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.

Caste Discrimination and Minority Rights: The Case of India's Dalits

Abstract: India's Dalits (formerly known as Untouchables) number around 167 million or one-sixth of India's population. Despite constitutional and legislative prohibitions of Untouchability and discrimination on grounds of caste they continue to suffer caste-based discrimination and violence. Internationally, caste discrimination has been affirmed since 1996 by the UN committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination as a form of racial discrimination prohibited by the Inter national Convention for the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, and since 2000 as a form of discrimination prohibited by international human rights law. India's Dalits have also pursued minority rights and indigenous peoples' approaches before international forums. Yet the Dalits do not readily meet the internationally-agreed criteria for minorities or for indigenous peoples, while in India they are not classified legally as a minority, enjoying a constitutional status and constitutional protections in the form of affirmative action provisions distinct from those groups classified as minorities. This article is concerned with the characterisation of the Dalits in international and Indian law. In particular it focuses on India's provisions on Dalits and minorities respectively, examining the origins and limitations of the Scheduled Caste category (the constitutional term for the Dalits) and the relationship between Scheduled Caste status and religion. The article addresses arguments for the extension of Scheduled Caste status to Muslim and Christian Dalits (currently excluded from the constitutional category on grounds of religion) and concludes by endorsing calls for re-examination of the domestic legal categories encompassing victims of caste discrimination and of the legal strategies for the elimination of such discrimination, while arguing that internationally caste discrimination might be more effectively addressed by the conceptualisation of caste as a sui generis ground of discrimination as in India.

Low caste but middle-class: Some religious strategies for middle- class identification in Hyderabad:

Abstract: This article examines some religious means that socio-economically mobile low caste families use to identify themselves as 'middle-class people' in an urban setting in the south Indian city of Hyderabad. Special attention is paid to the situation of ex-Untouchables whose religious strategies, through partly specific to them, nevertheless reveal tendencies that are general among low caste Hindus in urban areas. The portrait of an ex-Untouchable family in Hyderabad and the arrangement of the ritual of Sri Satya Narayana wratam illuminates the Hindu religious strategies that they consider pivotal in the acquisition of social respectability. Although low caste middle-class people share certain of the cultural concep tions of the wider Indian (and Hindu) scene, they interpret ritualistic Hinduism in a non hegemonic frame, emphasising features that may differ radically from the ideologically dominant version of cultural competence. The article shows that new middle-class people seek to create a 'middle-class Hi...

Voice to the Voiceless: The Power of People's Theatre in India

Abstract: From early times, theatre in India has addressed social issues. Folk-theatre publicly admonishes evil-doers, and in the 19th century it raised popular consciousness against British rule. As the independence movement grew, many plays risked censorship. Founded in 1941, the Indian People's Theatre Association developed rural audiences, while the street theatre movement evolved from the explosion of radical political theatre in the late 1940s, dramatising capitalist and caste exploitation. The Indian government has used plays for public education on themes like birth control and the use of fertilisers.

Keeping Up with the Vaishyas: Caste and Relative Standing

Abstract: We investigate the importance of relative income within the Indian Caste system, using a choice experiment We find that slightly more than half of the marginal utility of income comes from some kind of relative income effects, on average, which is comparable to the results from previous studies in other countries Belonging to a low caste and having a low family income are associated with higher concern for relative income Moreover, an increase in the mean income of the caste to which the individual belongs, everything else held constant, reduces utility for the individual Thus, the negative welfare effect of reduced relative income compared to the average own caste income dominates the positive welfare effect of increased relative income of the own caste relative to other castes

Mangala Bansode and the Social Life of Tamasha: Caste, Sexuality, and Discrimination in Modern Maharashtra

Abstract: Over the past three decades there has been an increasing academic interest in the field of popular culture and cultural studies. However, in the Indian context there is little study about the popular practices of caste-based cultural forms and sexual labor. Most significantly, scholars have rarely considered the so-called "immoral" and "vulgar" "folk art" of Tamasha (folk theater) and the lives of Tamasgiranchya (Tamasha performers) worthy of systematic analyses. In this essay, I deploy the oral history and life narrative of a Dalit Tamasgir woman, Mangalatai Bansode, to examine the hitherto unexplored potentials and problems of intimate and interlocking technologies of "deviant" sexuality, labor, and struggle for survival; the community's social, cultural, and political battles; private and public patriarchy; and Maharashtra state's politics regarding "folk culture." I provide micro-level details of Tamasgiranchya's historical experiences of poverty, hunger, education or the lack thereof, occupation, and the strategic deployment of khandani business, body politics, and sexual economy of erotic excess. I unravel how ruling elites both in colonial and postcolonial periods constructed Tamasha as a despised form of hereditary performance, and how Tamasgir women have had to struggle constantly to preserve their honor within and without the Dalit community, enhance their social status, and earn their family's livelihood. Ironically, Tamasha continues to be a degraded form of performance that has provided possibilities and power, however limited, to some women.