From Traditional to Modern Atrocities: Has Caste Changed in Independent India?

Abstract

Committing atrocities is as inherent to caste as caste is to Hinduism. Maintaining these values by enacting atrocities on castes lower in the strata, combined with socio-economic-political developments, has massively changed the essence of caste in independent India. These developments have led to a ‘de-ritualization of caste’, persisting as a ‘kinship-based cultural community’—still stratified but functioning around politics and economics. This transition is in contrast to the tradition-rooted practices and ideology of pre-and colonial India. However, have caste atrocities changed since India’s independence? This article will showcase these post-independence social transitions in anti-Dalit atrocities despite and due to legal provisions formulated during and immediately after the colonial-era, and the economic reforms in post-colonial India. I argue that the caste system has deteriorated post-independence with an increase in the number of atrocities and their gruesomeness. This is explained through Anupama Rao’s assessment of legal provisions, Smiti Sharma’s analysis of the correlation between economic status and caste-based crimes and their effects, and lastly, Anand Teltumbde’s analysis of transformations in the motivations of crimes, perpetrators and performance of atrocities. Quantitative data is used to illustrate the failure of legal provisions in preventing the rising violence against Dalits and the growing economic disparity between different castes as one of its causes. A qualitative analysis of these developments assesses the changing social attitudes of dominant castes that use violence against ‘Dalit assertion’. Unpacking the 2009 Khairlanji massacre is pertinent to my analysis of atrocity to reveal all these sides of caste violence and the contributions of state, civil society, media and other institutions in its wake.