It is important to find pathways to make India a casteless nation
1 year, 7 months ago

It is important to find pathways to make India a casteless nation

Live Mint  

I am of the opinion" Ambedkar told the Constituent Assembly, “that in believing that we are a nation, we are cherishing a great delusion. Yet in politics, public policy and daily life, caste remains a major factor even if overt discrimination and violence have declined. But it is also a practical matter: a society divided by caste cannot achieve social cooperation at scale to compete with others. At the root of many of India’s chronic failings is weak social capital arising from caste divisions. A new book edited by Amit Ahuja and Devesh Kapur presents empirical evidence of how violence of all kinds, including caste-based killings, has fallen over the past five decades, mostly due to state intervention, but also social disapproval and media exposure.

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History of this topic

Emerging dimensions of caste politics in India
4 months, 1 week ago

Emerging dimensions of caste politics in India

Hindustan Times  

The discourse on the politics of caste in India seems stuck in the binary of supporting or opposing caste-based reservations. The third phase of reservation politics has already begun with quota benefits to economically weaker sections and political mobilisation around conducting a caste census. In some ways, the mobilisation around social groups in India is a result of political competition …

Caste reservation fabric needs new pattern
4 months, 3 weeks ago

Caste reservation fabric needs new pattern

New Indian Express  

“Begin at the beginning, the king said, very gravely, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland For millenniums, caste has been cast in stone in the Indian psyche. Gavai, who could be the chief justice next year, wrote: “The State must evolve a policy for identifying the creamy layer even …

Politics as unusual: Who’s afraid of an all-India caste X-ray?
1 year, 1 month ago

Politics as unusual: Who’s afraid of an all-India caste X-ray?

Live Mint  

The politics of social justice has long held salience in India as an echo of the ‘class struggle’ of leftist extraction. By one reckoning, how contestable key swing seats prove in a pivotal belt of the country could depend on vote shifts among caste groups classified as Other Backward Classes. Little wonder that calls have arisen from the Congress and …

How the reification of caste will not lead to a true politics of change and justice
1 year, 6 months ago

How the reification of caste will not lead to a true politics of change and justice

The Hindu  

When a young woman cop in the movie Kathal streaming on an OTT, counters an upper caste man by normalising the idea of lower caste people as thieves, what we witnessed as viewers is the process of reification. Andrew Feenberg in his paper ‘Lukács’s Theory of Reification and Contemporary Social Movements, Rethinking Marxism’ explains that class consciousness occurs when the …

Aakar Patel | The caste factor and the BJP-RSS’ Hindutva politics in today’s India
2 years ago

Aakar Patel | The caste factor and the BJP-RSS’ Hindutva politics in today’s India

Deccan Chronicle  

The 103rd Constitution Amendment, which was upheld by the Supreme Court recently, has been appreciated by our middle class, the core votaries of Hindutva. “Nirakar and Nirgun and all that leads us nowhere.” Idol worship, he said, “does not satisfy us who are full of activity… We want a ‘living’ god, which will engross us in activity and invoke powers …

Caste Atrocities 'Soul-crippling', Need Zero Tolerance for Prejudice: Meira Kumar
2 years, 4 months ago

Caste Atrocities 'Soul-crippling', Need Zero Tolerance for Prejudice: Meira Kumar

News 18  

Amid the uproar over the death of a Dalit schoolboy in Rajasthan, senior Congress leader Meira Kumar on Sunday stressed on completely eradicating the ”illness” of caste system and adopting a zero tolerance approach against prejudice. Asked if there has been lacuna on the part of the Congress government in handling alleged Dalit atrocities, Meira Kumar said, ”This is something …

A new pole in Indian politics
2 years, 9 months ago

A new pole in Indian politics

Hindustan Times  

For decades, Indian politics was analysed by caste and faith with 2014 — which witnessed the first full majority government in a generation — marking an inflection point where mobilisation based on religion trumped caste-based aggregation. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi believes that in the last eight years, the Bharatiya Janata Party has been able to create a new pole, …

Reservation as a political imperative
4 years, 3 months ago

Reservation as a political imperative

The Hindu  

Litigation and discussions about reservation policies are recurrent in Indian political discourse. Back in the 1970s, the Supreme Court in N.M. Thomas ruled that Article 16, which allows the state to provide for reservation, is not an exception to equality but rather a facet of Article 16. In N.M. Thomas, the Court held that some caste classifications, like those inherent …

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