Caste Violence Research Articles

Irreparable Damage: Violence, Ownership, and Voice in an Indian Archive

This paper uses a 2004 destructive incident at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) in Pune, India as a case study to discuss the intersection of caste politics, ownership, and violence in the archives. After a brief overview of the events leading up to, during, and subsequent to the violent destruction of archival documents by an angry lower caste mob, this paper provides the historical context necessary to analyze issues of ownership, politics, and colonialism within the context of a South Asian library, keeping in mind the complex interplay of religion, region, and caste in India. The paper then explores this incident from an archival studies perspective, looking at archives as both sites of violence and as cultural and political symbols, and explores how issues of ownership, political pressure, and access, if not properly addressed, can boil over into violent destruction of the archival record. Finally, this paper argues that violent incidents such as the one described can occur outside of the Indian context, in almost any archival setting, and concludes with recommendations on how to avoid future destruction in archival repositories.

The ‘Righteous Anger’ of the PowerlessInvestigating Dalit Outrage over Caste Violence

This contribution brings to our attention a Dalit (‘untouchable’) protest movement against caste violence (the 2006 Khairlanji massacre). Although anger is supposedly an emotion used in an open and demonstrative manner by the powerful as a means to enact their domination, the Dalit movement engaged in acts of ‘emotion work’ that upset such a social mapping of emotions. The paper engages critically with the sterile and biased concept of ‘axiological neutrality’ and advocates instead the heuristic possibilities enabled by the ethnographers’ personal exposure to the emotion work performed by social movements. The protest’s ideological stance illustrates the politically marginalised Dalits’ appropriation of democratic conceptions through the language of injustice and outrage. Two different sets of actors involved in the protest are distinguished: human rights and progressive activists of the peasant NGO movement on the one hand, and the local anti-caste movement of Dalits on the other. The distinct kinds of emotion work each set of actors performed, and the framing of the massacre as an outrage to moral values, highlights how, in the mobilisation for Dalit rights, the popular language of communal outrage and the language of democratic rights articulate with and support one another.

Caste and class violence in central Bihar: restructuring social order towards reconciliation

Caste and class violence in central Bihar: restructuring social order towards reconciliation

Searching for Peace in Central and South Asia: An Overview of Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding Activities. Edited by Monique Mekenkamp, Paul von Tongeren, and Hans van de Veen. Boulder, Colo. and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002. xiv, 665 pp . $65.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

Introduction. Reflections. Contemporary Conflict Resolution in Asia. Reflections on September 11. Positive Stories of Peacebuilding. Lessons Learned in Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding. Central Asia. Regional Introduction. Policy Options for Conflict Prevention and Resolution. Conflicts over Resources. Religion and Conflict in Central Asia. Conflict Surveys: Afghanistan Ferghana Valley Tajikistan Uzbekistan. South Asia. Nonofficial Dialogues and Conflict Management Activities. Confidence-building Measures. Border Conflicts and Territorial Disputes. The Influence of the Demographic Picture and Migration Flows on Regional Conflicts. Water-related Conflicts. Religion and Conflict in South Asia. Multiculturalism in India. Secularism and Communalism in India. The Caste System and Caste Violence. Rising Demands for Autonomy in India. Conflict Surveys: Bangladesh (the Chittagong Hills Tracts) India (the Naxalites the Senas conflicts in the northeast) Jammu and Kashmir Nepal (the Maoists) Pakistan (the Sindhi-Mohajir Conflict Sunnis and Shi'ites) Sri Lanka. Directory. Profiles of approximately 150 central and south Asian NGOs involved in conflict prevention and peacebuilding, organized by country, as well as information on government agencies and international networks and organizations.

The role of caste in prostitution

The caste system prevalent in Indian society has never been studied with respect to its role in prostitution. This critical and analytical study of the role of caste in prostitution in India is the result of over thirty years of observation both within the institution of prostitution, that is, in its ‘internal’ relationships; and outside the institution in the ‘external’ relationships which create violence in the lives of prostitutes in India. The caste system which plays a major role in the life of Indians has a role in prostitution yet this issue remains unexplored by scholars. Even when focusing on Scheduled Caste women, amongst whom most prostitutes number, the issue treated has been mainly that of economics, rather than those of culture and violence in their lives. The scope of study is restricted to women and girls alone, in keeping with the focus of the services of the Good Shepherd sisters (of whom the author is one) throughout the world. Under the prevailing caste system people are stratified into groups and the relationships among them is specified. The Scheduled Caste is one of the groups that exist outside the caste system in India and it numbers 138.2 million (Census India 1991). This study is based on three pairs of dichotomous concepts: the ‘Upper Castes’(the ‘pure’) and the Scheduled Castes (the ‘impure’); the males (the ‘supreme’ gender) and the females (the ‘inferior’ gender); male sexuality contextualized as the ‘human sexuality’ and female sexuality conceptualized as ‘good’ and ‘evil’ with dual perception. It indicates how persons are casteized, genderized and sexualized in the Indian society. It highlights parallels between the Upper Castes’ domination (concentration and exercise of power) over the Scheduled Castes (or the ‘Untouchables’) and between the lower position held by the Scheduled Castes and their experience of violence in Indian society. The data of my study consists of that gathered by interviewing prostitutes in specific surveys (three studies from 1983-90) and also from my practical experience of working with women and girls in prostitution for two decades (1962-82). The analysis of prostitution is set against the accepted wisdom which perceive the entry of all women and girls into prostitution for economic reasons, and against the Indian situation in which the country still faces the problems of dehumanized Scheduled Castes and grinding poverty. To see prostitution as a consequence of economic necessity, though accepted in many societies, remains controversial in the context of Indian society. In some societies prostitution is a form of labour and the economic cause is argued on the basis of financial autonomy, self-determination and occupation of choice for women. This study takes the stance that economic arguments alone are not universally acceptable and are generally not appropriate to the whole range of the entry of Scheduled Caste women and girls in prostitution in India. My study attempts to fill the gap left by previous studies by using my experience and an evaluation of a sample of women and girls in prostitution from various cultural backgrounds to illustrate the effectiveness of culture and violence in the lives of Indian prostitutes. The caste structure not only stratifies the Indian society, but also defines status, relationships and sexuality. This has major implications for the issues of power and violence between groups as they relate to one another. There exists a web of relationships between culture-violence-power that uses culture to mask violence; the 'internal'-'external' relationships which involve controlling and rejecting assimilation of prostitutes in the mainstream of life in society creating violence; the bond of friendship between the Upper Caste/Class men and women in the prostitute world which leads to exploitation of the Scheduled Caste women and girls; the exploitation of women by women for their survival; the role of caste and the dynamics of culture that contribute to the perpetuation of prostitution in India. The upper caste/class clients forming the first clients and patrons to exploit the girls, the caste/class nexus characterized by accumulation of power, and domination and subordination, and the strategy adopted for the diffusion of the Scheduled Caste violence (i.e. retaliation of the Scheduled Castes for exploiting their women and girls by the Upper Castes) which makes the Scheduled Caste girl into a ‘sacrificial victim’ in Indian society. These form the major findings of this study.

Riot After Riot

One of the great paradoxes of the modern world is that India, the land that produced such major world religions as Buddhism Jainism is now torn apart by caste and communal violence. Pakistan and Sri Lanka, like India, face severe ethnic problems. Law and order are to be emphasized. Caste and community must be protected by the executive branch of the Indian Government. This bas been laid down in the rules framed by the legislative branch. When this is not done there is a breakdown. No one is safe and no group is secure. In India today this is clearly the case. This book by M. J. Akbar is a collection of 15 journalistic pieces, written for Akbar's newspaper and magazine, The Telegraph and Sunday over the last decade. Because it is journalism, the important "burning" issues are covered such as the Moradabad massacre in 1980, the slaughter of the Uttar Pradesh Harijans in 1981 and the ongoing Babri Masjid controversey. It is journalism, but the writing is of high quality and evocative: "It is early morning and a mist lies on the river, making the pre-dawn haze more blurred. A part of the Howrah Bridge looms through the gauze, like a picture deliberately created by a photographer in search of art. The fires are out." (p. 170) Akbar's material is hard, brittle, compelling stuff. He writes with the passion of the committed and his commitments are to secularism, to humanity, to the truth, as he sees it, on the ground. Here, a brief account of Dr. Akbar's cultural background seems appropriate: He was born in 1951 and has become the English-speaking voice of post-Midnight's Children of India. The significance of post 1947 independence as a dividing line is generally not fully appreciated. Missing is the literary, sentimental romanticism of the earlier Indian generation of writers. Don Moraes and Ved Mehta already appear as dated figures of the past. Their India is another country. In Akbar's background there is no punting on English rivers, laboring at Oxford intonations, getting drunk after the Oxford-Cambridge boat race nor leisurely reading of the English romantic poets on the banks of the Cam. Akbar lives in the urban nightmare of Calcutta and in his nostrils is the smell of burning flesh and rotting corpses. Missing, though he is aware of the loss, is the romantic vision of Nehru and the religious idealism of Gandhi. Akbar is an Indian writing with a white-hot pen for Indians of today's India ...