Book Review: Life as a Dalit: Views from the Bottom on Caste in India by Subhadra Mitra Channa and Joan P. Mencher (eds.)

Abstract

Subhadra Mitra Channa and Joan P. Mencher (eds.) Life as a Dalit: Views from the Bottom on Caste in India, Sage Publications India, New Delhi, 2013; xl + 438 pp. 9788132111238, 58 [pounds sterling] (hbk) In this book, which constitutes an effective critique of some of the existing views on caste, Channa and Mencher look at caste from the bottom, recognising 'some categories as victims and others as perpetrators of discrimination' (p. xiii). They take a phenomenological stand that 'reality is better understood when constructed out of experience rather than uninvolved observation' (p. xiii). With this in mind, the contributors and editors empathise with the oppressed and the marginal and their essays are directed toward a project of 'recreating selves' (p. xiv). The authors describe and analyse the failure of science, technology and economic globalisation to improve the lives of the oppressed. In this carefully edited handbook, the editors focus on providing a comprehensive overview of the development of a critical social science and a theory that incorporates the voices and visions of those at the bottom. To do so, they have included 21 chapters, excluding the Introduction and Conclusion, divided into four sections. Barring Section Two, 'Doing fieldwork among the Dalits', which includes two chapters, all the sections, including 'Theorizing marginality' (Section One); 'Religion and gender' (Section Three); and 'Fighting the system: Dalit responses to oppression' (Four) are of nearly equal length. Channa provides an introduction entitled 'Looking up at caste: Discrimination in everyday life in India'. In it, headings include 'Social reality of the Indian nation', 'The educational system', 'Dalit scholarship', 'Caste violence: Physical and symbolic', 'The state and Dalits', 'The action on the ground: Protest and dissent', 'Dalit feminism', and 'Universalization of marginalization.' It provides a historical background of Dalit studies, and gives an overview of the subsequent chapters. Channa's essay makes observations and draws inferences from a human rights perspective, and attempts to incorporate the voices and visions of those at the bottom. She claims that Dalits are not regarded as a significant part of Indian society--'neither syllabus nor teaching material' gives them any space in the academic sphere (p. xv). At the political level, she says, 'Dalit leadership is yet to be accepted by the non-Dalit masses' (p. xv). Though she raises the question of social justice, much of her argument is supported by the perspectives of writers and social thinkers such as Vivekanand, Rege and Kothari. She argues that Dalit studies do not form an intrinsic part of any sociology course in Indian universities, and that only one person in the first fifty years following India's Independence made it to the top of the educational hierarchy, namely Sukhdev Thorat. Channa writes that there is substantive literature exploring the realities of Dalit life, and that these realities are varied, ranging from textual norms such as purity and pollution to issues including suffering and marginalisation. She states that a critical approach to Hinduism began during colonial rule, under the leadership of Phule and Periyar in the 19th century, and that the followers of the Ramakrishna Mission, including Vivekananda, 'do not overtly believe in caste' (p. xxi). She questions the data produced by agencies such as the National Sample Survey Organization for ignoring the ground-level realities of caste inequalities in post-Independence India. In 'Reinterpreting theory from a bottom-up perspective', she writes that sociologists in India were preoccupied with 'the structural relevance of caste ignoring its lived realities, anthropological studies with greater orientation'. She believes that Mencher's paper sets a new trend of looking at the bottom-up perspective of caste with a reflexive methodology. Channa claims that the purity and pollution of Dalits is quite different from that of the upper castes. …