This article locates various historical discourses of anti-caste imaginaries and articulations that are imprinted in the historical past of Kerala society. Unravelling historical and social theoretical trends, it examines broadly an anti-caste imaginary articulating notions of equality and addressing various events, personnel interventions, policies and ideologies made discursive politics in Kerala. As ideologies and its consequent effects upon society are political, the article substantially makes comments and interprets the Dalit-Bahujan world grounded on the lived experiences of Dalits in Kerala. The article brings forth discourses of social movements, production of Dalit icons, critical narratives on untouchability and communist positions about caste. But, a new imagination, academic and aesthetical engagements of Dalit-Bahujans in the form of the production of Dalit art and literature informs new articulation of Dalit politics in Kerala.
{"title":"Dalits and Discourses of Anti-Caste Movements in Kerala, India","authors":"K.S. Madhavan, Rajesh Komath","doi":"10.26812/caste.v4i2.684","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v4i2.684","url":null,"abstract":"This article locates various historical discourses of anti-caste imaginaries and articulations that are imprinted in the historical past of Kerala society. Unravelling historical and social theoretical trends, it examines broadly an anti-caste imaginary articulating notions of equality and addressing various events, personnel interventions, policies and ideologies made discursive politics in Kerala. As ideologies and its consequent effects upon society are political, the article substantially makes comments and interprets the Dalit-Bahujan world grounded on the lived experiences of Dalits in Kerala. The article brings forth discourses of social movements, production of Dalit icons, critical narratives on untouchability and communist positions about caste. But, a new imagination, academic and aesthetical engagements of Dalit-Bahujans in the form of the production of Dalit art and literature informs new articulation of Dalit politics in Kerala.","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":"89 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136102603","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Scheduled Castes in the Indian Labour Market: Employment Discrimination and its Impact on Poverty’","authors":"Tauqueer Ali Sabri","doi":"10.26812/caste.v4i2.704","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v4i2.704","url":null,"abstract":"nature","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":"123 ","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136103205","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
During the season of sugarcane cutting, men and women seasonally migrate toward the sugar belt. Drought conditions in their native districts are always highlighted as the reasons for seasonal migration. However, existing literature on sugarcane cutters emphasizes that mostly poor, lower caste, landless, small landholders, and resourceless people migrate to the sugar belt. Even pregnant or lactating mothers are not an exception for seasonal migration and the work of sugarcane cutting. In Maharashtra, issues like poor work conditions, labor rights, financial exploitation, hysterectomy among women, citizenship status, education, and health of sugarcane cutters are already in the discussion forums. After migration, these workers live without housing, sanitation facilities, and drinking water. For women, there is no social, economic, labor, and personal security. Workers have to bathe, defecate openly, and drink untreated water. Specifically, women have special health needs, and there should not be a compromise while accessing essential health services. Considering the background information, this article considers questions like why women migrate in adversity and do women work for the Sugar Belt without facing any hardship? People at large relate the phenomenon of migration to human development or economic development. Similarly, it is possible to study internal migration or seasonal migration. Nevertheless, the analysis argues that seasonal migration of the poor, unskilled, illiterate, lower caste, landless, resourceless, and vulnerable cannot be connected to human development. Instead, we can relate it to survival at large. Significantly, the ignorance of the state towards these workers and their needs can be seen from the perspective of social exclusion.
{"title":"“Our Poverty has No Shame; the Stomach has No Shame, so We Migrate Seasonally”: Women Sugarcane Cutters from Maharashtra, India","authors":"Saroj Shinde","doi":"10.26812/caste.v4i2.604","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v4i2.604","url":null,"abstract":"During the season of sugarcane cutting, men and women seasonally migrate toward the sugar belt. Drought conditions in their native districts are always highlighted as the reasons for seasonal migration. However, existing literature on sugarcane cutters emphasizes that mostly poor, lower caste, landless, small landholders, and resourceless people migrate to the sugar belt. Even pregnant or lactating mothers are not an exception for seasonal migration and the work of sugarcane cutting. In Maharashtra, issues like poor work conditions, labor rights, financial exploitation, hysterectomy among women, citizenship status, education, and health of sugarcane cutters are already in the discussion forums. After migration, these workers live without housing, sanitation facilities, and drinking water. For women, there is no social, economic, labor, and personal security. Workers have to bathe, defecate openly, and drink untreated water. Specifically, women have special health needs, and there should not be a compromise while accessing essential health services. Considering the background information, this article considers questions like why women migrate in adversity and do women work for the Sugar Belt without facing any hardship? People at large relate the phenomenon of migration to human development or economic development. Similarly, it is possible to study internal migration or seasonal migration. Nevertheless, the analysis argues that seasonal migration of the poor, unskilled, illiterate, lower caste, landless, resourceless, and vulnerable cannot be connected to human development. Instead, we can relate it to survival at large. Significantly, the ignorance of the state towards these workers and their needs can be seen from the perspective of social exclusion.","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":"211 ","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136023100","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The category of gender has perennially found itself at the margins because of its social location across South Asia. Albeit heterogeneous by nature, women have borne the burden of history, community, tradition and even geography being violently mapped across their bodies. No wonder that the past two centuries has witnessed heated debates on the women’s question in the region ranging from the Altekarian paradigm to the valorized mother figure who is ever nurturing and generous. Many social reformers both male and female sought to battle orthodoxy, religious chauvinism and caste-based status-quoism widening the contours of gender justice in the process. The tropes revolved around consent and coercion, public battles over scriptural legitimacy and contentious traditions. The reformers were treading on delicate grounds as the sacred domain of the ‘home’ had to be kept immune from any polluting winds of ‘western’ ideology. This article is an attempt to tease out E.V. Ramasamy Naicker’s (Periyar) radical understanding of the gender question and his efforts to create an alternate epistemology to question existing socio-cultural realities. It concludes by arguing that this gendered utopia is also a work in progress.
{"title":"Periyar: Forging a Gendered Utopia","authors":"Shailaja Menon","doi":"10.26812/caste.v4i2.686","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v4i2.686","url":null,"abstract":"The category of gender has perennially found itself at the margins because of its social location across South Asia. Albeit heterogeneous by nature, women have borne the burden of history, community, tradition and even geography being violently mapped across their bodies. No wonder that the past two centuries has witnessed heated debates on the women’s question in the region ranging from the Altekarian paradigm to the valorized mother figure who is ever nurturing and generous. Many social reformers both male and female sought to battle orthodoxy, religious chauvinism and caste-based status-quoism widening the contours of gender justice in the process. The tropes revolved around consent and coercion, public battles over scriptural legitimacy and contentious traditions. The reformers were treading on delicate grounds as the sacred domain of the ‘home’ had to be kept immune from any polluting winds of ‘western’ ideology. This article is an attempt to tease out E.V. Ramasamy Naicker’s (Periyar) radical understanding of the gender question and his efforts to create an alternate epistemology to question existing socio-cultural realities. It concludes by arguing that this gendered utopia is also a work in progress.","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":"42 4","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136023102","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Over the last three decades, India has experienced rapid economic development and social and cultural transformation. Questions arise as to how minorities secure their livelihood and what strategies are being devised for the same. And, what vision of the future do they have in mind? In this article, I will focus on the Dalit community in North India. Fieldwork conducted on one such disadvantaged group, the urban Balmikis (known as the sweeper caste) in Delhi, is drawn upon to examine as a case study. Balmikis have a high rate of migration to urban areas, which is due to their historical background of being employed in the sanitation sector of municipalities and the Ministry of Railways since the colonial times. The name of the community, Balmiki, is derived from worshipping “Bhagwan Valmik,” a legendary saint and composer of Ramayana. It began to take root as a name with positive connotations among the sweeper caste in North India around the 1920s and 1930s. Because of this historical development, it is often accused of discrediting Dalits who dissent from Hindu values and for hindering Dalit solidarity. However, if one listens to the claims of the Balmikis, they do not necessarily consider themselves "Hindus”. For example, during my research, a frequent response to questions about religion was the statement, "We are forced to be Hindus”. In contrast, the words that immediately follow, "We are Balmikis," are restated. By focusing on the beliefs and ambiguity of self-identity of the Balmikis, this article attempts to examine their anti-caste imagination. It then poses the question as to how that imagination is intertwined with everyday experiences and collective grassroots movements.
{"title":"Socio-spatially Segregated Experience of Urban Dalits and their Anti-caste Imagination: A Study of the Balmiki Community in Delhi, India","authors":"Maya Suzuki","doi":"10.26812/caste.v4i2.687","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v4i2.687","url":null,"abstract":"Over the last three decades, India has experienced rapid economic development and social and cultural transformation. Questions arise as to how minorities secure their livelihood and what strategies are being devised for the same. And, what vision of the future do they have in mind? In this article, I will focus on the Dalit community in North India. Fieldwork conducted on one such disadvantaged group, the urban Balmikis (known as the sweeper caste) in Delhi, is drawn upon to examine as a case study. Balmikis have a high rate of migration to urban areas, which is due to their historical background of being employed in the sanitation sector of municipalities and the Ministry of Railways since the colonial times. The name of the community, Balmiki, is derived from worshipping “Bhagwan Valmik,” a legendary saint and composer of Ramayana. It began to take root as a name with positive connotations among the sweeper caste in North India around the 1920s and 1930s. Because of this historical development, it is often accused of discrediting Dalits who dissent from Hindu values and for hindering Dalit solidarity. However, if one listens to the claims of the Balmikis, they do not necessarily consider themselves \"Hindus”. For example, during my research, a frequent response to questions about religion was the statement, \"We are forced to be Hindus”. In contrast, the words that immediately follow, \"We are Balmikis,\" are restated. By focusing on the beliefs and ambiguity of self-identity of the Balmikis, this article attempts to examine their anti-caste imagination. It then poses the question as to how that imagination is intertwined with everyday experiences and collective grassroots movements.","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136070884","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article critically examines the university academic spaces and the campus culture determined by a particular form of the dominant habitus which is, in effect, actively excluding the first-generation women students belonging to the marginalized sections of Indian society. As this dominant habitus is constantly reproduced on university campuses, with or without contentions, entering the academic spaces of Indian universities for first-generation Dalit women—who are deprived of both cultural and social capital—is invariably becoming a herculean task. Therefore, this article analyses the concealed forms of dominant campus habitus that structurally create a conducive environment for privileged students and a rigid glass ceiling for first-generation Dalit women students in their journey toward higher education. Notwithstanding the limitations associated with their social status of being first-generation learners, the formations of alternative cultural capital and resilience of the Dalit women students have been analysed from a feminist perspective, proving that one could overcome these social challenges through the acquired cultural capital. The analytical concepts and theoretical frameworks of this article have been developed based on empirical/ethnographic data collected from women research scholars at a prominent university in South India. The narratives were collected in the academic year 2020–2021 through in-depth interviews and focused group discussions.
{"title":"The Caste of Campus Habitus: Caste and Gender Encounters of the First-generation Dalit Women Students in Indian Universities","authors":"Anusha Renukuntla, Ashok Kumar Mocherla","doi":"10.26812/caste.v4i2.682","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v4i2.682","url":null,"abstract":"This article critically examines the university academic spaces and the campus culture determined by a particular form of the dominant habitus which is, in effect, actively excluding the first-generation women students belonging to the marginalized sections of Indian society. As this dominant habitus is constantly reproduced on university campuses, with or without contentions, entering the academic spaces of Indian universities for first-generation Dalit women—who are deprived of both cultural and social capital—is invariably becoming a herculean task. Therefore, this article analyses the concealed forms of dominant campus habitus that structurally create a conducive environment for privileged students and a rigid glass ceiling for first-generation Dalit women students in their journey toward higher education. Notwithstanding the limitations associated with their social status of being first-generation learners, the formations of alternative cultural capital and resilience of the Dalit women students have been analysed from a feminist perspective, proving that one could overcome these social challenges through the acquired cultural capital. The analytical concepts and theoretical frameworks of this article have been developed based on empirical/ethnographic data collected from women research scholars at a prominent university in South India. The narratives were collected in the academic year 2020–2021 through in-depth interviews and focused group discussions.","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":"46 ","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136102964","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Dalit historiography is the narrativization of the past from a Dalit perspective purposive of critiquing existing traditions of Indian historiographies and/or producing alternate histories. It is the discourse through which historiographical erasures and misrepresentations are challenged through narratives that recover and reinterpret the past from anti-caste standpoints. This counter-discourse reorients historiography and transforms historical understandings by recognising caste as a structuring principle of history. This article attempts to theorise Dalit historiography as a resistance epistemology by outlining its methodological and thematic aspects through a study of DCUF cultural productions. DCUF (Depressed Class United Front) is an Adi-Dravida community named Dravida Varga Aikya Munnani that emerged as an anti-caste politico-religious group in 1950s Kerala under the leadership of PJ SabharajThirumeni. To understand the politics of the alternate history articulated by DCUF, the article first maps the field of mainstream Kerala historiography to which DCUF cultural productions may be seen as a historiographical response. DCUF cultural productions, as an articulation of Dalit historiography, intervene in the epistemology of this mode of history writing by placing caste as the fulcrum of history by giving an alternate picture of the past vis-à-vis the origins of caste, its manifestations and anti-caste resistance. This study foregrounds the political valence of history in Dalit struggle and the ongoing negotiations between Dalit communities with the mainstream vis-à-vis history and history writing.
{"title":"When Fists Write (of) the Past: Conceptualising Dalit Historiography through the Cultural Productions of Dravida Varga Aikya Munnani","authors":"Sephora Jose","doi":"10.26812/caste.v4i2.620","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v4i2.620","url":null,"abstract":"Dalit historiography is the narrativization of the past from a Dalit perspective purposive of critiquing existing traditions of Indian historiographies and/or producing alternate histories. It is the discourse through which historiographical erasures and misrepresentations are challenged through narratives that recover and reinterpret the past from anti-caste standpoints. This counter-discourse reorients historiography and transforms historical understandings by recognising caste as a structuring principle of history. This article attempts to theorise Dalit historiography as a resistance epistemology by outlining its methodological and thematic aspects through a study of DCUF cultural productions. DCUF (Depressed Class United Front) is an Adi-Dravida community named Dravida Varga Aikya Munnani that emerged as an anti-caste politico-religious group in 1950s Kerala under the leadership of PJ SabharajThirumeni. To understand the politics of the alternate history articulated by DCUF, the article first maps the field of mainstream Kerala historiography to which DCUF cultural productions may be seen as a historiographical response. DCUF cultural productions, as an articulation of Dalit historiography, intervene in the epistemology of this mode of history writing by placing caste as the fulcrum of history by giving an alternate picture of the past vis-à-vis the origins of caste, its manifestations and anti-caste resistance. This study foregrounds the political valence of history in Dalit struggle and the ongoing negotiations between Dalit communities with the mainstream vis-à-vis history and history writing.","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136103686","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores the connection between food and utopia within the Dalit student movement. Research data was gathered during the multi-stage ethnographic fieldwork in the university campuses in New Delhi (Jawaharlal Nehru University, University of Delhi) and Hyderabad (Osmania University, the English and Foreign Languages University) during 2013 and 2014 (total seven months). Seeking to demonstrate the centrality of the beef symbolism in the local Dalit student movement in Hyderabad, this article provides a content analysis of “Beef Anthem”, written and performed by Dalit student activist NS Chamar, contextualizing it with fieldwork observations and interviews with the Dalit activists. This article uncovers multilayered meanings and strategies surrounding beef issue allowing one to understand how through the symbol of beef, the Dalit activists in Hyderabad reimagined themselves and strategized their movement in the context of the strengthening right-wing politics.
{"title":"Imagining an Anti-Caste Utopia Through Food: Dalit Student Politics in Hyderabad, India","authors":"Kristina Garalyte","doi":"10.26812/caste.v4i2.683","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v4i2.683","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the connection between food and utopia within the Dalit student movement. Research data was gathered during the multi-stage ethnographic fieldwork in the university campuses in New Delhi (Jawaharlal Nehru University, University of Delhi) and Hyderabad (Osmania University, the English and Foreign Languages University) during 2013 and 2014 (total seven months). Seeking to demonstrate the centrality of the beef symbolism in the local Dalit student movement in Hyderabad, this article provides a content analysis of “Beef Anthem”, written and performed by Dalit student activist NS Chamar, contextualizing it with fieldwork observations and interviews with the Dalit activists. This article uncovers multilayered meanings and strategies surrounding beef issue allowing one to understand how through the symbol of beef, the Dalit activists in Hyderabad reimagined themselves and strategized their movement in the context of the strengthening right-wing politics.","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":"17 8","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136104366","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The production of knowledge in India operates within a rarefied domain enclosed within the structures of caste, class, ethnicity and gender. This has enabled the unabashed peddling of one-dimensional epistemology of glorifying the past, justifying the prevalent social hierarchies and manufacturing consent for the existing social order. Periodically, the status quo was interrogated and the resultant debates are secreted within the pages of history. Rarely if ever, these contestations become a part of the pedagogy thereby igniting a quest for a more emancipatory social apparatus. This is not surprising as the reproduction of the symbolic power needs to be closely guarded. The ancient world considered land as the paramount resource and wars were waged to capture more territories. For the industrialized societies, capital was the source of sustenance but in the modern era, privilege and power based on knowledge is the magic mantra, the currency of socio-economic relations. This article revolves around the attempts made by the researcher to introduce a full-fledged course on Dalit Bahujan Political Thought1 at the Masters level in Delhi University. This intervention was opposed by the entrenched academia hailing from the privileged castes who wished to perpetuate their Brahmanicalweltanschaung. The texts/readings prescribed for the course were sought to be banned by the higher authorities. The pantheon of thinkers who advocated an Indian version of liberation theology was never engaged with at an ideological level. The everyday engagements with the students who joined the course and their interactions in the classrooms provide a multi-layered understanding of negotiating utopias. This article is based on discussions with various stakeholders—academic committees who decide on pedagogy, feedback from students and classroom engagements for more than five years.
{"title":"Teaching Dalit Bahujan Utopias: Notes from the Classroom","authors":"N. Sukumar","doi":"10.26812/caste.v4i2.678","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v4i2.678","url":null,"abstract":"The production of knowledge in India operates within a rarefied domain enclosed within the structures of caste, class, ethnicity and gender. This has enabled the unabashed peddling of one-dimensional epistemology of glorifying the past, justifying the prevalent social hierarchies and manufacturing consent for the existing social order. Periodically, the status quo was interrogated and the resultant debates are secreted within the pages of history. Rarely if ever, these contestations become a part of the pedagogy thereby igniting a quest for a more emancipatory social apparatus. This is not surprising as the reproduction of the symbolic power needs to be closely guarded. The ancient world considered land as the paramount resource and wars were waged to capture more territories. For the industrialized societies, capital was the source of sustenance but in the modern era, privilege and power based on knowledge is the magic mantra, the currency of socio-economic relations. This article revolves around the attempts made by the researcher to introduce a full-fledged course on Dalit Bahujan Political Thought1 at the Masters level in Delhi University. This intervention was opposed by the entrenched academia hailing from the privileged castes who wished to perpetuate their Brahmanicalweltanschaung. The texts/readings prescribed for the course were sought to be banned by the higher authorities. The pantheon of thinkers who advocated an Indian version of liberation theology was never engaged with at an ideological level. The everyday engagements with the students who joined the course and their interactions in the classrooms provide a multi-layered understanding of negotiating utopias. This article is based on discussions with various stakeholders—academic committees who decide on pedagogy, feedback from students and classroom engagements for more than five years.","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":"164 ","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136069893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Constitution, as a formal legal document, reflects a commitment to secure to all citizens, Equality, Justice, and Liberty, as a non-negotiable duty of the State. The nature and context of present society, however, is embedded in its socio-cultural development through civilisations. This study aims to engage with such a manifestation of state power as revealed in the text Manavdharmashastra, that marked the origin of codified social laws to derive legitimacy and establish a ‘divine’ authority to rule. Subsequently, the pioneers to critique the dysfunctions of Manu’s social laws became a subject of interrogation by social reformers like Jyotirao Phule and Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar. Methodologically, our effort will be to weave together an intertextual analysis based on scientific observation of the case of caste subaltern, through three widely acknowledged texts—Manusmriti, Phule’s Slavery (Gulamgiri), and Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste, on ideals of society and governance, in order to present a historical legacy into the origins of social hierarchy as an institutional mechanism to perpetuate inequality among subjects. The aim is to develop an approach to evaluate the ancient political thought of Manusmriti, and probe contradictions and realism in actions, with explicit excerpts of relevant texts, to authenticate the credibility of facts and its alignment with the central thought. The article eventually attempts to suggest alternatives to secure the vision of an ideal Indian society that aims to disintegrate the institution of caste.
《宪法》作为一份正式的法律文件，反映了保障所有公民平等、公正和自由的承诺，这是国家不可推卸的责任。然而，当今社会的性质和背景是通过文明嵌入其社会文化发展的。本研究的目的是研究《Manavdharmashastra》中所揭示的国家权力的表现，这标志着编纂的社会法律的起源，以获得合法性并建立“神圣”的统治权威。随后，批评马努社会法则功能失调的先驱们成为了社会改革家如乔蒂拉奥·普勒(Jyotirao Phule)和比姆拉奥·安贝德卡尔(Bhimrao Ambedkar)博士审问的对象。在方法上，我们的努力将是通过对次等种姓案例的科学观察，通过三种广泛认可的文本——《manusmriti》、《Phule的奴隶制》(Gulamgiri)和《Ambedkar的种姓湮灭》(Annihilation of caste)——对社会和治理的理想进行互文分析，以呈现社会等级起源的历史遗产，作为一种制度机制，使主体之间的不平等永续存在。目的是发展一种评估古代政治思想的方法，并通过相关文本的明确摘录来探索行动中的矛盾和现实主义，以验证事实的可信度及其与中心思想的一致性。文章最终试图提出替代方案，以确保一个理想的印度社会的愿景，旨在瓦解种姓制度。
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