Lower Castes Research Articles

ASSESSING THE MARGINALIZED CHILDREN AFTER THE PANDEMIC: A SURVEY OF JAUNPUR DISTRICT

Caste and marginalization of certain downtrodden communities are inter-linked. The lower castes are the most vulnerable to any natural or man-made disasters. The pandemic had similar effects on the Dalits and their children. This article is an overview of the Dalits children after the two years of pandemic, primarily it had analysed their school dropouts and their health.

Depiction of Caste Annihilation and Class Abrogation in Mulk Raj Anand’s UNTOUCHABLE and COOLIE

Since civilization has started caste system based on profession not by birth. Later on it turns into a power game and the whole human society were divided into four varnas. Manusmriti, widely regarded to be the important and authoritative book on Hindu law and dating back to at least 1000 years before Christ was born ‘‘acknowledges and justifies the caste system as the basis of order and regularity of society .’’(Web ) The caste divides Hindu into four main categories – Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras. Many believe that the groups originated from Brahma , The Hindu God of Creation. They are classified according to occupation and determine access to wealth , power and privilege. In recent years Violence has become a common phenomenon in India. It has engulfed the entire political, social, economic, cultural and even our personal lives. Violence of social justice and caste discriminations of complex characters have added additional burden to our society whereas we Indians have been specially advised to practice “non-violence”. The growing trend in violence thus provokes us to talk about non-violence and identify the roots of violence in India. Caste Violence is perhaps one of the most hazardous forms of violence in India. It often intermingles with the most political, social, cultural, and class atrocity. So caste discriminations and atrocities against the socially weaker sections with age- old traditional and unconventional norms deserve a careful historical investigation. Indian Caste system is the most widely discussed subject all over the world. Caste system is a social evil in which the higher caste people exploits and persecutes the lower caste people and forced them to live sub-human lives like beasts. This paper is based on caste and vulgarism of ‘Untouchable’ and ‘Coolie’ poignantly portrayed by M R Anand. It is an attempt to explore its origin, nature, gravity, and deprivation.

Oppression of the Subaltern: A Depiction by Mulkraj Anand in his Untouchable

Anand is largely remembered for his depictions of the oppressed class in India. He had got an international acclaim because of his perceptive insight into the lives of the oppressed class in India. Untouchable ,being his first novel that was published in 1935,is well known for his analysis of the exploitation and subservient, pathetic conditions of the lower class people that he depicts through a character like Bhaka .though the novel presents incidents that happened in a day in the protagonist’s life,by large it speaks about the oppression of the lower castes by the upper castes that was very much visible in the colonial as well as the postcolonial India .the novel mainly focuses on the subaltern that was and also is the most burning issue in the Indian subcontinent. The novel displays the pretentions, snobbery and flamboyance gestures of the upper class against the lower classes.

Language and Power in Sharankumar Limbale’s Akkarmashi: A Foucauldian Reading

This paper explores the relationship between language and power in the autobiographical novel Akkarmashi by Sharankumar Limbale through a Foucauldian analysis. The study investigates how language functions as a tool of power to control and manipulate individuals and communities in the context of caste-based discrimination in India. The study is guided by Michel Foucault’s theories on power and discourse, which emphasize the ways in which language is used to exert control over individuals and shape societal norms. The paper examines the use of language in the novel to reinforce caste-based power dynamics and perpetuate social hierarchies. Through a close analysis of the text, the study uncovers the ways in which language is used to marginalize and stigmatize individuals belonging to lower castes. It also explores how language is used as a means of resistance by the marginalized communities in the book. The paper argues that the novel exposes the power imbalances embedded in language use, and highlights the need to challenge dominant discourses that perpetuate social inequalities. It also underscores the significance of empowering marginalized voices to contest hegemonic power structures.

Women, technology, and water: creating new waterscapes and contesting cultural norms

Abstract With the analysis of primary data, the paper looks at how the adoption of new modes of water technologies and subsequent water commercialization has created new waterscapes. Water commercialization is changing cultural norms associated with water collection in the drought-prone villages of western Rajasthan. The newly introduced water tankers have selectively benefited the upper caste rich households who now buy water from the tankers at doorsteps. The majority of the poor and low caste households remain dependent on common water sources that are drying up due to neglect with the advent of water commercialization. Women from low caste poor households have to walk for long distances to fetch water in addition to doing physical labor to support family income. Though domestic water use remains a domain of woman's working space, men from high caste rich households have started fetching and storing water as it entails cash transactions.

Socio-economic and Political Deprivation of Hill Dalits (A Study of Gaikhur and Taple Villages of Gorkha District)

This paper applies the mix-method approach (both quantitative and qualitative methods) through survey data from Gaikhur and Taple villages of Gorkha district (408 Hill Dalit households and 210 non-Dalit households).The caste hierarchy and varna system created the caste-based discrimination and untouchability practice in Nepal. This paper also explores that because of caste-based discrimination including untouchability prevailed in the villages studies non-Dalits discriminates Dalits in education and participation inreligious and cultural functions in the villages. Further, Dalits are deprivedof household income generation as compared to that of non-Dalits. Data also reveals that Dalits are deprived of political participation as compared to that of non-Dalits. Within Hill Dalits, the so-called low caste Dalits (Damai and Gaine) have also deprived in education, household income and political as well as cultural participation as compared to that of high caste Dalits (Sarki and Kami).

Prevalence, pattern, and predictors of formal help-seeking for intimate partner violence against women: findings from India’s cross-sectional National Family Health Surveys-3 (2005–2006) and 4 (2015–2016)

BackgroundHelp-seeking for intimate partner violence (IPV) requires women to disclose their experiences. For policymakers, low help-seeking threatens the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of gender equality, good health, and wellbeing. In India, the Prevention of Domestic Violence Against Women Act (PWDVA 2005) was implemented in 2006. Using two rounds of the India National Family Health Survey (NFHS), one before and one after implementation, we examined the prevalence, pattern, and sociodemographic and socioeconomic factors associated with formal help-seeking for IPV.MethodsWe used univariable and multivariable logistic regression models to assess the prevalence of help-seeking for IPV in the past 12 months and examined associations with different forms of IPV and sociodemographic factors.ResultsThe proportion of ever-married women aged 15–49 years who reported physical, sexual, or emotional IPV in the last 12 months increased from 23% in NFHS-3 (2005–2006) to 25% in NFHS-4 (2015–2016). In both surveys, few women sought help. Informal sources of help were preferred over formal sources, which declined from NFHS-3 to NFHS-4 (any help: 24.5 to 13.8%; informal help: 24.1 to 13.4%; and formal help: 1.2 to 1.1%). Women from lower castes and women with children were less likely to seek formal help. Over the two surveys, the odds of formal help-seeking for sexual IPV in the past 12 months remained similar (NFHS-3 aOR 1.9, 95% CI 1.4, 2.5. NFHS-4 aOR 1.9, 95% CI 1.4, 2.6). The odds were slightly higher for emotional IPV (NFHS-3 aOR 2.5, 95% CI 1.8, 3.3. NFHS-4 aOR 2.7, 95% CI 2.0, 3.7) and spousal control (NFHS-3 aOR 2.0, 95% CI 1.4, 3.0. NFHS-4 aOR 2.3, 95% CI: 1.4, 3.7).ConclusionsLow disclosure and help-seeking impact a country’s social, cultural, economic, and political progress. The PWDVA did not appear to result in increases in help-seeking among women in India who experienced IPV. Further work is needed to understand barriers to help-seeking in the presence of public policy efforts to support women affected by IPV. These may include poor implementation and enforcement of Policy, as well as normalization and justification of gender-based violence. We recommend a deeper understanding of help-seeking across all systems to establish a barometer of help-seeking. An increase in formal or informal help-seeking is an indicator of reduced tolerance of IPV and the enabling environment of the PWDVA 2005 for tracking progress toward the SDGs of gender equality and the eradication of all forms of gender-based violence and discrimination.

Effects of caste, birth season, and family income on digit ratios.

The contributions of latitude and ethnicity in the determination of cross-society differences in digit ratios are unclear. In India, different castes (endogamous groups) have been living in the same areas (villages or towns) for the last 1500 years and, therefore, these groups may have different gene pools without a latitude-related difference component. Thus, in the present study, we studied the effect of caste on digit ratios. We also studied the effects of sex, birth season, and family income on digit ratios. We selected a sample of 301 college students (age: M=19.9 years, SD=2.63) in Muzaffarnagar city of western Uttar Pradesh, India, and asked participants for information regarding their birth month, religion, caste, and monthly family income. We measured participants' dorsal and palmar digit lengths (of all fingers, except the thumb, in both hands) using vernier calipers of 0.01 mm accuracy. Other backward castes (intermediate castes) had longer digit lengths than general castes (upper castes), scheduled castes (lower castes), and Muslims. However, there was no difference in digit ratios of caste groups (scheduled castes vs. other backward castes vs. general castes vs. Muslims) or specific castes (Chamar-Jatav vs. Jat vs. Pandit-Tyagi). Winter-born women had lower left dorsal 2D:4D and 3D:4D ratios than summer-born women. Family income was related to higher dorsal 2D:4D and 3D:4D ratios among women. Moreover, in dorsal digit ratios, sex difference (men < women) occurred in digit ratios constituting digit 5, whereas, in palmar digit ratios, sex difference occurred in digit ratios constituting digit 2. The present study suggests that endogamy-led genetic difference in ethnic/caste groups is not a determinant, whereas birth season (i.e., the exposure to sunlight) and family income might be determinants of digit ratios. In addition, compared to palmar digit ratios, dorsal digit ratios are better markers of sexual dimorphism.

Invention or Inversion? Revisiting the Question of Caste Tradition

The main theme of this paper is to revisit the question of caste and the politics of/on traditions. We have explored the questions of mythology; how ‘we’, the lower caste people associate and (re)interpret the mythical characters as a process of social upward mobility. So, is it the invention of tradition or is it the inversion of tradition or both? Interestingly, we could be able to locate a distinct regional pattern in this case. Thus, we argue that in the Northern part of India, specifically in Uttar Pradesh, though it is the process called the invention of tradition, it can be framed as a little tradition under the grand Hindu tradition. On the other hand, in the Southern part of the country specifically in Tamil Nadu, it is rather the process called the inversion of tradition which is much more radically grounded in sub-national ethos. Based on these premises, this article further argues that Uttar Pradesh’s caste politics is based on the invention of a tradition model which can incorporate the lower castes’ little traditions within the larger ambit of the Hindu grand narratives. Thus, new Hindutva politics has easily appropriated them within their polemic. On the contrary, in the South, due to the inversion of the tradition model embedded in a pre-existing political tradition and sub-national ethos, Hindutva failed to get a proper hold in recent times.

Study about Oppressed People in Thagapan Kodi, a Novel by Azhagiya Periyavan

Human society has undergone various progression and thus developed into a civilized society. The main reason for oppression in Indian society is caste. Castes were formed and rigidified on the basis of occupational differentiation. Due to the upper and lower caste system, people were treated with disgrace, impurity and untouchability and certain ethnic groups were excluded from society. The lower caste people lived with such cruelties throughout their life. Thus, they were called oppressed people. No changes took place in the life of those people and the reason behind it is they are ideologically oppressed. The oppressed people began to think about their lives only when education is offered for all people. Through education they realized that they were enslaved. Thus, the oppressed people’s survey reveals the objections of the oppressed people. Such objections lead to protests. In that way Dalit literature become very famous. In the novel Thagappan Kodi, the sentiments of resistance against the dominant class are gradually formed and the thought of liberation is developed through renouncing various symbolic activities that disparage themselves. This article exemplifies the sufferings of the oppressed people, their moaning and the plans laid out by upper caste to torture them.

Religious Conversion and Growth of Islam in Malabar from 9th to 16th Century: Causes and Consequences

In the records of Kerala, the role of religious conversion in the growth of Muslims in Malabar cannot be omitted. Religious conversion is the adoption of a set of ideals identified with a particular nonsecular denomination to the exclusion of others. An inflexible caste system in Malabar gave remarkable growth to Islam. Like Christianity, Islam is a missionary faith, but pressured conversion is not practiced by using Islam like different missionaries. Conversion to Islam becomes a method found by the lower castes to get away from persecution from the top castes.

The Nature of Caste-based Society: Evidence from India and Bangladesh

Although both constitutions of India and Bangladesh promise equal rights for their entire citizens, the Dalit community is treated as untouchables and is hated by society. Most of the people suffering from caste discrimination are Dalits in India and Bangladesh. They have fared worse than the upper caste groups regarding educational and occupational attainment, wages and consumption, and business ownership. The challenges to thoroughly enjoying fundamental human rights for Dalits in India and Bangladesh include lack of access to education, poverty, health and housing problems, and unequal access to employment. Dalits are still facing social problems owing to the stigma of untouchability and low caste, despite the constitutional provisions against caste-based discrimination. But, it is a ray of hope that caste discrimination has decreased over time in India and Bangladesh with considerable differences in practices in various states and regions. The paper is mainly based on secondary data, and content analysis has been applied as a method. It tries to assess the pattern of caste-based discrimination among the Dalit people of India and Bangladesh.

The Ecology of Nationalism and the Representation of Lower Castes in the Novel Tamas

The colonization of India had awful consequences on the lives of people as the nation was severely affected by problems like poverty, illiteracy, unhygienic and callous living producing, in addition to the already prevailing sociological and economic problems, environmental and conservational crisis, the root cause of which was to be found in the incessant exploitation of natural resources by the ruling European colonial powers in India. Resultantly, the Gandhian struggle for independence could not restrict itself merely to the primary objective of acquiring a politically independent statehood for India, but it had to keep on its agenda also problems of ecology, hygiene and conservation. The novel Tamas describes analogous labors made by the congress working committee volunteers in the Muslim area despite antagonism by the Muslim League workers. This ecology of nationalism, however, could not sustain long as the ecological purity of a mosque and a temple, in retaliatory action, was polluted by the perpetrators. The novel regularly, throughout the narrative, establishes a connection between the ideas of pureness and dirtiness and the consequential communal clashes in the city by showing how harmony and mutual veneration for each other’s community, the so-called ecology of nationalism and political unity, was thwarted by an error of Nathu, a member of the lower caste community. In a broad sense, the character of Nathu is presented representatively in a way to demonstrate how the act of a socially impure community was accountable for the fall of the ecology of Indian nationalism rather than the political desires and mistakes of leadership.

The body and the contagion: a symbiosis of yoga, dance, health and spirituality

ABSTRACT What are the connections between bodies, healing, and transcendence? I propose that by examining the intersections of the medical and the socio-cultural body with dance or the performative body, we can shine a critical light on this question. This paper brings Yoga and Indian dance together to explore how notions of health, spirituality, and morality came to be inscribed in particular kinds of bodies leading to selective ideas of bodily transcendence and spirituality in postcolonial India. I show through a diverse range of scholarships how the heterogeneous roots of Yoga have been homogenized in modern India as something Hindu and Brahminical (which is now integrated with rightwing Hindutva). Interestingly, the Indian classical dance revivalism shared the same logic as Yoga revivalism. As a result, the upper caste Hindu bodies distinguished themselves from their cultural others (Muslims and low caste Hindus) through concepts of purity, health, spirituality, and transcendence. I examine how some of these concepts of Yoga, dance, and embodiment from the east and west mingled in recent times and influenced narratives of ‘contemporary dance’ in India and the U.S. In these symbiotic, cross-cultural exchanges, concepts of somatics and neurobiology blended with modern Yoga and dance to render the elite, upper-caste/class bodies, and/or white bodies as universal, righteous, and transcultural.

Folk dance/vulgar dance: erotic lavani and the hereditary performance labour

ABSTRACT Performed as hereditary labour by women artists of lower castes largely for male entertainment, the erotic dance of lavani seems to occupy two different bifurcated worlds. There is a licit world of festivals, television dance shows, and urban revivalist cultural shows where lavani is performed in its vernacularized codified form, and valorized as the folk art of Maharashtra. The nostalgia of the urban cosmopolitan middle class for the indigenous and rural, and the concern of the regional state and elites for cultural identity undergirds this folk world. The other world is of a range of subaltern cultural spaces from local performance houses (kala kendra), to stage shows and orchestras, where the erotic dance of lavani is performed for livelihood, and is castigated as vulgar, ‘just sex, no art’. While the cultural labour of this ‘vulgar’ lavani is performed only by the hereditary women artists, they have only a nominal presence in the folk world of lavani. This paper seeks to unpack the politics of folklorization that rests upon the exclusion of vulgarized but an organically thriving performance of lavani. It further interrogates how the hereditary cultural labour is central to this process of folklorization.

Social Identity, Behavior, and Personality: Evidence from India

Hierarchies in social identities are integrally related to divergences in economic status. In India, caste is a significant social identity where discriminatory practices have resulted in poor outcomes for the lower castes. While there is considerable research on differences in economic outcomes along caste lines, there is limited work on behavioral preferences and personality traits that can also be adversely affected by such identity hierarchies, and that are important determinants of educational attainment and labor market performance. Combining rich data from incentivized tasks and surveys conducted among a large sample of university students, we find that the historically marginalized Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SCSTs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) report lower scores than upper castes along several dimensions of economic behavior, such as competitiveness and confidence and personality traits, such as grit, locus of control, and conscientiousness. Further, socioeconomic status has a limited compensatory role in mitigating these gaps.

The Caste of Casting: Thilakan and ‘Backward’ Articulations in Malayalam Cinema

The invisibility of the modern backward caste presence is fundamental in validating Nair dominance in Malayalam cinema. This article analyses how cast–caste contingency operates as a mode of erasure to ensure the invisibility of ‘backwardness’ in Malayalam cinema. The mechanisms of erasure are described with reference to the multiple forms of proscription imposed on the Ezhava actor Thilakan following his enunciation of caste-based discrimination in the workspace. The insistence on verisimilitude while casting a lower caste body is substituted by a desire to camouflage in the case of a backward caste actor. The backward caste body is assigned savarna or Dalit roles in an attempt to render backward caste presence in Malayalam cinema inconsequential and invisible. OBC visibility in (Malayalam) cinema is marked by multiple forms of encounters with the mechanism of invisibility in place, eventuating interruptions in the constituted structure of the cinematic (public) in various ways. Thilakan’s engagement with the vocabulary of caste occasions a disturbance in the projected image of a progressive film industry, the manifestations of which are analysed in this article.

Nitrogen cycling in western India as revealed by nitrogen isotopes, and the historic production of saltpetre

AbstractSaltpetre (KNO3) manufacture was a principal monopoly industry in early Modern India when the United Kingdom governed the social and economic systems. The process represented microbial transformation of excrementitious livestock and human wastes deposited around habitats, resulting in formation of salt efflorescence at an economic scale. Low caste people collected these wastes for extraction and production of rough saltpetre under the administrative control of British India. Stable isotope composition (δ15N and δ18O) was used to trace details of the microbial transformation processes, often involving the isotopic fractionation of nitrogen and oxygen. Marked elevation in δ15N and δ18O values for nitrates in soils and deposits, relative to those of primary organic nitrogen in diets and water sources, characterizes the unique processes of historic saltpetre manufacture in British India.

Caste, Impurity And Untouchability: Study Of Ants Among Elephants

Sujatha Gidla's autobiography, Ants among Elephants broadly discusses the idea of purity and impurity, and how it has dominatedthe age-old caste narrative. The memoir focuses on the lives of her parents, grandparents and their resultant inner turmoils. Thepurpose of this research paper is to examine the lives of indigenous people and their struggles in relation with caste hierarchy. Thispaper will examine the lives of lower caste Indians in the pre - independence era through the memoir of Sujatha Gidla.

Understanding Sustenance of Small Farm Holders: A Study of Income Inequality among Farm Households in Indian Punjab

The sustenance of marginal and small farm households is a pertinent question given that their number is on the rise in South-Asia. The study aims to assess their present socio-economic profile and the challenges faced in order to draw a roadmap of development for these underprivileged households. The study pertains to Indian Punjab and data from the Situation Assessment Survey of the 70th Round of NSSO are used. The concepts of economic surplus, occupational diversity, farm productivity and vertical and horizontal inequalities are used to achieve the objectives. This study reveals that marginal farm households faced food insecurity as they failed to meet consumption expenditure from the income earned. In fact, small farm households are left with an annual economic surplus of Rs 8890 per capita only, after meeting consumption needs. Income is unevenly distributed among farm households with a Gini coefficient of 0.48. The majority of the marginal and small farm households fall in lower-income quintiles and are occupationally more diversified than their larger counterparts. Horizontal inequalities are lower between the farm-size categories (0.14) than within farm-size categories (0.27). The Gini coefficient within each farm-size category is the highest among marginal farm households (0.50), followed by small farm households (0.45), highlighting their economic stress and tug-of-war survival. Further, the farm households belonging to socially lower castes falls only in the marginal farm-size category and represent the lowest income. Development must be sustainable and inclusive, hence, policies to develop marginal farmers’ centric farming systems and high value crops such as potato, cotton, sugarcane and oilseeds, providing high yielding livestock breeds, value addition through farmer-producer organizations, non-farm employment through MGNREGA, provision of institutional credit at subsidised rate of interest and quality health and education facilities in the public sector are recommended to uplift the affected households.