Humanising the subaltern: unbounded caste and the limits of a rights regime

Abstract

This article critically explores the implications of the recent turn to transnational efforts in activism that seeks to counter caste-based discrimination. In particular, it analyses the consequences of mobilising a concept of caste that is sufficiently expansive to accommodate occupation- and descent-based discrimination globally, and which primarily frames caste in terms of human rights. To what extent is it possible to maintain a nuanced conceptualising of caste and of what it means to occupy the margins of the caste system, if efforts to influence the workings of global governance institutions divest caste of its regional and local distinctiveness? The article demonstrates how, even though Dalit (‘untouchable’) activists have been successful in bringing attention to caste as a global concern, present endeavours, on the one hand, reinforce the marginalised identity that they seek to overcome and, on the other, fail to recognise the diversity and situated-ness of the Dalit experience.