Contemporary Voice of Dalit

This article conceptualizes identity-mediated psychosocial disability of socially excluded individuals and groups from a socio-behavioural perspective. It postulates collective representations, inequitable social interactions and personal characteristics that lead to perception and internalization of negative identity in members of stigmatized groups. Non-dominant identity induces self-imposed and society-ascribed psychosocial disability through stigmatization and discrimination. Psychosocial disability is a state where individual or collective sense of incapacity restricts optimal use of individual and collective human agency to influence out-groups favourably to achieve self-expansion and communal expansion. The aspects of psychosocial disability include poor self-concept, low ethnic self-esteem, negatively internalized identity, poor social integration and conflicts in social relations. It results in psychosocial disability that further increases social exclusion, reduces quality of life and well-being. This article concludes that socially excluded individuals and groups experience psychosocial disability in everyday life.

India, along with its civilizational heritage, also has a lot of social problems such as caste and gender discriminations. Various movements, both religious and social (like Buddhism, Jainism or Bhakti), tried to eradicate these in ancient and medieval India, but they continued to exist even in colonial India. However, it was only during the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that sustained efforts were made to address these issues against the backdrop of colonial modernity and the national narrative. Jyotirao Phule and Gandhi were two of those who tried to deconstruct and analyze caste and gender discriminations. They had their visions of a free, egalitarian Indian society. Although both agreed on the need of transforming society, yet there were divergences in their approaches towards these issues. While Phule concentrated his efforts on the betterment of status of women in Maharashtra only, Gandhi visualized women from a national perspective.

Modernity, urbanization and education are thought to be the instruments that would cut across both social and gender barriers and usher in an egalitarian society. However, Jyotirao Phule and M.K. Gandhi thought differently about the role of education and level of empowerment of women in the society. The article aims to bring out several such convergences and divergences in the philosophies of these leaders and tries to situate them in the historical and social contexts. This article will also discuss the efforts of the two reformers in ameliorating the conditions of women.

Social justice is the spirit and vision of the Indian Constitution. It is the duty of the state to secure a social order in which the legal system of the nation promotes justice on the basis of equal opportunity and, in particular, ensures that opportunities for securing justice are not denied to any citizen by reason of economic or other disabilities. This article makes an attempt to explore Ambedkar’s ideas on social justice. Thereafter, it focuses on Ambedkar’s struggles and ideas on social justice in the Indian context and it finally explores the relevance of his mission for social justice in the present times.

The poor and marginalized women in India have not just experienced the inequalities of class and gender but also of caste and religion. Since most of them are employed informally, they are further exposed to job-related insecurities. The article intends to identify these women at the bottom of the Indian society and to understand their historical and current challenges. In the first section, it explores some major intersections of inequalities and disadvantages that these women face, attempting to understand their differences and commonalities. It is found that these women predominantly belong to dalit, tribal or Muslim communities. These women face unique struggles, owing to their different community identities. These challenges and their historical background are explored in the second section of the article. In addition, they face certain common challenges owing to their gender and the informal nature of their occupation, which is addressed in the third section. The article discusses their common and unique concerns through an exploration of various theoretical frameworks and gives a comprehensive overview of the subject. It underscores that the informal employment in India cannot be addressed without fully grasping the intertwined issues of caste, religion, community or gender.

This article discusses the construction of Adi-Dravida identity through print by the Indian migrant dalits in Colombo during the early twentieth century. The Adi-Dravidas started a monthly journal ‘Adi-Dravidan’ in 1919 to propagate the new identity of Adi-Dravida and consolidate the people for social emancipation. The article analyzes the politics of identity construction of the dalits through print media in the colonial period.

This article focuses on an unexplored domain of Dalit literature that was composed in colonial Bengal, both in the Bengali and English languages. After critically analyzing the contents and arguments of writings of the Scheduled Castes of Bengal, this article confirms that they (the Scheduled Castes) had raised their voice against social injustice and discrimination that they faced from the dominants/elites. The author has broadly classified their writings into three categories: (a) caste-oriented writings, (b) creative literary works and (c) autobiography (biography). The writings of first group had announced a ‘respectable identity’ of the Scheduled Castes by rejecting the traditional interpretations of origin and growth of caste. Creative writings have depicted the deplorable social condition of the Scheduled Castes and raised serious questions against injustice/discrimination and exploitation. Autobiographies on the other hand have recorded the experience of casteism of the Scheduled Castes as well as their struggle for survival. All these features of the article have established the hypothesis that the Scheduled Castes can read and write!

The caste-based stratification of society adversely affected the equality of educational opportunities to the disadvantage of the groups like Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs), as they were engaged in traditional family occupations, which did not require any kind of formal education or special training. This situation persisted through the ages and the depressed classes continued to be deprived of educational opportunities, which were controlled by the upper castes. In this context, the present article aims to compare educational status of SCs at upper primary stage with non-SCs in government and private schools in Visakhapatnam and East Godavari districts in coastal region of Andhra Pradesh.

The article seeks to place SCs vis-à-vis non-SCs in terms of gender issue among students in class; management of the school; transport facilities for schools; drinking water and toilet facilities as well as other infrastructure facilities and scope of implementation of welfare schemes, etc., in both government and private schools in the given area.

It is observed that there is not much difference between SCs and non-SCs in respect of admissions, hostel facilities, library facilities, computer facilities, etc., for the students studying in the government schools. However, they were not adequate to cover all the SCs aspiring to study and that often resulted in students (about 33 per cent) seeking admission in private schools. Importantly, the SC students in government schools could avail the scholarships, freeships like books, school uniforms, etc., but this facility is not available to the SCs studying in private schools.

Thus, there is a need for the government to take appropriate and immediate decision to improve the educational opportunities of SCs in private schools also.

Tribal population is known for its rich culture. Over the past few decades, the developmental approach towards the tribes has been influencing their culture in such a way that these tribes are losing their rich cultural elements. Many of the policies and acts have taken them to the process of homogenization, thereby resulting in the loss of the knowledge systems that prevailed, and were practiced, among this population. Here, the researchers try to bring about the case of Baiga community in Chhattisgarh and the reason as to how their medicinal practices—the benchmark of this tribe—changed due to the policies and acts such as The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, Development-induced Displacement and other centre and state provisions. The researchers have adopted case study method. The cases were 10 Baiga villages in Bilaspur that are displaced and resettled from the present Achanakmar Wildlife Sanctuary area. Semi-structured interview schedule, focused group discussion and observation are used to collect the information. The study indicates that medicinal practices are almost getting lost from the community. The transformation of the knowledge system has not effectively occurred. The lifestyle outside the forest habitat with the general population is influenced by the policies and provisions of the central and state governments. It is visible in the form of changing dependency from their medicinal system to government-sponsored or private-sponsored health care services, dependency on the food provisions under below poverty line (BPL) scheme rather than the self-reliance they had.

In the following article, I have attempted to foreground the anti-caste or dalit consciousness of the novel Titash Ekti Nadir Naam by Adwaita Mallabarman. It is done in order to resist those readings or adaptations or interpretations of the text that have overlooked its radical content. I have looked at three aspects of the novel: the use of the folk, the question of emotionality and the relationship between spatiality and dalit identity formation. The article also delineates the kind of subject that emerges with the denouement of the novel. It is an interventionist reading of sorts that seeks to place the novel and the author in their socio-historical context. However, the essay does not engage in an anachronistic dalit critic and faults the text for the ‘absence’ of certain tropes or aesthetics that are considered to be typical of dalit writing.

Manohar Mouli Biswas, Surviving in my world: Growing up Dalit in Bengal (Translated from the Bengali and Edited by Angana Dutta and Jaydeep Sarangi), Kolkata: Samya, 2015, ₹ 350, 125 + xxx pp., ISBN 978-93-81315-09-2.

Jaydeep Sarangi (Ed.), Subaltern Speaks: Selected Essays on Sharankumar Limbale, Allahabad: Cyberwit. net, 2014, 174 pp., ₹ 300, ISBN 978-81-8253-572-5.