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24.5 Dalit Studies

Jogdand, P.G.: Development of the Dalits: Some Observations. The
Indian Journal of Social Work 68, 1 (2007): 56-72.
In this paper the author reviews the process of the development of
the Dalits since Independence in terms of constitutional/legal
safeguards and provisions for political representation and economic
betterment, the educational scenario, the employment status of the
Dalits, and the question of empowerment. Notwithstanding
improvement in literacy and education among Dalits, the author
cautions that recent trends towards the privatization of education
at different levels have had an adverse effect on the Dalits, and have
severely constrained the opportunities for Dalits to avail of higher
education.
While the policy of positive discrimination initiated by the Indian
state has enabled Dalits to gain employment in the government,
public sector undertakings, the political arena and in educational
institutions more or less according to their population, the overall
effect of these policies has been limited. On the whole, Dalits have
been confined to the lower levels of public sector employment. With
the advent of the New Economic Policies and the privatization of
public sector undertakings, there is likely to be a drastic and
increasing reduction in the access of Dalits to employment, and
increasing disparities between the Dalit and the non-Dalit
population.
In conclusion, the author suggests that the focus of development
of Dalits to date has been target-oriented, neglecting both holistic
development and genuine empowerment. Notwithstanding some
improvements through various programmes, the Dalits continue to
remain backward, suffering acute poverty, unemployment,
segregation, and atrocities. Moreover, the post-reforms scenario
has worsened the relative position of Dalits, particularly those
groups resident in rural areas and dependent on farm labour or the
proceeds of small landholdings.

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Kumar, Vivek: Babasaheb Ambedkars Ideas of Social Justice and

Just Society. Dialogue Quarterly 9, 2 (2007): 117-27.
The achievement of social justice implies the removal of the
inequalities in social, political and economic life and the creation of
a just society. The term has taken on a specific meaning in the context
of Indian society, where it has come to stand for justice for those
social groups to whom it had been systematically denied in the past.
This paper focuses on Dr B.R. Ambedkars understanding of the
idea of social justice.
Ambedkar argued for the establishment of a society where the
individual is an end in himself. He argued that equality, liberty
and fraternity cannot be divorced from each other. That is, without
equality, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over many,
while equality without liberty would kill individual initiative.
Without fraternity, liberty and equality could not become a natural
course of things. Ambedkar envisioned that social justice could be
brought about only when political democracy is extended into the
social and economic fields as well. However, he insisted that
breaking the monopoly of the erstwhile political and social elites
has to be done through constitutional means. That is why he hoped
that the Dalits and other marginalized sections of society would be
enabled to join the administration.
Ambedkar was also aware of the existing corruption and biases
in the Indian administrative and judiciary systems. He believed
that the incorporation of the aspirations of the marginalized
categories of society in rules and policy is not sufficient to ensure
social justice, but that the incorporation of individuals from these
groups in the administration is also a necessary condition for
dispensing justice. The paper concludes by underlining the
importance of the idea of distributive justice in Ambedkars overall
theory of social justice.

Kumar, Vivek: When the Marginalised Mobilise: A Case of the

Bahujan Samaj Party. Indian Journal of Social Work 68, 1 (2007):
88-100.
In this article, the author seeks to review the typology of Dalit
political mobilization in reference to the recent political strategy of
the Bahujan Samaj Party led by Mayawati. A first type of Dalit

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political mobilization is where Dalits are mobilized as appendages

of the major political parties, which are dominated by the upper
castes. In this type of mobilization, the numerically minority parties
establish their monopoly on the party and the government, while
the numerically dominant castes and communities (Dalits and OBCs)
are relegated to the periphery. In response to the earlier exclusionary
nature of party politics, Dalits have more recently established their
own parties, including the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). In a second
type of Dalit mobilization, which finds no recognition in the usual
typologies, Dalit voters are lured or intimidated by the upper castes
and OBCs to cast their votes in favour of the candidates sponsored
by them. For this type the author coins the term contemptuous
mobilization, contemptuous for the reason that it usurps the
democratic rights and free will of the citizen to choose his/her
representative independently.
A third and unique process of Dalit mobilization which has
emerged more recently is the process of the mobilization of the upper
castes by the Dalit-led and dominated BSP. Dating from the UP
State Assembly and Parliamentary elections of 1998-99, and
particularly since 2005, the BSP has attempted to mobilize the upper
castes, especially Brahmins but also Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and
Kayasths, to the consternation of the upper caste dominated political
parties. According to the author, this does not represent an
ideological shift for the BSP leadership but is merely a political
calculus. For this type of mobilization, where the castes located
higher up in the hierarchy have been forced by sheer political
compulsion to seek the patronage of a political party led by Dalits,
the author has coined the term Arohi mobilization (arohi being the
Hindi word for ascending).
In conclusion, the author sees the mobilization of the Dalits as a
democratizing process, breaking the erstwhile hegemony of the socalled upper castes.

Likhari, Tanvir: Dalit Feminism: A Perspective on Bamas Sangati.

Guru Nanak Journal of Sociology 28, 1 & 2 (2007): 143-64.
This paper describes Dalit feminism as a discourse of discontent,
a politics of difference from mainstream Indian feminism, which
has been critiqued for marginalizing the voices of Dalit women. It
challenges Indian feminisms hegemony in claiming to speak for all

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women, as well as the hegemony of Dalit men to speak on behalf of

Dalit women.
In such a scenario, Dalit women like Bama themselves take up
the pen to articulate and record their experiences of hurt and
humiliation and to subvert centuries-old historical neglect by the
elitist nationalists. Bamas Sangati is a record of the experience of
the joint oppression of caste and gender faced by numerous Dalit
women. The author describes Dalit womens oppression as a triple
jeopardy of oppression by double patriarchies: the discrete
patriarchy of their own caste and an overlapping patriarchy of the
upper castes, in addition to poverty. Discrete patriarchy dictates
that power rests with the men of the community and in the
institutions led by them the caste courts, the Church, and the
panchayats. The aggressive exploitation of Dalit women is expressed
in terms of their double-day labour, domestic violence, and the
authority over them of the religious clergy and the upper castes.
Bama locates male violence unleashed by Dalit men in their own
sense of powerlessness vis--vis upper castes. The author
demonstrates the way in which Bama foregrounds the difference
of Dalit women from privileged upper caste women while also
celebrating their identity in their strength, labour and resilience.
As a feminist writer Bama protests against all forms of oppression
and makes an appeal for change and self-empowerment through
education and collective action.

Limbardi, L.: Grassroots Democracy: The Experience of Dalits in

Panchayati Raj Institutions. The Indian Journal of Public Administration
53, 4 (2007): 788-96.
In the era of globalization and liberalization, bringing about
development at the grassroots has become crucial. While the 73rd
Constitutional Amendment Act has brought about very significant
changes in the Panchayati Raj system in the country, it has not been
able to provide substantial institutional space for certain social
groups, Dalits in particular.
This article focuses on the experience of Dalit elected
representatives in Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) in the period
following the 73rd Amendment Act. The rise of Dalit consciousness
following long-drawn struggles has increased their democratic
aspirations for political power and equitable access to the rural

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resources, but the Dalit leadership in local bodies is typically

constrained by the stranglehold of the upper castes over the social
and political structures in the rural countryside. The author argues
that unless the issues of the caste-ridden polity are addressed, the
political representation extended to the Dalit community will remain
a sham and PRIs will be unable to act as instruments of the social
transformation of Dalit communities.

Teltumbde, Anand: State, Market and Development of Dalits. Indian

Journal of Social Work 68, 1 (2007): 34-55.
In this theoretically oriented article, the author considers issues of
the development of the Dalits in relation to the State on the one
hand, and the market on the other. Historically, the author argues,
the development of Dalits has taken place entirely with the
mediation of the State: firstly through the colonial state, and
thereafter through the constitutional state of independent India. This
historical experience has been internalized by Dalits to such an extent
that the State is conceived as an autonomous, sans-class entity,
capable of delivering social justice to the resource-poor Dalits who
constitute more than 23 per cent of the Indian population and
even more if one counts converts to Christianity and Islam.
Before independence, the issue of the economic development of
Dalits was largely subsumed in the peasant struggles taken up by
the communists. While Dalits accomplished considerable
development under the Welfare State development model that
prevailed in the decades following Independence, the author
maintains that this model resulted only in the creation of a tiny and
alienated middle class among the Dalits that was incapable of
providing ideological leadership to the masses of Dalits who still
remained untouched by the development process. While the free
market paradigm created by policies of globalization since the mideighties has been advocated as a corrective to statist welfarism, the
author argues that the market economy has had comprehensively
adverse impacts on both the short-term as well as the long-term
interests of the Dalits. In his opinion, the Dalits need to revitalize
their struggle towards the objectives laid out by Dr Ambedkar so as
to achieve comprehensive empowerment: economic empowerment,
in particular through land reform; personal empowerment, by means
of education; socio-political empowerment, through the instrument

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of democracy; and socio-cultural empowerment by superseding the

decadent traditions and culture that had enslaved the Dalits through
history.

Waghmore, Suryakant: Exploring the Unexplored: Dalit

Worldview in Development Discourse. The Indian Journal of Social
Work 68, 1 (2007): 7-23.
This article seeks an interface between the political struggle for
empowerment of the Dalits and the arguments of postmodernists
on behalf of the deconstruction of development discourse. Beginning
with an account of the historical marginalization and exclusion of
Dalits in Indian society, associated with the institutionalization of
the caste system, the author recounts the possibility of resistance
against oppression opened up by the Bhakti movement under the
ethnocentric modernity of the Mughal period, and the several
factors conducive to Dalit assertion under the British colonial regime
(for instance, rural economic transformation and monetization, the
expansion of modern education, reforms of discriminatory
practices), as well as the impact of the Ambedkar movement. While
these changes had brought about a socio-cultural victory by 1947,
the author maintains that they did not effect substantial economic
improvement in the lives of the Dalit communities.
While the post-modern critique of modernity tends towards
romantic celebration of the local, the author emphasizes that any
analysis that aims at understanding Dalit issues and incorporating
the Dalit worldview in the development discourse has to critically
appraise not only capitalism (local and global), but also local culture
as a terrain of power. To the dilemma posed by the post-modern
critique of modernity from the perspective of Dalit assertion, the
author nonetheless sees a pragmatic solution in exploring the ways
in which the most relevant aspects of different traditions and
practices, both indigenous and Western can be combined
innovatively into new hybrid or syncretic forms.
See also Devi Prasad (9.4); Peter, Raman & Rajivlochanan (14.2);
Prasad (24.4); Tiwari (11.1); Vera-Sanso (18.4)

24.6 Backward Classes