Dalits, Subalternity and Social Change in India

Dalits, Subalternity and Social Change in India PDF

Author: Ashok K. Pankaj

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-10-26

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 0429785186

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The linguistic origin of the term Dalit is Marathi, and pre-dates the militant-intellectual Dalit Panthers movement of the 1970s. It was not in popular use till the last quarter of the 20th century, the origin of the term Dalit, although in the 1930s, it was used as Marathi-Hindi translation of the word "Depressed Classes". The changing nature of caste and Dalits has become a topic of increasing interest in India. This edited book is a collection of originally written chapters by eminent experts on the experiences of Dalits in India. It examines who constitute Dalits and engages with the mainstream subaltern perspective that treats Dalits as a political and economic category, a class phenomenon, and subsumes homogeneity of the entire Dalit population. This book argues that the socio-cultural deprivations of Dalits are their primary deprivations, characterized by heterogeneity of their experiences. It asserts that Dalits have a common urge to liberate from the oppressive and exploitative social arrangement which has been the guiding force of Dalit movement. This book has analysed this movement through three phases: the reformative, the transformative and the confrontationist. An exploration of dynamic relations between subalternity, exclusion and social change, the book will be of interest to academics in the field of sociology, political science and contemporary India.

Dalits in Neoliberal India

Dalits in Neoliberal India PDF

Author: Clarinda Still

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-07-17

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 1317341635

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India’s economic growth has brought opportunities for many but to what extent has it benefitted its ethnically-shaped underclass: the Dalits? Have Dalits fared better in a neoliberal India or have structural economic and social changes served to magnify Dalit disadvantage? This volume offers a varied picture of Dalit experience in different states in contemporary India. The essays draw on factual research in rural and urban areas by experts in the field. With case studies ranging from Dalit entrepreneurs in Bhopal to housewives in Tamil Nadu to ex-millworkers in Mumbai, the book contends that radically progressive change and advance is attended by discrimination and exclusion, as well as surprising new areas of stigma. With contributions by political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, and economists, the volume will be key reading for scholars and students of Dalit and subaltern studies, sociology, political science, and economics.

Dalits in Modern India

Dalits in Modern India PDF

Author: S. M. Michael

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2007-05-08

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9780761935711

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This second, revised and enlarged edition looks back at the aspirations and struggle of the marginalised Dalit masses and looks forward to a new humanity based on equality, social justice and human dignity. Within the context of Dalit emancipation, it explores the social, economic and cultural content of Dalit transformation in modern India. These articles, by some of the foremost researchers in the field, are presented in four parts: Part I deals with the historical material on the origin and development of untouchability in Indian civilisation. Part II contests mainstream explanations and shows that the Dalit vision of Indian society is different from that of the upper castes. Part III offers a critique of the Sanskritic perspective of traditional Indian society, and fieldwork-based portraits of the Hinduisation of Adivasis in Gujarat, Dalit patriarchy in Maharashtra and Dalit power politics in Uttar Pradesh. Part IV concentrates on the economic condition of the Dalits.

The Changing World of Caste and Hierarchy in Bengal

The Changing World of Caste and Hierarchy in Bengal PDF

Author: Sudarshana Bhaumik

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-08-26

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 1000641430

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This book challenges the prevalent assumptions of caste, hierarchy and social mobility in pre-colonial and colonial Bengal. It studies the writings of colonial ethnographers, Orientalist scholars, Christian missionaries and pre-colonial literary texts like the Mangalkavyas to show how the concept of caste emerged and argues that the jati order in Bengal was far from being a rigidly reified structure, but one which had room for spatial and social mobility. The volume highlights the processes through which popular myths and beliefs of the lower caste orders of Bengal were Sanskritized. It delineates the linkages between sedantized peasant culture and the emergence of new agricultural castes in colonial Bengal. Moreover, the author discusses a wide spectrum of issues like marginality and hierarchy, the spread of Brahmanical hegemony, the creation of deities and the process of Sanskritization, popular Saivism, the cult of Manasa in Bengal and the revolt of 1857 and the caste question. Rich in archival sources, this book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of colonial history, Indian history, political sociology, caste studies, exclusion studies, cultural studies, social history, cultural history and South Asian studies, especially those interested in undivided Bengal.

Change and Mobility in Contemporary India

Change and Mobility in Contemporary India PDF

Author: Sobin George

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2019-09-25

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 1000692302

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This book studies caste and community dynamics in India and offers a critical view of social mobility from below. Building on the theories of the eminent sociologist M N Srinivas, the essays in this volume reformulate the debate on caste as they document the changing inter-caste dynamics and caste-based violence in contemporary India. The volume showcases the new language of change in caste relations, articulated mostly from the perspective of the marginalised as experiences, differences, contestations, assertions and as citizenship rights. It focusses on the clash between traditional structures of inequality and the ideals of equality and justice in a liberal, democratic India. It also highlights the persistence of caste and endogamy and the interlocking nature of caste, gender and disability, struggles of ethnic groups and informal workers in the market economy, discrimination in the labour market and the dissolution of dissent in the public sphere. With contributions from leading scholars of social change and development in India and abroad, this volume will be useful for scholars and researchers of sociology, social anthropology, minority and subaltern studies, and development studies.

Indian Sociology

Indian Sociology PDF

Author: B. K. Nagla

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-12-02

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9819951380

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This book presents a critical and reflective view of fundamental theoretical orientations, thematic domains, and current debates in Indian sociology. It covers the growth of sociology as an academic and pedagogical subject, with four main parts. Part I discusses important theoretical orientations in Indian sociology, including Indological and civilizational approaches, as well as the contributions of an eminent sociologist and pioneer in Indian sociology, Professor Yogendra Singh, concerning the sociology of knowledge, liberal democracy, and the relevance of his concept of Islamization in the study of Indian society. Part II examines substantive areas of study such as caste, class, and tribe. Part III reflects on specific topics of current concern in Indian sociology, such as emerging vistas and futures, globalization, and rethinking area studies for planetary conversations. This book is highly relevant for postgraduate students and researchers in sociology, social anthropology, and social sciences.

The Oxford Handbook of Caste

The Oxford Handbook of Caste PDF

Author:

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-10-31

Total Pages: 689

ISBN-13: 0198896735

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Beginning with the 1990s, the subject of caste has seen a profound increase in interest among scholars. What was until then approached as a fossilized tradition of the ritual-obsessed Hindus refusing to see the progressive spirits of the emerging world and studied as a branch of anthropology, suddenly began to be seen as a complex reality deeply embedded in a range of institutions and social practices, attracting scholars from a wide range of disciplines—sociology, political science, history, literature, and even economics. Underlying this opening of the subject of caste were many factors: epistemic, empirical, and political. Caste is no longer approached through the classical binaries of 'traditional' and 'modern'; the 'East' and the 'West'; or the 'closed' and 'open' systems of stratification. With the growing consolidation of caste-based identities among those ranked lower down in the hierarchy since the 1990s, raising questions of citizenship and dignity, the subject has acquired a new salience. As the emerging research shows, the realities of caste on the ground have always been diverse across regions, often contested and ever changing. This Handbook presents a wide range of essays written by authors representing diverse academic disciplines and perspectives, bringing together the emerging trends in the research, imaginations, and lived realities of caste.

Dalit Women

Dalit Women PDF

Author: S. Anandhi

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2017-05-18

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1351797190

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Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Notes on contributors -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: We ask you to rethink: Different Dalit women and their subaltern politics -- Part I Imagining a new Dalit women's politics -- 1 Foreword: Dalits, Dalit women and the Indian State -- 2 For another difference: Agency, representation and Dalit women in contemporary India -- Part II Dalit women's conceptualizations of caste difference and their means of collectivization -- 3 Gendered negotiations of caste identity: Dalit women's activism in rural Tamil Nadu -- 4 Liberation panthers and pantheresses? Gender and Dalit party politics in South India -- 5 Microcredit self-help groups and Dalit women: Overcoming or essentializing caste difference? -- Part III A broken empowerment? Are women still trapped by caste and patriarchy? -- 6 Dalit women, rape and the revitalisation of patriarchy? -- 7 Different Dalit women speak differently: Unravelling, through an intersectional lens, narratives of agency and activism from everyday life in rural Uttar Pradesh -- 8 Subsidising capitalism and male labour: The scandal of unfree Dalit female labour relations -- Part IV Religion as Dalit political practice -- 9 Transformation and the suffering subject: Caste-class and gender in slum Pentecostal discourse -- 10 Improper politics: The praxis of subalterns in Chennai -- Afterword: The burden of caste: Scholarship, democratic movements and activism

Inclusive Development Through Guaranteed Employment

Inclusive Development Through Guaranteed Employment PDF

Author: Ashok Pankaj

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-12-02

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 981157443X

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This book examines the inclusive development experiences and impacts of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). It discusses the theoretical assumptions underlying the inclusive development of Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS), and draws conclusions based on robust data and real-world experiences with the MGNREGS – which has attracted global attention as India’s most ambitious, rights-based development initiative and most expansive work-based social security measure, the world’s largest public works programme, and people-centric approach to development. The book argues that the Scheme holds vast potential, and, in fact, has made significant contribution to the promotion of livelihoods of the poorest of the poor, but that the weak institutions of local-self-governance, entrusted for implementation of the Scheme, are incapable of exploiting them to the full. It ends with a concrete policy suggestion: the inclusive development experiences gathered with the EGS and presented here could offer a source of policy change in many developing Afro-Asian countries whose situations are similar to India’s, provided the local conditions in the respective country are taken into consideration when designing the EGS. Its significance as a social security measure has increased in post-COVID loss of jobs and livelihoods of the poor.