Students and social scientists concerned with caste studies will agree to a socio-cultural phenomenon called Sanskritization among people of caste communities that are not recognized as belonging to castes primarily affiliated to either of the three varnas of Brahman, Kshatriya and Vaishya. What is Sanskritization? Following M. N. Srinivas, who put forward the concept of Sanskritization in Religion and Society among the Coorges of South India (1952) to explain upward social movement (?) among Hindu tribal groups or ‘lower’ caste groups imitating and gradually incorporating ‘upper’ caste people’s social, cultural behaviour, rituals, customs, and religious practices, there exist an array of works deliberating upon this collective behavioural instance called Sanskritization (Beteille, 1969; Gould, 1961; Patwardhan, 1973; Sachchidananda, 1977; Lynch, 1974). These studies have generally accepted Sanskritization as an effective tool for cultural integration between different caste groups by ensuring movements of people across caste barriers; in other words, Sanskritization spells a common idiom of social mobility (Beteille, 1969, p. 116). This paper does not support the view that Sanskritization has been an effective socio-cultural instrument in moving towards a society that does not swear by caste-principles. Rather, Sanskritization, a concrete social fact among the ‘lower’ castes people, seems to obliquely prove the productive logic of caste through the imitation of the Brahmin. Following Gramsci’s conceptualisation of the necessity of a subaltern initiative in any counter-hegemony project, the paper further argues that Sanskritization is regressive to the extent that it is antithetical to any such subaltern political initiative against caste.
{"title":"A Critique of Sanskritization from Dalit/Caste-Subaltern Perspective","authors":"Ishita Roy","doi":"10.26812/caste.v2i2.292","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v2i2.292","url":null,"abstract":"Students and social scientists concerned with caste studies will agree to a socio-cultural phenomenon called Sanskritization among people of caste communities that are not recognized as belonging to castes primarily affiliated to either of the three varnas of Brahman, Kshatriya and Vaishya. What is Sanskritization? Following M. N. Srinivas, who put forward the concept of Sanskritization in Religion and Society among the Coorges of South India (1952) to explain upward social movement (?) among Hindu tribal groups or ‘lower’ caste groups imitating and gradually incorporating ‘upper’ caste people’s social, cultural behaviour, rituals, customs, and religious practices, there exist an array of works deliberating upon this collective behavioural instance called Sanskritization (Beteille, 1969; Gould, 1961; Patwardhan, 1973; Sachchidananda, 1977; Lynch, 1974). These studies have generally accepted Sanskritization as an effective tool for cultural integration between different caste groups by ensuring movements of people across caste barriers; in other words, Sanskritization spells a common idiom of social mobility (Beteille, 1969, p. 116). \u0000This paper does not support the view that Sanskritization has been an effective socio-cultural instrument in moving towards a society that does not swear by caste-principles. Rather, Sanskritization, a concrete social fact among the ‘lower’ castes people, seems to obliquely prove the productive logic of caste through the imitation of the Brahmin. Following Gramsci’s conceptualisation of the necessity of a subaltern initiative in any counter-hegemony project, the paper further argues that Sanskritization is regressive to the extent that it is antithetical to any such subaltern political initiative against caste. \u0000","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45835122","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}
Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings. However, caste-based discrimination is one of the areas that most human rights mechanisms overlook. As a result of several interventions by Dalit and human rights organisations, the erstwhile United Nations body, in 2000, has termed it ‘discrimination based on work and descent’. The above Dalit and other International organisations have also brought evidence before the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination which has endorsed caste-based discrimination as part of the discrimination based on descent, in Article 1 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). Further, it was also brought to the notice of various Special Rapporteurs and UN Committees that communities discriminated on work and descent (CDWD) face severe human rights violations and abuses that continue to restrain the socio-economic development of these specific groups of people in several countries globally. Dalit organizations and their solidarity bodies have gone ahead through a process of ‘norm entrepreneurship’ at the UN levels. This article narrates and analyses the challenges and human rights consequences of caste and discrimination based on work and discusses the norm entrepreneurship journey of Dalits and CDWD at the UN level.
{"title":"Norm Entrepreneurship at the UN - Dalits and Communities Discriminated on Work and Descent","authors":"Paul Divakar Namala","doi":"10.26812/caste.v2i2.339","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v2i2.339","url":null,"abstract":"Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings. However, caste-based discrimination is one of the areas that most human rights mechanisms overlook. As a result of several interventions by Dalit and human rights organisations, the erstwhile United Nations body, in 2000, has termed it ‘discrimination based on work and descent’. The above Dalit and other International organisations have also brought evidence before the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination which has endorsed caste-based discrimination as part of the discrimination based on descent, in Article 1 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). Further, it was also brought to the notice of various Special Rapporteurs and UN Committees that communities discriminated on work and descent (CDWD) face severe human rights violations and abuses that continue to restrain the socio-economic development of these specific groups of people in several countries globally. Dalit organizations and their solidarity bodies have gone ahead through a process of ‘norm entrepreneurship’ at the UN levels. This article narrates and analyses the challenges and human rights consequences of caste and discrimination based on work and discusses the norm entrepreneurship journey of Dalits and CDWD at the UN level.","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47508342","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 Tripuri tribe from the state of Tripura constitutes around 50 percent of the total tribal population and can be found in all eight districts of the state. The tribe follows its own culture and tradition in terms of marriage and other customary practices. This study investigates the role of gender in inheritance of property among the Tripuri tribe and how Tripuri women are excluded from ownership of property. It also attempts to discover how property ownership affects their income and position in the household. The study has been conducted in the districts of West Tripura and Dhalai. Focus Group Discussion and interview schedules are employed as methods for collection of data. Results show that while 20 out of 54 married women from rural areas of West Tripura have inherited property, only 2 out of 13 married women have inherited property in the urban area. In comparison with West Tripura, Dhalai features a low ratio among women in inheriting property (only 4 out of 38 married women). A few causes include low level of literacy, slow urbanization and less inter-community marriages. The reasons for not inheriting property include: a woman failing to live up to the concept of a ‘good sister’ in the brother’s eyes, son needs property to care for parents, cost of marriage is borne by brother or parents so no right to claim, and to avoid unnecessary conflict in the family. In this manner, societal perceptions prevent women from claiming the legitimate share of their ancestral property.
{"title":"Exclusion of Tribal Women from Property Inheritance Rights: A Study of Tripuri Women of India","authors":"Ashim Shil, Hemraj P. Jangir","doi":"10.26812/caste.v2i2.317","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v2i2.317","url":null,"abstract":"The Tripuri tribe from the state of Tripura constitutes around 50 percent of the total tribal population and can be found in all eight districts of the state. The tribe follows its own culture and tradition in terms of marriage and other customary practices. This study investigates the role of gender in inheritance of property among the Tripuri tribe and how Tripuri women are excluded from ownership of property. It also attempts to discover how property ownership affects their income and position in the household. The study has been conducted in the districts of West Tripura and Dhalai. Focus Group Discussion and interview schedules are employed as methods for collection of data. \u0000Results show that while 20 out of 54 married women from rural areas of West Tripura have inherited property, only 2 out of 13 married women have inherited property in the urban area. In comparison with West Tripura, Dhalai features a low ratio among women in inheriting property (only 4 out of 38 married women). A few causes include low level of literacy, slow urbanization and less inter-community marriages. The reasons for not inheriting property include: a woman failing to live up to the concept of a ‘good sister’ in the brother’s eyes, son needs property to care for parents, cost of marriage is borne by brother or parents so no right to claim, and to avoid unnecessary conflict in the family. In this manner, societal perceptions prevent women from claiming the legitimate share of their ancestral property.","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69137946","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 Feminist Theory: A Reader is a collection of essays written by feminist writers in India. Feminism as a school of thought emerged in India in the early 1980s and since then, several scholarly works have been produced by feminists. Towards the beginning of the movement, there were two distinct groups of scholars, both educated in the English medium. The common factor in both groups was that the scholars all came from the dwija1 castes (Brahmin, Bania, Kayastha, Khatri and very few Kshatriya). The difference lay in the political positions which informed their standpoints—one group were Liberal Democrats, the others were Marxist feminists. After the 1990 Mandal movement, a third ideological school started to emerge. They foregrounded caste as a theoretical framework in understanding man-woman relations in India, as opposed to their predecessors who only theorized from the framework of class and democratic institutions. The editors of this book have chosen to reproduce several essays written by both Marxist and Liberal Democratic, non Dalit-bahujan women writers and in doing so have made clear their Dalit feminist position. Sunaina Arya is a young Dalit woman Ph.D candidate and research scholar in the field of Philosophy. The
{"title":"Dalit-Bahujan Feminism: A Newly Emerging Discourse","authors":"K. I. Shepherd","doi":"10.26812/caste.v2i2.344","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v2i2.344","url":null,"abstract":"Dalit Feminist Theory: A Reader is a collection of essays written by feminist writers in India. Feminism as a school of thought emerged in India in the early 1980s and since then, several scholarly works have been produced by feminists. Towards the beginning of the movement, there were two distinct groups of scholars, both educated in the English medium. The common factor in both groups was that the scholars all came from the dwija1 castes (Brahmin, Bania, Kayastha, Khatri and very few Kshatriya). The difference lay in the political positions which informed their standpoints—one group were Liberal Democrats, the others were Marxist feminists. After the 1990 Mandal movement, a third ideological school started to emerge. They foregrounded caste as a theoretical framework in understanding man-woman relations in India, as opposed to their predecessors who only theorized from the framework of class and democratic institutions. The editors of this book have chosen to reproduce several essays written by both Marxist and Liberal Democratic, non Dalit-bahujan women writers and in doing so have made clear their Dalit feminist position. Sunaina Arya is a young Dalit woman Ph.D candidate and research scholar in the field of Philosophy. The","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48145103","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 forms part III of a running commentary on Ambedkar’s posthumously published “Philosophy of History” (Ambedkar, 2014a). We attempt to follow Ambedkar’s reflections on the early origins of religion and his initial distinctions of the religions of “savage society” and “civilized society” (Ambedkar, 2014a, p. 9). Using the tools of philosophical critique, we see his attempt to dissect the real “principal” (Ambedkar, 2014a, p. 10) of religion beyond the apparitional nature of rites, rituals, and taboos. This leads to a series of deductions of what constitutes the very “core,” “source,” and “substance” of religion rooted in the “preservation of life” (Ambedkar, 2014a, p. 10). However, this is also a moment that will foreshadow Ambedkar’s ultimate judgement of Hinduism’s status as a religion when founded on the unequal social structure of caste. We argue the following in this article: what Ambedkar says about the architectonic of “savage society” and the failure to undergo a profound revolution in the nature and concept of religion bears an eerie resemblance to what ultimately takes the place of “savage society” (Ambedkar, 2014a, p. 9) over time, namely the Hindu caste system. This makes modern Hinduism a strange hybrid of pre-history and a future history whose conclusion is uncertain. Whether caste can disappear from society is the burning question. And this is intertwined with profound metaphysical questions of time, life, birth, and death, which only philosophy can deconstruct if a religion, like Hinduism, were submitted for critical judgement. The article concludes with an attempt to set the stage for the next phase of the commentary: there Ambedkar will transition from a general discussion about the philosophy and history of religion as a concept to an actual engagement with the philosophical contents of the religion known and practiced by hundreds of millions of adherents as Hinduism. As we already know, his conclusion is dire: a religion can only be true if it is rooted in ‘justice’ and serves the ‘utility’ of individual freedom (Ambedkar, 2014a, p. 22).
本文是对安贝德卡死后出版的《历史哲学》(Ambedkar, 2014a)的连续评论的第三部分。我们试图遵循Ambedkar对宗教早期起源的反思，以及他对“野蛮社会”和“文明社会”宗教的最初区分(Ambedkar, 2014a，第9页)。使用哲学批判的工具，我们看到他试图剖析超越仪式、仪式和禁忌的幽灵性质的宗教的真正“原则”(Ambedkar, 2014a，第10页)。这导致了一系列的推论，即什么构成了根植于“保存生命”的宗教的“核心”、“来源”和“实质”(Ambedkar, 2014a，第10页)。然而，这也是一个时刻，预示着安贝德卡最终判断印度教作为一种宗教的地位，当它建立在种姓不平等的社会结构上时。我们在本文中提出以下论点:安贝德卡尔所说的“野蛮社会”的架构，以及未能在宗教的性质和概念上经历深刻变革，与最终取代“野蛮社会”的东西(安贝德卡尔，2014a，第9页)有着惊人的相似之处，即印度教种姓制度。这使得现代印度教成为史前和未来历史的奇怪混合体，而未来历史的结论是不确定的。种姓制度能否从社会中消失是一个亟待解决的问题。这与时间、生命、出生和死亡等深奥的形而上学问题交织在一起，只有哲学才能解构这些问题，如果一个宗教，比如印度教，要接受批判性的判断。文章最后试图为下一阶段的评论奠定基础:安贝德卡尔将从对宗教哲学和历史的一般性讨论转变为对数亿印度教信徒所熟知和实践的宗教哲学内容的实际参与。正如我们已经知道的，他的结论是可怕的:一个宗教只有植根于“正义”，服务于个人自由的“效用”，才可能是真实的(Ambedkar, 2014a, p. 22)。
{"title":"A Commentary on Ambedkar's Posthumously Published \"Philosophy of Hinduism\"- Part III","authors":"R. Sampath","doi":"10.26812/caste.v2i2.337","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v2i2.337","url":null,"abstract":"This article forms part III of a running commentary on Ambedkar’s posthumously published “Philosophy of History” (Ambedkar, 2014a). We attempt to follow Ambedkar’s reflections on the early origins of religion and his initial distinctions of the religions of “savage society” and “civilized society” (Ambedkar, 2014a, p. 9). Using the tools of philosophical critique, we see his attempt to dissect the real “principal” (Ambedkar, 2014a, p. 10) of religion beyond the apparitional nature of rites, rituals, and taboos. This leads to a series of deductions of what constitutes the very “core,” “source,” and “substance” of religion rooted in the “preservation of life” (Ambedkar, 2014a, p. 10). However, this is also a moment that will foreshadow Ambedkar’s ultimate judgement of Hinduism’s status as a religion when founded on the unequal social structure of caste. We argue the following in this article: what Ambedkar says about the architectonic of “savage society” and the failure to undergo a profound revolution in the nature and concept of religion bears an eerie resemblance to what ultimately takes the place of “savage society” (Ambedkar, 2014a, p. 9) over time, namely the Hindu caste system. This makes modern Hinduism a strange hybrid of pre-history and a future history whose conclusion is uncertain. Whether caste can disappear from society is the burning question. And this is intertwined with profound metaphysical questions of time, life, birth, and death, which only philosophy can deconstruct if a religion, like Hinduism, were submitted for critical judgement. The article concludes with an attempt to set the stage for the next phase of the commentary: there Ambedkar will transition from a general discussion about the philosophy and history of religion as a concept to an actual engagement with the philosophical contents of the religion known and practiced by hundreds of millions of adherents as Hinduism. As we already know, his conclusion is dire: a religion can only be true if it is rooted in ‘justice’ and serves the ‘utility’ of individual freedom (Ambedkar, 2014a, p. 22).","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48838387","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 attempt in this article is to extrapolate the notion of hybridity latent in B. R. Ambedkar’s reflections on mixed castes, and outcastes, which subsequently leads to the causal link that he then derives gesticulating to social evils, namely, the origin of untouchability. Whether this embryonic notion of hybridity present in Ambedkar’s work is amenable to the extrapolation of Dalit identity thought along the lines of Gilles Deleuze’s notion of “immanent mixtures” is a thread that this study pursues. This certainly has broad implications for the prevalent notions of Dalit identity. This study ventures to read Ambedkar’s work, Riddles in Hinduism (1987) alongside Deleuze, probing into the intuitive link between notions of hybridity and the plane of immanence. Ideological distancing from predetermined categories of identity considered to be reductive in nature by the intellectuals of Indian philosophical thinking view such predetermined notions as facile conceptions that run short of representative qualities of complex and varied particularities of reasoned engagement with one’s resources. Amartya Sen heralded this ideological position in his work titled, The Argumentative Indian (2006), in favor of heterodoxy and reasoned choice determining priorities between different identities. Lacunae regarding identification of resources prominent in Sen’s work is pointed out by Jonardon Ganeri, who hails from the cluster of contemporary Sanskritists competent in philological and theoretical exegesis of “sastric” philosophical literature from the classical period of India. This study is a close reading of Jonardon Ganeri’s concept of ‘resources within’ which he develops in his work, Identity as Reasoned Choice (2012) to examine the potentiality of this concept to advance a theoretical framework that could counter a sectarian view of Indian tradition, as it is professed at the outset of his work. Sectarianism, which Ganeri opposes, identifies mysticism to be its chief trait which he shows to be selectively usurping only those resources grounded in Vedantic wisdom from India’s past.
{"title":"Tending Immanence, Transcending Sectarianism: Plane of Mixed Castes and Religions","authors":"Roshni Babu","doi":"10.26812/caste.v2i2.230","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v2i2.230","url":null,"abstract":"The attempt in this article is to extrapolate the notion of hybridity latent in B. R. Ambedkar’s reflections on mixed castes, and outcastes, which subsequently leads to the causal link that he then derives gesticulating to social evils, namely, the origin of untouchability. Whether this embryonic notion of hybridity present in Ambedkar’s work is amenable to the extrapolation of Dalit identity thought along the lines of Gilles Deleuze’s notion of “immanent mixtures” is a thread that this study pursues. This certainly has broad implications for the prevalent notions of Dalit identity. This study ventures to read Ambedkar’s work, Riddles in Hinduism (1987) alongside Deleuze, probing into the intuitive link between notions of hybridity and the plane of immanence. \u0000Ideological distancing from predetermined categories of identity considered to be reductive in nature by the intellectuals of Indian philosophical thinking view such predetermined notions as facile conceptions that run short of representative qualities of complex and varied particularities of reasoned engagement with one’s resources. Amartya Sen heralded this ideological position in his work titled, The Argumentative Indian (2006), in favor of heterodoxy and reasoned choice determining priorities between different identities. Lacunae regarding identification of resources prominent in Sen’s work is pointed out by Jonardon Ganeri, who hails from the cluster of contemporary Sanskritists competent in philological and theoretical exegesis of “sastric” philosophical literature from the classical period of India. \u0000This study is a close reading of Jonardon Ganeri’s concept of ‘resources within’ which he develops in his work, Identity as Reasoned Choice (2012) to examine the potentiality of this concept to advance a theoretical framework that could counter a sectarian view of Indian tradition, as it is professed at the outset of his work. Sectarianism, which Ganeri opposes, identifies mysticism to be its chief trait which he shows to be selectively usurping only those resources grounded in Vedantic wisdom from India’s past. \u0000","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69137916","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":"Cover and Table of Contents","authors":"J-Caste","doi":"10.26812/CASTE.V2I1.315","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/CASTE.V2I1.315","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48238937","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}
Yesterday, April 20, 2021, a jury in Minnesota convicted the former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin of murdering George Floyd, a Black American. Mr. Chauvin, who is white, had knelt on Mr. Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes despite Mr. Floyd’s desperate appeals that “I can’t breathe.” Those words reignited a powerful social movement for racial justice in America and were echoed around the world by communities disadvantaged by their histories of persecution fed by illusions of superiority. In the United States, racial inequality causes major disparities between African Americans and people of white ethnicities. These deprivations, despite progress, are seen today in economic assets, educational attainment, rates of incarceration, and health outcomes as in Covid-19. Yet Covid-19 did not create health disparities and differences in life expectancy. Those disparities are directly the result of racism. Racism is declared to be a public health crisis wherein Black lives are more prone to life-limiting illness and premature death including police killings in which Black males are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police.11“This problem is only exacerbated if we look at the global scale. White supremacy is the idea that there is a hierarchy inherent to the chain of human beings, with those who are white at the top and Black people at the bottom.”22 J-CASTE agrees, though we also see these deep divisions and resentments within societies of color. All forms of graded hierarchies continue to degrade the lives and well-being of those whose births deprive them of their full potential and human rights whether by race or gender, indigeneity, language, or culture. Like white privilege, there is caste privilege in high Brahmanical societies, and like white supremacy, caste supremacy is responsible when Dalits choose suicide over humiliation at universities or when high caste men gang rape Dalit girls in rural villages.
{"title":"“I Can’t Breathe”: Perspectives on Emancipation from Caste","authors":"L. Simon","doi":"10.26812/CASTE.V2I1.309","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/CASTE.V2I1.309","url":null,"abstract":"Yesterday, April 20, 2021, a jury in Minnesota convicted the former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin of murdering George Floyd, a Black American. Mr. Chauvin, who is white, had knelt on Mr. Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes despite Mr. Floyd’s desperate appeals that “I can’t breathe.” Those words reignited a powerful social movement for racial justice in America and were echoed around the world by communities disadvantaged by their histories of persecution fed by illusions of superiority. In the United States, racial inequality causes major disparities between African Americans and people of white ethnicities. These deprivations, despite progress, are seen today in economic assets, educational attainment, rates of incarceration, and health outcomes as in Covid-19. Yet Covid-19 did not create health disparities and differences in life expectancy. Those disparities are directly the result of racism. Racism is declared to be a public health crisis wherein Black lives are more prone to life-limiting illness and premature death including police killings in which Black males are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police.11“This problem is only exacerbated if we look at the global scale. White supremacy is the idea that there is a hierarchy inherent to the chain of human beings, with those who are white at the top and Black people at the bottom.”22 J-CASTE agrees, though we also see these deep divisions and resentments within societies of color. All forms of graded hierarchies continue to degrade the lives and well-being of those whose births deprive them of their full potential and human rights whether by race or gender, indigeneity, language, or culture. Like white privilege, there is caste privilege in high Brahmanical societies, and like white supremacy, caste supremacy is responsible when Dalits choose suicide over humiliation at universities or when high caste men gang rape Dalit girls in rural villages.","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47819992","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}
Anti-caste traditions in India work to understand and examine the idea of personhood which the majority in India is deprived of by virtue of being born in the lower rungs of the caste hierarchy. This paper examines the historical continuity in Brahminism and the rupture Jotiba Phule presents to it through his art and activism which serves to disturb the regular flow of singular continuity of what is perceived as history and historiography. Jotiba’s quest is for finding the essence / personhood of, what Butler calls, a ‘precarious subject’ and recognizing that precarious subject – the Shudra, as a subject of history. But the personhood of this precarious subject is never a complete personhood. Therefore, Jotiba attempts to unveil the path towards achieving complete personhood which is embedded in reaffirming the lost or concealed truth – by discontinuing the historical flow of the social structure of caste and establishing a new subject rising out of crisis in social structure in history. I have chosen two works from Jotiba’s works as new methodological tools for history writing and historical criticism, and made hermeneutical and phenomenological readings of the both. The works are his poem Kulambin (a peasant woman), and the Satyashodhak (truth-seeker) marriage as the public performance of protest- as they are both - the essential and the mundane to his life, which exemplifies the truth Jotiba followed and established an organization Satyashodhak Samaj (Society of Truth Seekers) as a testament to it.
{"title":"Fracturing the Historical Continuity on Truth: Jotiba Phule in the Quest for Personhood of Shudras","authors":"Snehashis Das","doi":"10.26812/CASTE.V2I1.265","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/CASTE.V2I1.265","url":null,"abstract":"Anti-caste traditions in India work to understand and examine the idea of personhood which the majority in India is deprived of by virtue of being born in the lower rungs of the caste hierarchy. This paper examines the historical continuity in Brahminism and the rupture Jotiba Phule presents to it through his art and activism which serves to disturb the regular flow of singular continuity of what is perceived as history and historiography. Jotiba’s quest is for finding the essence / personhood of, what Butler calls, a ‘precarious subject’ and recognizing that precarious subject – the Shudra, as a subject of history. But the personhood of this precarious subject is never a complete personhood. Therefore, Jotiba attempts to unveil the path towards achieving complete personhood which is embedded in reaffirming the lost or concealed truth – by discontinuing the historical flow of the social structure of caste and establishing a new subject rising out of crisis in social structure in history. I have chosen two works from Jotiba’s works as new methodological tools for history writing and historical criticism, and made hermeneutical and phenomenological readings of the both. The works are his poem Kulambin (a peasant woman), and the Satyashodhak (truth-seeker) marriage as the public performance of protest- as they are both - the essential and the mundane to his life, which exemplifies the truth Jotiba followed and established an organization Satyashodhak Samaj (Society of Truth Seekers) as a testament to it.","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42184714","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}
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