Contemporary Voice of Dalit

The origin of Dalit assertion and politics has a long tradition. The main objective of Dalit assertion and politics was to transform the age-old caste-based hierarchical structure of Indian society based on liberty, equality, fraternity and social justice as envisaged by Dr B. R. Ambedkar. During this long period, the nature of Dalit politics has varied from issue to issue and from context to context. During the seven and half decades of our independence, we have witnessed a massive change, like politics in general and Dalit politics in particular. Up to 1980, we have seen a comprehensive Dalit movement in different parts of India. After that time, it is tough to organize such comprehensive politics, especially in the urban centres. Due to selfishness, personal greed for power and other gains of Dalit leaders and activists, Dalit politics become much more fragmented, localized and depoliticized. Not only that, but identity politics also divided the Dalits into different caste and sub-caste groups. Due to these reasons, it is hard to make grand solidarity in politics among different Dalit castes and other weaker sections of Indian society. We have recently seen a new swing in Dalit politics that is very aware, assertive, organized, well-connected, inclusive and beyond party politics. In this study, the author wants to draw a brief sketch of the history of Dalit politics. Further, he wants to explore the changing nature of Dalit politics. In this context, he has tried to discuss the impact of the depoliticization of Dalit politics by the Dalit leaders and the caste identity politics within Dalit caste groups in forming grand solidarity in Dalit politics in India.

The economy of India was reasonably well during the world economic crisis and is performing well in the economic growth of the nation. However, relatively high aggregate economic growth also co-exists with the persistence of less social development for more than a decade. The exclusiveness of this growth rate is associated with region, locality, education, employment, living standard and social position. In this situation, this study poses questions: what are the changing impacts of neoliberalism in India and does economic growth co-exist with social development? What are the neoliberal experiences of marginal sections connected to economic growth? How are the educational attainments, retention and achievements of Scheduled Caste students connected to the structural changes in higher education?

The article talks about how Dalit symbolism has become an epitome of the Dalits’ assertion for democratic space in the contemporary period. The renewed aspirations of Dalits have emerged in the form of physical as well as cultural symbols. They are carving out their own public space through physical symbols such as imposition of icons through statues and monumental structures, and cultural symbols in the form of inventing popular myths, folk heroes, stories and history, which can be referred to as counter-publics or alternative public sphere. Treated as subservient and marginalized under the hegemonic power structure, the oppressed Dalits want to have their own voice and to present their own alternate views about State, culture and political philosophy. Nothing can be better than the exhibition of radical progressive Dalit symbols in the form of statues of Dalit icons at public places, calendars of Dalit heroes, Dalit blogs, Dalit songs, stories, poems and so on as mentioned, in order to develop an understanding of Dalit aspirations and history among the general public. Thus, the article endeavours to explore and analyse those symbols, narratives and songs, and their contributions towards Dalits’ renewed aspirations, historical claims and craving for democratic space.

The reservation policy in India claims to address caste discrimination by promoting equality through economic and educational opportunities. Equal opportunities, however, do not often translate into equality. Education remains one of the most prominent tools used to disseminate dominant ideologies and perpetuate oppression. Whether it is the Brahmanical control over Vedic knowledge or the colonial validation of English education as a superior form of knowledge, education inculcates among the oppressed the legitimacy of oppression. The traditional method of education suffers from what Paolo Freire calls ‘narration sickness’. In this form of imparting knowledge, there is usually a teacher who narrates/implants knowledge on the patient, silent, objectified students. This article argues that the challenges towards an egalitarian pedagogy emanate from the social identities rooted in caste that travel across the classrooms. By linking education with the nexus of networks of exclusion, this article aims to offer possible ways to achieve an alternative, emancipatory pedagogy.

This article revisits Ambedkar’s speech ‘Annihilation of Caste’, the delivery of which was stalled as permission for it was withheld by the organization who had originally invited Ambedkar to deliver a talk on curbing denigrating social practices like ‘untouchability’. The article revisits this moment of denial as well as the speech in its written form and argues for the political significance both (the ‘speech’ and the ‘final act of denial’) hold in contemporary Indian socio-political culture with respect to caste and its ideological mechanisms. It is argued that the consequent ‘final un-deliverance of the speech’, owing to its cancellation by the Mandal, the conference organizer, accounts for political Hinduism’s ‘unthinkability’ to accept any intellectual that does not belong to the ‘upper’ caste/caste dominant to exegete on any matter requiring intellectual exercise. This article attempts a critique of this ‘unthinkability’, which it argues is a basic paradigm in the ideology of caste.

This article explores the traditional ideas and practices of indigenous democracy among the tribal communities in North East India. Traditional institutions of governance in the region are repudiated today as autocratic and authoritarian, or at best oligarchic. This oversight is imminent unless their cultures and customs, which are closely linked to their institutions of governance, are examined. In most traditional tribal institutions at the grassroot level, there is either a direct participation of all adult male or a representative system in which each clan or sub-clan is represented in the village council. Thus, one finds pre-modern roots of direct and representative democracy in the traditional polity of indigenous communities in the North East. The article identifies ‘consensus’ as the heart of tribal democracy and argues for the strengthening of indigenous democracy for deepening democracy in India. However, more democratic reforms of the traditional institutions are needed to particularly include women and the ‘others’. The findings contribute to the growing literature on the pre-modern roots of modern democracy.

The article explores the lived realities of socio-political negotiations by marginalized groups and the inherent rationality of caste-based power negotiations at a micro level. It also explores the possibilities of alternate futures and alternate interpretations of the margins, through the study of caste-based negotiations and subversions in the Khap villages of western Uttar Pradesh. Stuart Hall, British Cultural theorist, draws attention to the perspective that cultural identification need not produce an essence but a positioning subject to the continuous ‘play’ of history, culture and power. B. R. Ambedkar had termed the hierarchical caste system in India as ‘graded inequality’, which resists any transformation in its oppressive framework because it gives a sense of superiority to each caste placed above the other in a descending order. Despite stiff resistance to any transformation, various forms of subversion—denting the rigid caste and cultural frames—exist in the Khap areas of western Uttar Pradesh.

Ambedkar’s vision of a non-sectarian equitable new social order in combination with empirical study on the current socio-political negotiations by marginalized groups on the ground—with a hint to the possibilities of alternate futures through the efforts towards inducing a democratic environment—are explored here.

The intense electoral competition has made it imperative for political parties to invent new languages and newer modes of organizing the demos. The interchanging registers of Mandal and Kamandal have so far configured the trajectory to power in the state. A careful reading reveals that both these registers have employed the discourse of ‘identity’ to mobilize people. The popularity of this discourse hinges on the fact that it is dynamic and can touch upon the idea of the ‘political’ of diverse people. However, the appropriation and reappropriation of this discourse has transformed its meaning over time. While caste remains the centre around which it is woven, the way in which caste entities are captured to form alignments has changed over time. While the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) used it for arousing critical consciousness of the Dalit-Bahujan caste to challenge caste hegemony, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) used it successfully for constructing a rightist identity and dismantling the Bahujan politics. BSP strengthened the Dalit-Bahujan identity to fight caste discrimination, turning caste disadvantage into caste advantage. To counter this BJP too engaged in caste-based community mobilization, while simultaneously giving a rhetoric of caste-free developmental politics to consolidated upper-caste–lower-caste Hindu alliance.

Even after 75 years of independence, India witnesses the increasing violence unleashed by the upper caste families against the individuals for inter-caste love or marriage. The objective of this article is to critically engage with the operational aspects of Michel Foucault’s biopolitics of caste system in enforcing endogamy in the marital relationship between two individuals. Caste as a social institution governs every aspect of Dalit’s life, ranging from cradle to graveyard. As such, the increasing incidents of (dis)honour killings, from South India, reflect the idea of endogamy, with the ulterior motto of controlling the sexuality of the Dalits and women, thereby ensuring the purity of the caste Hindu society. Thus, the patriarchy is an inseparable element of caste system in controlling the freedom of women in choosing her partner and it is prevalent in sub-castes of Dalit folds also. The question of discrimination and practice of endogamy within Dalit communities should be addressed in marching towards annihilation of the caste.

This monograph explores in detail the acting persona of Kalabhavan Mani (1971–2016), a prominent film actor of Dalit origin from Kerala, who acted as hero and villain in many south Indian movies. Well known and loved for his singing, acting, mimicking skills, comic anecdotes and spontaneous humour, this actor was never taken as a serious intellectual/thinker by the Kerala mainstream ostensibly because of him being a school dropout. Drawing on Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, a methodological inquiry is made into the casteist dimension of this strategy of framing, real as well as reel, by which the metaphysics of the acting out of laughter and laughing out of acting enacted/embodied by Dalit body/discourse is contained, distorted and nullified.

This review article ponders over the debate on the river Sarasvati’s association with the Harappan civilization through a critical analysis of G. D. Bakshi’s book The Sarasvati Civilization: A Paradigm Shift in Ancient Indian History (2019, Gurugram: Garuda Prakashan). By identifying the Rigvedic river Sarasvati with the now dry Ghaggar-Hakra, scholars like G. D. Bakshi co-relate the Vedic-Aryan culture with the Harappans and, by doing this, they Aryanize the Harappan civilization. Since the Aryans are accepted as the ancestors of the modern Hindus, by locating the origin of the Aryans within India, right-leaning scholars put forth the exclusive claim of the Hindu community over the Indian nation. Contrary to them, the left-liberal scholars endorse the Aryan migration theory, and it allows them to explain the origin of the Indian civilization due to the contribution of different ethnic, linguistic and cultural groups that have had migrated into India from faraway lands. It is argued in this review paper that the Aryan debate is more about politics than academic endeavour, and its primarily focus is on the following question: Who has a righteous claim over the Indian nation?

Amit Ahuja, Mobilizing the Marginalized: Ethnic Parties without Ethnic Movements. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019, 266 pp., ₹550.00 (Paperback). ISBN-13: 9780197529515

Ashoka Kumar Sen, The Making of a Village: The Dynamics of Adivasi Rural Life in India. London and New York, Routledge, 2021, 227, pp., ₹995 (Hardback). ISBN: 978–0–367–37403–7.