis in unequal societies. The multi layers in social hierarchy are mainly represented by caste system which has many faces in its social structure. Poverty in these social organizations has varying nature in its magnitude and extent. In this context, the prevalence of poverty with reference to social ecology has vital importance for understanding the major constraints of poverty in Indian society. The present paper is an attempt to incorporate the multiple dimensions of poverty that affect the social ecology in many ways. The paper highlights the relationship between multi-dimensional poverty and social ecology. The paper also attempts to establish conceptual linkages based on ground reality between the social ecology and poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines inter-caste differences in demographic characteristics, such as size, growth and distribution of scheduled caste (SC) population in Haryana, analyzing and interpreting secondary data available from the Census of India. In 2011, 5.1 million SCs living in Haryana made more than total population of Norway. Although there are 37 castes of the SCs, but three of these, in combine, subsume more than three-fourths of total such population in the state. The Chamars, the largest caste with 47.5 per cent in total, was the most widely distributed, making the first ranking caste in all but one district of the state. The Balmikis, the second largest SC caste, made the second ranking SC caste in ten of 21 districts in Haryana. However, the Mazhabis, the fifth ranking SC caste, was highly concentrated in Sirsa and Fatehabad districts, making the first ranking SC caste only in Sirsa district. The SCs in Haryana were though predominantly rural by residence but quite literate, aware, awakened and majority of their workers engaged in non-farm activities. During 1971-2011, the SC population in the state grew faster than the entire state population. The high growth rate of the Meghs and the Ods, the two relatively large sized SC castes, was a cause of concern, needing priority attention of the policy makers; the Meghs, being predominantly rural, agricultural and poorly literate, restricting awareness and knowledge, needing immediate attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Arundhati Roy's first novel, The God of Small Things (1997) mostly focused on the tragic outcomes of the rigid Indian caste system and found its place in the tradition of Marquezian magic realism and Salman Rushdie's mythical and exotic portrayal of India, her second novel offers a complex description of a divided society. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017) bears the mark of Roy's vast experience in the field of political and environmental activism, her militant approach towards social injustice. The new novel is a patchwork of narratives focused around two main characters, the transsexual Anjum and Tilo, the ever revolting architect involved in the civil war in Kashmir. In the description of both hallucinatory violence and small, gentle moments of harmony and cooperation, Roy portrays the divided, postcolonial/neocolonial India where conflicts are constantly emerging on religious, political, social and sexual levels. Borders seem impossible to cross when the conflict is thoroughly interiorised like in the case of the Delhi hijras, or has grown uncontrollable like in the civil war for Kashmir's independence, yet they prove transgressable in the characters' everyday practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In more ways than one, Arundhati Roy's latest novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness continues the subaltern saga initiated in her debut novel The God of Small Things. Velutha, the titular "god of small things," was permanently silenced for trespassing on the upper-caste social spaces and violating its moral codes. In the forty years' interregnum between the fictional times of the two novels, the religious and sexual minorities too have joined the dalits in experiencing discrimination and ill-treatment and are required to constantly contend with outmoded moral codes, caste-based discrimination, and majoritarian violence. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness offers a mind-numbing account of how almost all its major characters experience silence for reasons beyond their control--birth, sexual orientation, social/cultural impositions, and so on--but finally learn to break it in their own individual ways. In the process, they achieve a limited realization of their true selves and learn to manage the fear, hypocrisy, and negativity imposed on them. This paper charts their passage from passivity to autonomy and concludes that they offer, as a collective, a way out of the morass Indian society is now embroiled in. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report experimental findings on how individuals from different cultures solve a repeated coordination game of common interest. The results overturn earlier findings that fixed pairs are almost assured to coordinate on an efficient and cooperative equilibrium. Subjects in the prior experiments were US university students, whereas the subjects in our study are men drawn from high and low castes in rural India. Most low-caste pairs quickly established an efficient and cooperative convention, but most high-caste pairs did not. The largest difference in behavior occurred when a player suffered a loss because he had tried to cooperate but his partner did not: In this situation, high-caste men were far less likely than lowcaste men to continue trying to cooperate in the next period. Our interpretation is that for many high-caste men, the loss resulting from coordination failure triggered retaliation. Our results are robust to controls for education and wealth, and they hold by subcaste as well as by caste status. A survey we conducted supports the ethnographic evidence that more high-caste than low-caste men prefer to retaliate against a slight. We find no evidence that caste differences in trust or self-efficacy explain the caste gap in cooperation in our experiment. Our findings are of general interest because many societies throughout the world have cultures that lead individuals to (mis)perceive some actions as insults and to respond aggressively and dysfunctionally. [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]

This essay examines the question of empathy within the discourses of caste in India and argues that the presence of this deeply hierarchical system, which is premised on the idea of disgust, does not allow for the production of empathy or empathic political spaces. Locating itself in a particular case of caste violence and its counter discourse in the Una District of the state of Gujarat in western India, this essay examines the affectual politics of the presence of the animal and the animal-like in caste publics and the consequences that it has for the question of empathy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the debates around food and nutrition security from a perspective of gender justice, central to which is the recognition of men and women as having equal rights and entitlements to a life free from hunger and malnutrition. Using both quantitative and qualitative data from the Indian state of Bihar, we assess various elements of gender justice through the functioning of the Public Distribution System, the largest food-based safety net programme in the world. Despite universal entitlements, we find that power relations embedded in local politics, caste and class heterogeneity and political economy considerations, mediate the gendered access to food through state transfers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microtubule actin cross-linking factor 1 (MACF1) gene variant rs2296172 has recently been associated with type 2 diabetes (T2D). However, this variant has never been evaluated as such in Indian populations. In the present replication study, we genotyped variant rs2296172 by Taqman allele discrimination assay in 432 individuals belonging to the Bania caste group from Punjab, India. The single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) was evaluated for association with T2D, in a population based candidate gene case-control association study design, by estimating odds ratio with 95% confidence interval. The SNP rs2296172 of MACF1 was found to be significantly associated with T2D (p = 0.02) and odds ratio (OR) = 1.59 (1.06-2.38) at 95% CI. We further emphasize that the Indian population as such is a conglomeration of various endogamous population groups. It is critical that such replication studies be carried out in various populations to find association of variants to T2D susceptibility and understand genetic heterogeneity. However, it is important to avoid pooling of samples to address the concern of population stratification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]