Contemporary Voice of Dalit

The primary data were collected from 927 Dalit woman labour households belonging to all the three geographical regions of Punjab (India) to analyse the asset structure of these households. The study revealed that a Dalit woman labour household had assets worth ₹128,750.98. Out of the total value of assets, 90.81% were durable assets and the remaining 9.19% were livestock assets. All the respondent households were found landless. The ratio of debt to household assets was found to be 0.41 which indicates that 41% of the household assets would be needed to pay off their current debt. More than 70% of the total value of durable assets was swallowed only by the dwelling house. Most of the durable items in these households were found useless, old and broken. Actually, the relatively rich households of the village used to give them these already used items in order to seek their cheap or free labour.

Over the years many efforts were made to improve the status of financial inclusion of people. Financial inclusion measures access and usage of financial products such as deposits, loans, insurance products and quality of financial services. Financial inclusion is the process of providing financial services to the people who are outside the formal financial system. High levels of financial inclusion improve economic development and equitable distribution of wealth. This study focuses on status of financial inclusion among Dalit women in Kancheepuram district of Tamil Nadu. It was found that education level of the people; government initiatives such as general credit card, Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana; satisfaction of the self-help group model; financial practices and financial literacy were positively and significantly associated with financial inclusion. Usage of non-bank agencies and cultural barriers were negative and insignificant.

Ozhivudivasathe Kali is a 2003 Malayalam short story written by Unni R. which shot into limelight with the release of the Kerala State Award winning film with the same title by Sanal K. Sasidharan. As the title suggests, the story recounts an ‘off-day game’ played by four middle-aged men in a dingy lodge. The drunken revelry soon turns into a cruel game exposing the fissures that exist under the guise of equality and acceptance. It echoes Golding’s Lord of the Flies and is a scathing and unsettling expose of the Kerala mindscape where Dalits still continue to be considered less human. A deadly game where the victim is ruthlessly hounded and finally killed for his ‘fault’ of being different, the story is arresting for its foreboding tone, given the way reality is shaping out all over the world these days where being the ‘other’ is an invitation to harassment and even decimation.

Though popular culture is celebrated among people across the country, the admiration for folklore and performing arts is very limited. In the domain of folklore, performing art forms are categorized and stratified based on ‘who is performing it’ or ‘who is eligible to perform’ with a benchmark of the social status of purity and pollution. This article discusses and reflects the dilution of casteism and fabricated caste identities and prejudices in oppari, ancient folklore and a musical dirge song performed in Tamil Nadu, which is considered as a polluted, discriminated cultural outcome and custom to be performed and etched with people belonging to oppressed classes in society. It also keeps a close lens and discussion on change in oppari, the role of casteism and its revamp in the contemporary scenario and sociocultural aspects of oppari within the realm of caste and performance.

The period between colonialism and the twenty-first century gives horrible glimpses of temple entry and the violence attached with that. Keeping temple entry as an important issue in mind, here, the article reveals the social exclusion and the cultural subjugation of the Dalits since the colonial period to the present day. Dalits in the colonial period and also in present day are denied their social and religious rights in Hindu religion. The right to enter the temple is a fundamental right of a citizen in a religion like Hinduism. Among the various issues that Dalits have voiced since the colonial period, the issue of temple entry along with untouchability is one of the most important. It is not only a matter of excuse that Dalits till the present day (after seven decades of India’s independence) are not allowed to enter inside the temple in some rural areas of the country. The temple entry bill and the legislations have also been adopted by the princely states and the Parliament of India in different times, but still, Dalits are not allowed to enter the Hindu temples even in various parts of India, for instance, in the Kendrapara district of Odisha. As temple entry is an important issue for Dalits as well as for upper caste Hindus in social and religious life, it is pertinent to revisit the historiography of temple entry movements including the contemporary movements which remain important in religious, social and academic spheres. With the aforementioned backdrop, the article first provides a synoptic view on the historiography of Dalit movements in India and on ‘the Gandhi–Ambedkar debate on caste, untouchability and the issue of temple entry’ as a background for the study, and the latter sections thoroughly explores the historicity of temple entry movements and the social exclusion and cultural subjugation inherited with it since the colonial period to the present day. The article also provides a particular section on the temple entry movement in Odisha (2005–2006) which is based on the empirical works of the author and examines the issue in a critical lens with observations and findings.

Every thread of caste and occupation in India is intrinsically linked to the migration patterns. Migration of the upper caste is more of an economic, while the lower castes are both social and economic. Differential distribution of resources deprived the Dalits, reduced them to degraded social status. To escape from the clutches of caste discrimination, Dalits migrated to different places. In this context, this study unravels the lived experiences and socio-economic changes among the Odia Dalit migrant workers in Hyderabad city and how they reconstruct their identities in the urban landscape, reasons leaving their home, challenges, and difficulties in new social space. The study employed a qualitative research approach assisted by in-depth interviews and informal discussions. Hyderabad city is chosen for this study, as it attracts migrant workers across the country, and a majority of the Odia migrants are found working in different industrial sectors. Study shows migration offered an opportunity not only in economic and employment spheres but also in the socio-cultural spheres. The city gives a space to escape from caste discrimination, and significantly improved their lifestyle but fear psychosis of caste identity is prevalent. To escape their Dalit identity, they identify themselves as other backward classes (OBCs) or Khandayat. Improvement in economic life has little impact on the social structure. Migration brings wealth but not the alteration in caste structure. Methodologically and conceptually, the study contributes to the knowledge of the lived experience of the Odia Dalit migrants in city space, how they identify themselves, and how they make sense of themselves and others, and how Hyderabad shapes their experiences.

Iyothee Thass (1845–1914), a forgotten Dalit activist, has become part of serious academic discussions in the recent times. Various studies had been carried out, such as I. Thass as a Dalit journalist; I. Thass as a Forerunner of Buddhist Renaissance in the Tamil region and I. Thass as an anti-caste activist. This article analyses Thass’ articles related to Christianity. These articles can roughly be classified into two categories: articles that are exegetical (explaining the Biblical passages/events/personalities) and articles that are critical of the institution of the Church and its mission. The analysis of all the articles on Christianity reveals that Thass emerges both as a strong critic of Christianity in India, specially its adaptation of caste in its Indian version and a Buddhist exegete who could explain the whole Bible as a veiled doctrine of Buddhism.

Social democracy demands existence of freedom, equality, justice and solidarity among masses. Doyens like John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx decrypted the social inequalities that deprived people of human rights. Dr B. R. Ambedkar, being the most influential figure vis-à-vis social democracy in Indian context, voiced the deprived status of Dalits. Inspired by John Dewey’s idea of social endosmosis, he concluded that education can help to dissolve the rigid boundaries of caste. He also vociferously advocated education for Dalits to erase the status quo of being a society’s underbelly and overcome the quotidian humiliations. Discourses on Dalits since then have converged to an infectious expansive debate on the concomitant subjugated status of Dalits in the Indian social structure. Many Dalits have procured agency through education and have been vociferously voicing the subjugated position of Dalits in the cultural apparatus of caste. Bama is one such educated Dalit woman who has laid bare through her writings the complexities existing in a Dalit’s life. Her autobiography invocates Dalits to empower themselves through education and transgress the rigid boundaries of caste. The article examines her vision of Dalits’ emancipation vis-à-vis Ambedkar’s notion of social democracy.

It is evidently seen that the history of religion has gone through various historical trajectories, such as conflicts and appropriation, spread and conversion, individual change and social transformation. In the recent history of conversion, Dr Ambedkar’s mass conversion to Buddhism is one of the important cultural phenomena in India. In this article, I intend to discuss the social–cultural context of Dr B. R. Ambedkar’s historical public conversion from Hinduism to Buddhism in 1956 at Nagpur, Maharashtra. Further, I argue that Dr Ambedkar’s conversion to Buddhism was an attempt of replacement of the ‘common sense’ of historically humiliated and stigmatized ‘untouchable’ castes. It was an attempt of the restructuring and culturalization of the untouchable castes through rejecting the ‘coercion’ and ‘consent’ of the hegemonic structure of caste Hindu cultural authority, which was functional as a culture authority and social power. I argue that Dr Ambedkar’s religious conversion was an attempt to establish the epistemological separation and formulation of social ontology through the cultural imagination of ‘ex-communicated’ castes with the refusal of the ideology of ‘pure and impure’.

All human beings are inherently motivated for self-improvement and growth. People tend to respond diversely in the face of adversity, from succumbing and recovering to remaining resilient and thrive. The present narrative review is not an exhaustive review of the existing literature on thriving but is an informed effort to add to the adolescent thriving discourse within the conceptual background of social marginality in the Indian context. This review thus defines and summarizes perspectives, determinants and assessment of thriving. It also discusses the interaction between social marginality, adversity and adolescences. Finally, this review discusses the opportunities opened by the new National Education Policy 2020 for thriving interventions and research.

Rup Kumar Barman, Paribarta Anusandhan: Rashtra, Nagarikatta, Bastuchyuti O Itihascharcha. Gangchil, 2022, 170 pp. ₹450 (Hardback), ISBN: 978-93-93569-38-7.

Ghanshyam Shah, Kanak Kanti Bagchi and Vishwanatha Kalaiah (Eds.), Education and Caste in India: The Dalit Question (South Asia Edition). Routledge, 2020, 232 pp., ₹995 (Hardcover). ISBN: 978-0-367-74943-9.

Akhila Naik, Bheda (Translated by Raj Kumar) (Oxford University Press, 2017), 108 pp. ₹495 (paperback). ISBN-13:978-0-19-947607-7