Dalit Middle Class in Contemporary India: Various Discourses

Abstract

Dalits are the people oppressed by the Brahmins since the Vedic Age. A portion of them now belongs to the Scheduled Castes since independence. Reservation has been introduced for them in education, public employments and different tiers of elections. A tiny section of the Dalits availing these opportunities ultimately entered the middle class. But globalization diluted this opportunity for them. Moreover, Hindutva politics has been able to convince the educated young Dalits in favour of globalization as against Marxist narratives and efforts. This article addresses various discourses of Dalit middle class like its identity formation, emancipation-empowerment debates, bargains among different doctrines, rise of Hindutva politics mobilizing the Dalit middle class, a reverse caste politics mobilizing Brahmins under the authority of the Dalits with special reference to the politics of Bahujan Samaj Party and, finally, the Dalits’ demands for reservation in private sector while that in public sector is on the wane with the surge of globalization. This article is a qualitative one employing, at first, historical methodology based on secondary sources; then to authenticate and substantiate with the reality, the ethnographic surveys and interviews became necessary.