Caste

About: Caste is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 5681 publications have been published within this topic receiving 91330 citations. The topic is also known as: caste system.

Politics and the state in India

Abstract: Examining the processes of state formation and consolidation, and the erosion of the post-colonial state, this book highlights three themes: the constraints of modernization; the contradictory logic of modernization vis-a-vis assertive political identities; and the politics of the governed and the battle for equal status at the level of the state. It sees the present crisis of the Indian state as a direct result of the post-colonial state's inability to grapple with the social and multicultural realities of the Indian polity, thus making way for various religious, caste and regional frictions to surface.

The flaming feet and other essays : the Dalit movement in India

Abstract: In this volume of sixteen essays, D.R. Nagaraj, the foremost non-Brahmin intellectual to emerge from India's non-English-speaking world, presents his vision of the Indian caste system in relation to Dalit politics - the Dalit being a self-designation for many groups in the lower castes of India. Nagaraj argues that the Dalit movement rejected the traditional Hindu world and thus dismissed untouchable pasts entirely; but he believes rebels, too, require cultural memory. Their emotions of bewilderment, rage, and resentment can only be transcended via a politics of affirmation. Nagaraj theorizes the caste system as a mosaic of disputes about dignity, religiosity, and entitlement. Examining moments of caste defiance, he argues for a politics of cultural affirmation and creates a new cultural identity for Dalits. More significantly, he argues against self-pity and rage in artistic imagination and for recreating the banished worlds of gods and goddesses. Nagaraj's importance lies in consolidating and advancing some of the ideas of India's leading Dalit thinker and icon, B.R. Ambedkar. He suggests an inclusivist framework to build an alliance of all the oppressed communities of India.

Varṇas in Angkor and the Indian Caste System

Abstract: “In order to decide whether one can speak of a caste system in a society, one must ask: are status and power completely dissociated, can one find the equivalent of a Brahman/Ksatriya relationship? This question, though it may appear improper, has the virtue of immediately fixing a limit to Indian influence in South-East Asia. Important as this influence has been from the cultural and even social point of view, it would seem, roughly speaking, that nowhere in Indochina and Indonesia has the king been dispossessed of his religious prerogatives.”This claim concerns the important question of the degree to which the Indian caste system can be, or has been, exported—a question that elicits deep-rooted and contentious problems inhering in our understanding of the nature of the caste system itself. Two propositions may here be identified and distinguished. The first is that, in India, kings—however powerful politically—did not formally possess religious or ritual authority; whereas in Indochina, however weak they were, kings formally possessed religious as well as political prerogatives. This is the contention cited above. The second is that, the first being true, it is also true that in Indochina kings possessed and exercised a degree of real control over social organization, by virtue of their ritual position (which was foreign to India): they were social engineers. In brief, they were oriental despots. The first proposition does not entail the second, but the two tend to go together; many writers have shown an inclination to accept the second, sometimes on the evidence of the first, sometimes on the evidence of facts about Indochinese kingdoms.

Bonds lost: Subordination, conflict, and mobilisation in rural South India, c. 1900-1970

Abstract: Based on a variety of governement and mission sources and actual field work, the author analyses the changing agrarian and social relations and mobilisations among scheduled caste agricultural labourers in the highlands in western Tamil Nadu between c.1900 and 1970.

Nation, Civil Society and Social Movements: Essays in Political Sociology

Abstract: Introduction The Themes PART ONE: NATION, RELIGION AND LANGUAGE Conceptualising Nation and Nationality in South Asia New Nationalisms and Collective Rights The Case of South Asia Religious Nationalism and Democratic Polity in India An Untenable Linkage Language and Nation For a Cultural Renewal of India PART TWO: CIVIL SOCIETY, STATE AND GOVERNANCE State, Civil Society and Market in India Gradual Autonomisation Civil Society Religion, Caste and Language in India Civil Society and Good Governance in India The Pre-Requisites Civil Society and the Deprived The Relevance of Perspective from Below PART THREE: MOVEMENTS, POLICIES AND MODERNITIES Movements and Policies A Misplaced Polarity in Social Research Social Movements in the Three Worlds A Comparative Perspective Social Movements in the Third World Some Specificities Multiple Modernities and the Rise of New Social Movements The Case of India