Dalit Research Articles

Association Between Domestic Violence and Mental Health Among Nepalese Women: Results from a Nationally Representative Sample.

This study aims to examine the association between exposure to domestic violence and mental health outcomes, such as symptoms of depression and anxiety among married women in Nepal. The 2022 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey was used. Descriptive, bivariate, and multivariate logistic regression analyses were employed. A complex sampling frame was used to ensure the accuracy of the sample. A total of 4,211 women aged 14 to 49 years were analyzed. Among women between the ages of 15 and 49, 22.8% experience anxiety, and 22.5% experience depressive symptoms. Nearly 50% of women who had experienced domestic violence had symptoms of anxiety and depression. At the multivariate level, in Model 1, the study found that wealthy women were less likely to have anxiety (OR = 0.75; 95% CI [0.58, 0.96] and depression (OR = 0.70; 95% CI [0.54, 0.91]) than poor women. Similarly, women of the former untouchable caste were more likely to have anxiety (OR = 1.51; 95% CI [1.14, 2.00]) and depression (OR = 1.20; 95% CI [0.91, 1.58]) than high-caste women. In Model 2, the odds of anxiety and depressive symptoms were 1.70 (95% CI [1.29, 2.24]) and 1.99 (95% CI [1.48, 2.67]), respectively, for those women who had experienced severe physical violence. The odds of experiencing anxiety and depression were 2.88 (95% CI [2.28, 3.64]) and 3.04 (95% CI [2.32, 3.98]) times, respectively, for those women who had experienced emotional abuse. Similarly, women who had been sexually assaulted had 2.34 (95% CI [1.72, 3.20]) and 1.67 times (95% CI [1.23, 2.26]) more likely to experience anxiety and depression than women who had never been sexually assaulted. We found a strong association between mental health problems and women's experience of domestic violence. To address the mental health of Nepalese women, it is critical to strengthen domestic violence prevention programs, especially those targeting the lowest social strata of the population.

Electoral quotas and developmental outcomes: Evidence from India

Electoral quotas for disadvantaged groups aim to promote social justice by ensuring that all groups, including those who are otherwise excluded, participate in the government’s policy-making process. In India, electoral quotas have been in existence since the first election in 1951. An important research question is to evaluate the effect of electoral quotas for disadvantaged groups on the developmental outcomes of these groups. In this paper, we study whether electoral quotas for erstwhile untouchable castes i.e. Scheduled Castes (SCs) in India, lead to better developmental outcomes for Scheduled Castes. We consider four important indicators of welfare: primary schooling, infant mortality, access to subsidized food grain and employment under a government workfare scheme. We find that SCs in districts with a higher proportion of SC-reserved seats fare worse in terms of education, child health, and access to subsidized food grains. However, the probability of getting employed in a large government workfare scheme is higher for SCs from districts with a higher proportion of SC-reserved seats. Our results suggest that politicians prioritize providing targetable goods such as workfare while under-providing broad-based public goods such as education and healthcare or public goods like subsidized food grains, which offer higher opportunities for rent extraction.

Customary ‘child selling’ and the ‘untouched mother’ in Western Odisha, India: understanding the legitimatization of caste hierarchy

AbstractThe place of mothers is respected in all societies irrespective of their social, cultural, and geographical differences. The mother‐child relationship is considered one of the most sacred in the world. This article explores the age‐old customary ‘child selling’ prevalent in Western Odisha, a voluntary and non‐remunerative practice of childcare during infancy to save children from illness and Yama, the Hindu god of death, where the ‘caring mother’ belongs to the bottom of the social hierarchy, mainly from the (ex‐)untouchable castes. According to popular belief, Yama does not visit the untouchables because of their ‘filthy’ environment and their gods. Hence, it is considered a safer place for children, especially weak ones or those with the chronic illnesses of the upper castes, to conceal themselves from the evil eyes of Yama. The epistemology of this article aims to explore the hegemonic nature of the caste systems, which overwhelms the revered mother‐child relationship. Further, it tries to understand the (re)production of caste and legitimization of sociopsychological conditions for the marginalization and backwardness of ‘caring mothers’. Despite the sacred and intimate relationship between the ‘caring mother’ and child, the institution of ‘ritual selling’ reproduces caste inequalities, and again the former becomes an ‘untouchable’.

Dalits in the Past and Present: Experiences of Chamars from Nepal Tarai

This paper is about the caste system, status of one of the Dalit community (Chamar) and the change taking place in such community over the period of time. Caste system is the division of people based on occupational diversity which is unique feature of Hindu society.
 According Hindu varna system, society is hierarchically divided as Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Sudra. In this hierarchy, Dalits were kept at the bottom with duty as labourers and service providers. Belonging to Shudra varna they were discriminated in the name of so called untouchable caste. The results of untouchability were manifested in various areas of social practice including work and wage. It made Dalits to at the margin of the society. Later on the provision of punishment if any case of untouchability was found in practice was made. Even after the implementation of legal provision that considers discriminatory or untouchable practices against Dalits as illegal activities there is still the practice of untouchability. Till the date most of Dalits including Chamars in Tarai are engaged in age-old traditional occupation or manual works.
 Based on the previous literatures and few narratives collected through interviews this paper argues that the status of Chamar, one of the Dalit communities of Tarai was facing various problems including untouchability in the past and even today they are experiencing problems of various kinds including untouchability. However, social and cultural movement of Dalits in eastern Tarai of Nepal is a struggle for changing status of Dalits including Chamars.

Framing Dalits in Sikh Religion and History

This work is an enquiry into the role and status of the Dalits or the Untouchable castes among the Sikhs. An attempt has been made to trace the ‘Dalit history’ with reference to the works dealing with the issues of caste and Dalits in the Sikh social system. The various sections of the article have covered studies which, on the one hand, emphasize on the denial of the caste system among the Sikhs, highlighting its egalitarian nature and on the other hand there are studies focusing on the existence of caste in Sikhism.

‘Yes caste is important, (but)’: examining the knowledge-production assemblage of Dwij-Savarna scholarship as it invisibilises caste in the context of women’s prisons in India

ABSTRACT Gayatri Spivak, Partha Chatterjee, and many other Dwij-Savarna (‘upper caste’) academics from historically privileged ‘Dwij-Savarna’ Indian castes like Brahmins pioneered subaltern studies in the context of South Asian studies. Their thrust towards decolonising led to an epistemic de-centring of Western hegemony in knowledge production on behalf of marginalised ‘subalterns’. However, Umesh Bagade points out that caste is not a homogenising identity and the politics of ‘Dwij-Savarna’ scholars themselves must be interrogated through an epistemic lens. With the exception of Sharmila Rege, very few Dwij-Savarna feminists have interrogated their caste privileges with respect to gender studies. As a result, a vast majority of gender studies work in India invisibilises epistemically the experienced marginality of women from oppressed castes and tribes. One such discipline where this is particularly visible is prison studies, where the scholars come from privileged ‘Dwij-Savarna’ communities and interrogate the social issues of the incarcerated who come predominantly from marginalised caste backgrounds. Our research interviews five leading Dwij-Savarna prison studies scholars who dialogue with intersections of carcerality and women’s issues. We engage with them about their work and conceptual perspectives on the role of caste, particularly in the context of gender. The researchers found that the Dwij-Savarna scholarship largely overlooks caste and refuses to engage with vulnerability and marginality issues emanating from caste locations within the prison system, doubly invisibilising the lives and narratives of the caste-oppressed women inside.

Guest Editor’s Introduction: Critical Philosophy of Caste and Race

Guest Editor’s Introduction: Critical Philosophy of Caste and Race

ЗАРУБЕЖНЫЙ ОПЫТ Б. Р. АМБЕДКАРА: США, АНГЛИЯ, ГЕРМАНИЯ

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, an untouchable from the caste of mahars, was educated abroad with the support of the maharaja of Baroda. The goal of his studies at the Columbia University in New York was to learn about the struggle of the Black Americans. African Americans and their leaders influenced his ideology and policy regarding Indian untouchables, as the struggle of the dalits and the Blacks and their social situation are somewhat similar. Ambedkar’s works reflect the learnings from his American experience. In countrast with the multiple castes and subcastes of the untouchables, the Blacks are an endogamous group, and it is easier for them to unite in their struggle. As the Chairman of the Constitutional Committee, Ambedkar included in the Constitution a number of articles to protect the rights of the scheduled castes. He turned to Buddhism as a result of his quest to reform the caste system in order to end social discrimination of the Dalits. Ambedkar showed that each caste maintained its identity and that is why it was impossible to unite all untouchable castes. However, his accomplishments in the struggle for equal rights for all people allow hope that this historic goal will be achieved.

АДИ-ДХАРМ: "ИЗНАЧАЛЬНАЯ ВЕРА" ЗАРЕГИСТРИРОВАННЫХ КАСТ ПАНДЖАБА

In the 1920s, the British province of Punjab saw the birth of a protest movement named Adi Dhar(a)m (Original Religion). It embraced low-caste members of the Sikh community who were eager to establish their own religious identity. Among the Adi Dharm founders was Mangoo Ram Mugowalia (1886–1980), who united the Chamars – one of the largest untouchable castes of Punjab. In 1931, Adi Dharm was listed in the colonial Census as a separate religion boasting almost half a million followers. In the subsequent censuses, Adi Dharm was listed as a caste. By the mid-1940s, the protest movement declined, but in the 1970s it revived owing to a great extent to the support of the Punjabi diaspora. A new phase of its history stemmed from the growth of social and political activities of Dalits (‘the downtrodden’) in India and particularly in Punjab where the Scheduled Castes account for over 30 percent of the population. Contemporary phase of the Adi Dharm history is mostly related to the activities of the All-India Adi Dharam Mission whose main temple is located in the village of Kharali, district Hoshiarpur, Punjab

АМБЕДКАРИТЫ И САКРАЛИЗАЦИЯ Б.Р. АМБЕДКАРА В СОВРЕМЕННОЙ ИНДИИ

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956), a Dalit leader born in the caste of Mahars, received an excellent Western education and advocated the abolition of caste discrimination, is an extremely significant person in the scheduled caste community of modern India. Having given the oppressed castes the opportunity to acquire a new social identity through the adoption of Buddhism, Ambedkar became in their eyes a hero-liberator. Attention to the personality and legacy of Ambedkar began to grow steadily against the background of the arrival in politics of people from the scheduled castes, who were opposed to the politics of hindutva. At present, the significance of the personality of B.R. Ambedkar for the Indian nation is recognized at the highest state level. The leaders of the country open new memorial museum complexes, monuments, refer to the works of Ambedkar in public speeches. From our point of view, we can talk about the inclusion of B.R. Ambedkar in a kind of political pantheon of “great leaders of the past”. Basing on the concept of E. Burns of the euhemerization of political leaders, as well as analyzing printed and sculptural images of Ambedkar, ritual practices and folklore of the ambedkarite community, the author describes the mechanisms of sacralization of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar in the modern Republic of India

Intersections of caste, class, and gender in healthcare sanitation work in India: Social work imperatives for restructuring marginalized women's care work

AbstractHousekeeping and sanitary workers are crucial for the functional efficiency and hygiene of healthcare facilities. In India, women from oppressed castes and backward classes are predominantly recruited in these occupations. The work, regarded as “polluting,” is stigmatized, devalued, and lies at the historical and sociocultural intersections of caste, class, and gender. In the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic, this paper utilizes the concepts of “feminization of labor” and “care ethics” to read caste into an intersectional theoretical analysis of the organization of marginalized women's labor in such essential, yet invisibilized healthcare work. An exploratory narrative review of literature focusing exclusively on marginalized healthcare housekeepers and sanitation workers in India is undertaken and supplemented with a critical analysis of labor laws and policies to trace the sustained reproduction of the caste‐based sexual division of labor in these occupations. I propose that their exploitative terms and conditions are sustained by what I refer to as the “feminine caste contract” – a complex sociopolitical and legal arrangement of precarious, casteist, and gendered work conditions. Recognizing the exploitation inherent in this contract, recommendations are made for social work education and practice to play a key role in restructuring marginalized women's labor in essential care work.

Theory of Culture and Market by Wherry: Caste and Cultural Impact in Indian Market

The sociology of the market with the focus of cultural impact in the market demand and supply studies by Wherry and others is central part as a theoretical base to argue the idea of oppressed culture in India and its impact on the oppressed castes in Varna System and other marginalized groups, including women. In unequal caste and gender-based society, the market demands services and products that treat lower caste and women as a secondary stakeholder and keep them away from playing the role of a mainstream seller or buyer. The article focuses on business strategies in India where caste-based hierarchical culture is observed in businesses. The article also deals with the theoretical concepts such as caste, culture and market with arguments by Dr Ambedkar and Wherry with other references. The theoretical base of the article is drawn from Wherry’s book and builds on the argument with empirical data from India. The author tried to seek answers to three questions stated in the last part of the introduction. The author has used both qualitative and explorative data from various sources.

Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar’s Context of Religious Conversion

It is evidently seen that the history of religion has gone through various historical trajectories, such as conflicts and appropriation, spread and conversion, individual change and social transformation. In the recent history of conversion, Dr Ambedkar’s mass conversion to Buddhism is one of the important cultural phenomena in India. In this article, I intend to discuss the social–cultural context of Dr B. R. Ambedkar’s historical public conversion from Hinduism to Buddhism in 1956 at Nagpur, Maharashtra. Further, I argue that Dr Ambedkar’s conversion to Buddhism was an attempt of replacement of the ‘common sense’ of historically humiliated and stigmatized ‘untouchable’ castes. It was an attempt of the restructuring and culturalization of the untouchable castes through rejecting the ‘coercion’ and ‘consent’ of the hegemonic structure of caste Hindu cultural authority, which was functional as a culture authority and social power. I argue that Dr Ambedkar’s religious conversion was an attempt to establish the epistemological separation and formulation of social ontology through the cultural imagination of ‘ex-communicated’ castes with the refusal of the ideology of ‘pure and impure’.

‘The Bhangi and the Chamar should be Called to the Councils of Empire’: Lord Lothian, the Indian Franchise, and the Untouchables

ABSTRACT The franchise enquiry led by Lord Lothian (Philip Kerr) was a central component in the Indian constitutional reform process of the 1930s. This article examines the general context of the enquiry, as well as the specific circumstances, under which it was conducted in both the United Kingdom and the sub-continent. Lothian’s investigation paid special attention to the means by which increased numbers from untouchable caste groups could be enfranchised. The article explores the ways in which the position of the untouchables became a principal concern in discussions about the franchise and more general political reform. It also examines the close involvement of Lothian in the Round Table movement and its influence on his thinking about expanding the electorate and constitutional change in the subcontinent. A detailed focus is the effort made by Lothian to determine the potential number of untouchable voters in the United Provinces. Here, in one of the most populous provinces of British India, Lothian encountered multiple problems as he attempted to estimate the population of untouchable caste groups. The article argues that many of the difficulties he confronted had their origins in an earlier reticence on the part of the authorities in the province to recognise the untouchables as a minority that should be given any special political consideration. It was, ironically, Lothian’s colleagues in the Round Table who had laid the foundations for this perspective and thus contributed to many of the difficulties and quandaries with which he subsequently wrestled.

Social disadvantage, economic inequality, and life expectancy in nine Indian states

SignificanceIndia is one of the most hierarchical societies in the world. Because vital statistics are incomplete, mortality disparities are not quantified. Using survey data on more than 20 million individuals from nine Indian states representing about half of India's population, we estimate and decompose life expectancy differences between higher-caste Hindus, comprising other backward classes and high castes, and three marginalized social groups: Adivasis (indigenous peoples), Dalits (oppressed castes), and Muslims. The three marginalized groups experience large disadvantages in life expectancy at birth relative to higher-caste Hindus. Economic status explains less than half of these gaps. These large disparities underscore parallels between diverse systems of discrimination akin to racism. They highlight the global significance of addressing social inequality in India.

Constitutional foundations and principles of the formation of a sovereign, secular, and democratic state in India: history and modernity

The purpose of the research was to study the fundamental provisions of the Constitution of India and the amendments made to it, which regulate the constitutional foundations and principles of the formation of a sovereign, secular, and democratic state. In addition, the article discusses the constitutional provisions relating to the acquisition of independence, the freedom of India, the formal establishment and consolidation of the fundamental rights and freedoms of its citizens and the abolition of the institution of untouchability. The study of the role and importance of the political and legal views of the leader of the national liberation movement, the philosopher and jurist Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in shaping the constitutional foundations and state structure of India is of some interest. The author used a complex of scientific methods to achieve the objective. It is concluded that the achievement of India's political independence, the declaration of equal rights and freedoms and the abolition of the untouchable caste in the state Constitution, is a significant contribution to the development of this country and a rapid step in increasing India's importance in the world.

Becoming Working Class: Domestic Workers and the Claim to Localness in Mumbai

AbstractIn India, many women from former untouchable caste groups (Dalits) are domestic workers. Despite attempts at seeking formal, legal recognition, they continue to be seen by the state as part of a broad, ambiguous category of “informal workers” whose work is stigmatized and not legislated for. In this essay, I suggest that the discourses and practices of a neighborhood‐level Dalit domestic workers’ union in Mumbai reconceptualize domestic work as “formal” work. The workers assert themselves as formal workers (kamgaar) owing to their long histories of work in specific neighborhoods, relationships of trust with employers, and their ability to negotiate long‐standing employment with them. Though domestic work does not align with the state’s definition of formal work (for example, through the presence of written contracts), for the workers, it was their own qualities, origins, social positions, and relationships that defined the formality of work rather than the other way around. Centering respect and dignity in their own work, their union also facilitated the articulation of the caste and gender‐based prejudices that have not only kept domestic workers outside the ambit of formal recognition but also have brought about routine encounters with violence and harassment for Dalit women in the local neighborhood.

Entangled Histories: Gender and the Community Mobilisations of the Ezhavas in Colonial Kerala

This paper explores how transnational historical approaches towards gender can provide a fresh perspective to locate women’s histories of colonial India and how such enquiries can widen the scope of exploring the rich archival sources available. By bringing in the recent scholarship in the area of gender and transnatioanal history, this paper would demonstrate the possibilities to unearth complex and entangled histories of women by bringing to the discussion the community consolidation efforts of Ezhavas, an erstwhile untouchable caste in the colonial Kerala, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Focusing on the transnational character of the cultural and ideological transactions that shaped the Ezhava community mobilization in the wake of colonial transformations in the region, the paper would trace the specific ways in which such exchanges shaped the history of gender within the Ezhava movement. In doing so, this paper would point towards the need to go beyond both colonial and nationalist paradigms to unpack the intricate histories of gender, caste and regional social movements during the age of empire.

“Wake up for education”: colonialism, social transformation, and the beginnings of the anti-caste movement in India

ABSTRACT Looking at the early educational activities of the anti-caste movement in the Western Indian Bombay Presidency (1848–1882), the article sheds light on the diverse, and sometimes contradictory social effects of the colonial encounter. The military defeat of the Maratha Empire, the setting up of colonial educational governance, and the emergence of missionary education had disrupted social and religious certainties. In this moment of crisis, reformers turned to education to intervene in the ongoing social transformation processes. From the perspective of the shudra-atishudra – the serving, labouring, and untouchable castes, who formed the lowest stratum of Western Indian society – the new political situation provided a space to challenge the established structures of caste and gender domination. The article starts with a discussion of colonial-governmental and missionary educational interventions, and proceeds to analyse anti-caste radicals’ educational activities against this background. Schools, popular literature, and public performance aimed to create a reflexive knowledge among the shudra-atishudra about their own position in society, and the ways to change it. Finally, the article explores the anti-caste movement’s varying interpretations of the changes in education and society. While anti-caste writers of the 1850s welcomed the new educational opportunities, their voices were highly critical of colonial education policy in the 1880s. In the nineteenth century’s struggles over caste, gender, and education, privileges and exclusions had been reworked in a colonial-modern framework. Still, important steps had been taken towards democratising and universalising Indian education.

Indian Media and Caste: Of Politics, Portrayals and Beyond

Media industry in India has witnessed hegemony of dominant castes since its very inception. Such hegemony has had a huge impact on our everyday lives and how we come to experience the world. This paper attempts to analyze how caste operates in the media sector, from its composition to content and argues that Indian media has played a catalytic role in inflicting epistemic violence over the oppressed castes as it helps dominant discourses to prevail and shapes popular perceptions and culture. After going over journalism, the paper examines cinema and television as both- a tool of maintaining the status quo and also as a medium of resistance and assertion. An analysis of the feminist discourse in media reveals a linear and somewhat exclusionary approach that bars the agency of Dalit women from media representation. At the end, it explores the power of the Internet with respect to the emerging Ambedkarite voices that are strengthening a liberatory framework while reclaiming their worldview.