...apart from these four sects, there were other castes that were completely ostracized from the traditional Indian society and not given any place in the caste hierarchy and were considered untouchables because they were engaged in professions that were considered “impure”. They were at the bottom of these (upper caste) people. They were treated less than humans. And if you’re a Dalit woman, the cocktail of gender and caste raises an even bigger barrier to tear...
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...166,635,700 of them Impoverished and excluded Abused and humiliated Denied justice Exploited Untouchable HOW CAN THIS STILL BE GOING ON IN THE 21ST CENTURY? DALITS OF INDIA 9 What is the caste system? Historically the caste system has formed the social and economic framework for the life of the people in India. In its essential form, caste as the system of social and economic governance is based on principles and customary rules that: < Involve the division of people into social groups (castes) where assignments of rights are determined by birth, are fixed and hereditary. < The assignment of basic rights among various castes is unequal and hierarchical, with those at the top enjoying most rights coupled with least duties and those at the bottom performing most duties coupled with no rights. < The system is maintained through the rigid enforcement of social ostracism (a system of social and economic penalties) in case of any deviations. Thus the doctrine of inequality is the core and heart of the caste system. Supported by philosophical elements, it constructs the moral, social and legal foundations of Hindu society. What is caste-based discrimination? The UN defines this kind of problem as ‘discrimination on the basis of work and descent’. It is an ancient form of oppressive, hierarchical social organisation that ordered people according to their family of birth. It has remained in place despite its legal abolition because of its religious sanction, the social...
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...lord prescribed to the Sudra, to serve meekly even these (other) three castes” (p. 9). The classes are ranked very distinctly: “But for the sake of the prosperity of the worlds he (the Lord) caused the Brahmana, the Kshatriya, the Vaisya, and the Sudra to proceed from his mouth, his arms, his thighs, and his feet.” (v. 1.31, p. 4). Therefore, it is very clear that the Brahmins were the highest regarded caste, while the Shudras were equivalent to ‘feet’. However, there is one more group that the Indian caste system does not recognize as a caste – Dalits. Dalits are called many different names: Panchamas ("fifth varna"), and Asprushya ("untouchables"). The distinction between them and the four castes is very well defined: while the first four varnas (castes) can choose their occupation, Dalits in India have been limited to the occupation into which they were born. Even though they often belong to the same religion and culture, Dalits are still ostracized and regarded as outcasts in Indian society. This human rights violation has been the topic of many books, written both domestically and around the world. One...
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...sarcasm provoked him for true justice and transformations and that common man became the principal architect of our 'Constitution of India'. On 26th of January our constitution came into force and India became ‘The Bharat Ghanrajya’. Ambedkar resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens: “JUSTICE, social, economic and political; LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; EQUALITY of status and of opportunity; and FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and of the Nation.” He tried to uplift the untouchables in order to educate them and for socio-economic improvements, he also protested against the divided Hindu community of Brahmins and Dalits. As moral principles never depend on majority of people, wrong is wrong even if everybody is wrong and right is right even if nobody is right. And here he was the one who fearlessly persisted all odds and fought for what was right. He left Hinduism and became a Buddhist and stood for humanity. He fought against the discriminant society until untouchability was not avowed as a punishable crime. After the independence he also became the Chairman of the ‘Constitution Drafting Committee’ and they produced such a complete and admirable constitution which not only succeeded in giving a viable democracy to India but also succeeded in maintaining the unity of diversified Indian culture. But even today communal riots are major cause of antitheism...
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...SOCIALISM OF SOCIETY IN INDIAN ECONOMY INTRODUCTION Impact of Dr. B.R.Ambedkar's thoughts on Indian economy is evaluated under the following main heads: * Reforms on agricultural lands. * Currency problem. * Financial problem in public. * Taxation policy. * Industrial growth on national level. * Economic development. * Socialism of state. * Miscellaneous economic Problems. I. Economy enterprises. II. Over population III. Upliftment of women for economic development. IV. Human capital. V. Hindu economy. (1) Reforms on agricultural land:- After long study on Indian agriculture Ambedkar recognised that problems of agriculture related to farmers should be solved, in one of his article i.e. "Small Holdings in Indian and their remedies"(1917) and also in "Status and minorities"(1947) he has suggested some reforms which has included in the manifesto of the "Swatantra Majdur Paksha"and the Scheduled caste Federation. Ambedkar recognized that small subdivided and fragmented holdings of land are the major problem of Indian agriculture with affects. It has resulted in various disadvantages, and there were difficulties in cultivation and utilization of resources increasing cost, low productivity, inadequate income, Low standard of living etc. According to Dr. Ambedkar reforms on agriculture is not related only with the size of holdings but also with other factors such as capital, labour and other inputs, so the concept of "Idea of...
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...CLASS AND CASTE- BACKWARD CLASSES AND DALITS The term Apartheid was coined to define the social and political policy of racial segregation enforced by the whites on the black natives of South Africa. Apartheid of India is ‘Casteism’. So, is India a replica of South African apartheid? Certainly not. The South African natives were segregated on the basis of laws, made by men in authority ,which were later dismantled by human efforts, again by men in authority. But in India, the discriminatory nature of class as well as race is duly recognised by the Constitution but not practised as the men in authority here are not distinct. Hence, the apartheid between Bharat and India is beyond the reach and ambit of human intervention. Class and caste discrimination in India is as old as the Himalayas. The enormity of human degradation, inequality, discrimination and untouchability is beyond comprehension and is enforced by scriptures which are held and hailed as sacred. Violation of scriptural ordinance is blasphemous and therefore unimaginable. It all started with the advent of the Aryans and the writing of the Vedas. The caste system has been there in India since then but it was merely a class system on the basis of division of labour. But it accelerated during the British Raj as they produced the Scheduled Caste List to enforce their ‘ Divide and Rule’. The colonial experience resulted in the obsession of Indians with fair skin colour. But even this inferiority complex fails to provide...
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...Evolution of dalit literary movement The movement had two phases, the first phase during the 1960s and the second phase during the 1980s. The chief literary weapon of first phase was poetry and that of the second phase was autobiography. There were two inspiriting sources for the dalit literary movement. The activities of Dr. ambedkar had awakened the depressed classes of India against the tyranny of castism. The spread of school education equipped the neo-literate generation with the vision and the language to react. The earliest writings of dalit writers were published first in the little magazines that were popular mainly among trade unions activists. Narayan Surve, himself a trade unionist wrote moving poems about youthful workers, and sex worker mothers. The poems used language exactly as it is spoken by unfortunate young men and women. Namdeo Dhashal, on the other hand wrote poetry closer to he modernist sensibility, but with an unmistakable stamp of the anger of the rebel. A blend of pathos and protest became the defining feature of dalit poetry of this period. It became the voice of rebellion against social injustice blended with dreams of a life of dignity for the oppressed. The dalit mind and the problem are more prominently and eloquently expressed in the autobiographies. The dalit autobiographies are not conventional autobiographies; they are a direct picture of the plight of the dalits. These autobiographies had a revolutionary effect. They spoke about poverty...
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...A VIEW ON DALITS AND THEIR CONDITIONS ____________________ A paper submitted to Rev. Dr. Jayraj Dasan MACS International College of Cultural Studies ____________________ In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the course Dalit Theology, MACS 6 ____________________ By Lijoy Lovely Babu AP01/MA30/12 Submitted on 16 – 04 – 2013 1. INTRODUCTION AND DEFINITION The Dalits (also known as Untouchables, Harijans, orScheduled Castes) have historically been poor, deprived of basic human rights, and treated as social inferiors in India. Dalits are a group of people, who constitute the lowest caste of the Indian Society. According to James Massey (author of the book Dalits in India) , “The term Dalit is one of the most ancient terms which has not only survived till date but also shared by a few of world’s oldest languages like Sanskrit and Hebrew”. The term "Dalit" draws its root from the Sanskrit word “Dall” which means to crack, open or split. According to Elza Tamez, a liberation theologian, this term is used in two contexts – 1 – Phisically weak or lowly, 2 – Insignificant position in the Society. In modern times it’s a Marathi word which means "suppressed", "crushed", or "broken to pieces". It was first used by Jyotirao Phule in the nineteenth century, in the context of the oppression faced by these "untouchable" castes of the twice-born Hindus. Dalits are the group of people in the society, who are economically extremely poor...
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...untouchable in India (Dalit) and Japan (Burakumin)? To be an untouchable in India or Japan is to be a part of the population that would traditionally be placed at the bottom of the social hierarchy. These untouchables are traditionally associated with occupations that are considered impure, such as waste removal and the handling of human or animal carcasses, and therefore cannot interact with other members of their society, for fear of the pollution they would spread. In both India and Japan, there has been action against untouchability, yet there is still widespread discrimination of these people because of cultural ideals, the impure history attached to them and the traditional occupations that they are associated with. While the abolishment of caste discrimination in India in 1950 and the Buraka Liberation League in Japan has improved the lives of many people within these communities, there is still a great level of discrimination against the Indian untouchables, the Dalits, and Japanese untouchable population, the Burakumin. A Dalit is a member of the lowest rank in the Hindu caste system and Indian society. The term, Dalit, translates to “oppressed” or “broken”, signifying that members of the Dalit caste are immediately labelled as inferior to the rest of Indian society. In India today, Dalits make up 16.2% of its population, that number being approximately 166 million, which conveys the large spread of Dalits across the Indian population. The traditional Dalit position in Hindu...
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...₹600 crore. About 15% of the total fabric production of the country is from Uttar Pradesh. Around 30% of the total artisans in India are employed in Chikankari industry. Also, this industry generates revenue of about US$1.2 billion in the state annually. In 2013-14, U.P.’s GDP contributed to 8.46% of the national GDP (U.P.’s GDP–886,410; India’s–10,472,807). Chikankari contributes to 8.12% of U.P.’s GDP (Annual revenue: $1.2bn). Exports: Direct export of Chikan apparels is estimated at ₹60 crore. Indirect export would be at least ₹200 crore annually, thus the potential for export is very large. Tourism: Tourism can help improve the sales. WEAKNESSES AND THREATS: * Unregulated market: Because of the lack of regulation, most of the women workers are exploited because they are denied minimum wages (Table 1) * Substitutes: Currently, the Chikan industry is facing a tough competition from China, because of machine-made imitations. These imitations have dominated the international market due to low pricing * Poor Branding: The fabric has not been able to attract the youth due to poor branding. * Time consuming: This hand embroidery is very time consuming process where it takes 15...
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...Michael Kropac Dalit Empowerment and Vocational Education An Impact Study © 2006 by Michael Kropac Winkelriedplatz 2 4053 Basel, Switzerland 0041 (0)61 361 36 03 Mail: kropac@gmail.com For all people of Navsarjan who resolutely follow their ideal of an egalitarian society Preface and Acknowledgements Preface and Acknowledgements The present work is based on my thesis submitted to the University of Basel (Switzerland) in December 2005. Ever since I have started to study Geography, I wanted to write a thesis that would be read by more people than only my supervisors and would prove to be useful in some way. A traineeship during my studies as well as various projects and a general interest to discover the ‘mystery’ called India had brought me to the subcontinent several times since 2002, and it was soon clear to me I would focus on a topic in the Indian context. Even before I visited India for the first time I knew that it was not only about the Taj Mahal, tigers and finding enlightenment in some yoga class, but also about development, poverty and caste. Once in India, the contrast between vibrant economic development and widespread poverty became more than obvious, but the idea of caste remained somehow ambiguous. As foreigners are often only able to speak English, they can only communicate directly with those strata of society who also speak this language – most often these are not the poor or deprived of the Indian society, but those at the ‘upper’...
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...The Search for Self and Space by Indian Dalit Joseph Macwan and African American Richard Wright Vaseemahmed G Qureshi Assistant Professor, Vishwakarma Government Engineering College, Chandkheda A B S T R A C T The subjugation of Dalits in India and Blacks in America is the result of slavery imposed on them in the name of castism in India and racism in America. Writers from these marginalized groups express their revolt against slavery through words. This presentation focuses on one black and one Dalit novel as a manifestation of the quest for self and space. Joseph Macwan comes forward as a prophet of Dalits’ welfare in Gujarat with his Angaliyat (1987) which is a representation of the emerging genre of the Dalit novel. It criticizes systems of internal colonization that exist within the Hindu caste system. Today, Dalits are both asserting their identity and challenging a society that had earlier excluded them, by writing about their lives themselves. Through the protagonist Teeha, the novel succeeds in demystifying ‘dalitness’ and redefining the real freedom of his fellow people. Richard Wright is one of the most acclaimed African American authors of the twentieth century. His Outsider (1953) depicts racial discrimination and the quest for identity. He creates a compelling story with his protagonist Cross Damon, a man of superior intellect who craves for peace and searches for his identity. In this quest, Cross Damon attempts to escape his past and start anew in a...
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...language that are spoken in 27 different states and 7 union territories. Discrimination on the bases of caste. India has an ancient history for the caste system, which has undergone many transformations over the years. About 2600 years ago India had 5 major races which constituted the ancient Indian society; they were Brahmans, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, kshudras and ati kshudras. The Brahmins were the Intellectual people who took the education, the Kshatriyas were the warriors and the rulers, the vaishyas were the business class. These three classes formed the upper strata of the society whereas the kshudras and the ati kshudras did the menial job and formed the lower class. When India got freedom in 1947 a large portion of the population was Dalit; a term used for socially and economically backward classes. Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar, who wrote the constitution of India, made amendments to justify the injustice done to them for centuries by giving them a lead in the society. “The central government reserves 27 percent of all government jobs and places in the institutions of higher education exclusively for the backward classes. Most states follow this policy, though some have even higher reservation percentages. Besides the backward classes’ quota, there is alternative action for other social segments as well. About 15 percent of government jobs and higher education place, For instance, are reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled...
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...Amit Pati PGDM 20160009 Individual Report Of Reservation Reservtion in India is a form of affirmative action designed to improve the well-being of backward and under-represented communities defined primary by their ‘caste’ (quota-system based on ‘gender’ or ‘religion’). These are laws wherein the certain percentage of total available vacancies in educational institute or government jobs are set aside for people from backward communities and others like SC, ST, OBC are the primery beneficiaries of the reservation policy under the constitution. Reservations per say has really failed to deliver the intended objective. Which is to uplift the down trodden and reduce the huge gap between the forward and the backward class . In the almost 60 years of its existence it has kind of consolidated a deep rooted belief amongst the scheduled caste that it is their right to get quotas and freebies and they need not have to make efforts to acquire skills to be competitive .There is quota in education and there is quota in jobs. The entire approach has been flawed .Mostly because the original well intentioned reservation policy thought out by the framers of the constitution was manipulated by later order politicians solely with the intention securing votes.None of the government machinery's has bothered to evaluate the extent to which benefits have percolated.Instead of creating more schools and educational institutions it went about reserving quotas.If the govt had provided a high class free...
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...taught till now. One cannot close a speech on Gandhi without highlighting his efforts to abolish untouchability from the Hindu society. Living in a city, I do not come across this abhorring practice on a day to day basis. At the same time I am aware of its prevalence in the interiors of India even today. I am curious to know whether the efforts of Gandhi have actually affected the practice of untouchability and reduced it to an extent in modern India or it is a byproduct of globalization. On this discourse, I would refer to the differences in the approach of the other pioneer of Dalit rights and the drafter of our constitution, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar. It is important to study and highlight the different approaches followed by Gandhi and Ambedkar and their motives behind them on the issue of caste system in India. After reading D.R. Nagraj’s essay – ‘Self- purification vs. Self- respect: On the Roots of the Dalit Movement’, I would proceed to comment on the relevance of these ideas in contemporary India. The concept of inequality itself is a modern philosophy. There are many examples in Hindu scriptures which believe in inequality as well as various humanitarian values including universalism, brotherhood, non violence etc. The gist of the main argument...
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