dalit nation

8/14/2019 Dalit Nation

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became popularized by Ambedkar in the 1920s and 1930s (Rinker 6). The Dalit Panther

movement took up the term in the 1970s, and in the wake of caste riots in the 1990s, Dalit

became a political understanding of caste that bonded together various communities suffering

under Hindu domination (Reddy 553). The control over and creation of a distinctive identity was

crucial to Dalit activists, and they considered their struggle with Hindus a question of who will

energize and determine the nature of the minoritys collective identity (Rajshekar 24).

Although Untouchables are considered outcastes and are therefore not technically

Hindus, they are nonetheless subject to the social hierarchy of Hinduism. They hover at the edge

of Hindu society, rejected from it while being made subservient to it. Becoming Dalits effected a

clear break from Hinduism, freeing Untouchables from the religious affiliations that pervaded

their previous identities as Sudras and Panchamas. As the lowest category of the Hindu caste

system, the term Sudra placed Untouchables firmly within Hinduism and mixed them in with

other low castes. Panchama was a term invented by Gandhi, who suggested that a new caste be

appended below Sudras to set Untouchables apart from other low castes, while affirming their

place within Hinduism.

Liberation from Hinduism was not only a way for Dalits to challenge a system that

assigned them to a position of inferiority, but a way of challenging an entire epistemology. As a

way of knowing the world and understanding hierarchies (Jefferson 53), religion dictated

Dalitss conception of social and political possibilities. Ambedkars writings on Buddhism and

Marxism point to the correlation between religion and politics in his search for a religious

epistemology that would correspond to an egalitarian society.

Moreover, by detaching Untouchability from religion, Dalit designated a condition of

oppression, categorizing Untouchability as a matter of social injustice, and making it relevant to


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humanitarian activists outside of Hinduism and India. Floating free from religious and cultural

specificity, Dalits inscribed themselves into international human rights discourse and

reconceptualized themselves in light of oppressed communities in other countries.

The international appeal of the term Dalit is derived from its very etymology: activist

V. T. Rajshekar asserts that the term is rooted in Dal, meaning broken or crushed in Hebrew

(Rajshekar 43). The etymological connection between Dalits and Jews implies that they suffer

similar diasporic conditions of oppression and homelessness. Dalits locate themselves within a

larger network of oppressed peoples, demanding the same international recognition of suffering

that Jews receive. Tellingly, RajshekarsDalit: The Black Untouchables of Indiais subtitled An

International Problem. Like many activists, Rajshekar portrays Untouchability as a crime

against humanity in order to incite international interventions. Since Rajshekar tends to identify

the Indian nation-state with Hinduism, India itself is considered the Dalitss oppressor, making

the national framework complicit in their persecution. Activists therefore sought to transcend the

nation-state, looking towards an international community for support.

By declaring an etymological kinship to Jews, Dalits asserted an identity that was

autonomous from the nation-state: the Jewish diaspora became the model for a collective identity

that transcended state boundaries and gained worldwide sympathy. Dalits found common ground

with the stigmatized Jew who was portrayed as a social outcast, always an alien in whatever

country s/he attempted to settle in. The practice of Untouchability effected a spatial and visual

shunning of Dalits from Hindu society, as Dalits were limited to residing in polluted spaces,

and their touch, shadow and even voice were deemed to be polluting (Rajshekar 50).

Rajshekar not only draws comparisons between the plight of the Dalit and the Jew, he

asserts that the Untouchable is worse off than a Jew. The sufferings of the Jew are his own


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creation. Not so are the sufferings of the Black Untouchables (48). Proclaiming Dalits as

innocent and helpless, he portrays their suffering as more worthy of compassion than Jews.

Ignoring the persecution of Jews, he states that [t]he Jew is despised but not denied

opportunities to grow. The Untouchable is not merely despised but is denied all opportunities to

rise (48). The suffering of Dalits is depicted as not only diasporic alienation, but active

discrimination.

Rajshekar further describes parallels between the holocaust and Untouchability,

connecting Hitler to Hinduism: Adolf Hitler only implemented the Aryan race theory. Herein

lies the secret of Brahmin admiration for Hitler, and Hitlers swastika is borrowed from the

Brahmins. The RSS[a Nationalist Hindu organization]symbol is also a swastika (62, original

italics). Activist Laxmi Berwa likewise claims that [t]he anti-semitism of the Nazis against the

Jews is in no way different in ideology and in effect from the Satanism of the Hindus against the

Untouchables (87).

Donning a diasporic mantle allowed activists to not only unite their cause with that of the

Jews, but with that of multiple ethnic identities that are oppressed within India. Like Paul

Gilroys formulation of diaspora as a shared experience in the Black Atlantic, Dalits sought to

form a diasporic community unified through the experience of oppression. The term brought

together Chuhras, Mehtars, Balmikis, Bhangis, and other castes that were forced into servile

labour and discriminated against. Historically, the political immobility of Dalits has been

attributed to their spatial and ethnic fragmentation. Vijay Prashad explains that Delhis Mehtars

remained submissive because they shared neither a shopfloor nor neighbourhoods nor did they

come from one ethnic community (UF 20). Rajshekar similarly claims that [a]s the Black

Untouchables are scattered in all the villages and segregated, they have no capacity to assert their


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rights (46). He argues that Dalits were co-opted into the Hindu system because they were

without name, fame, identity and religion of their own (61). Cutting across geographic, ethnic,

and occupational lines, the term Dalit proposed a diasporic identity under which the oppressed

could form a united front and consolidate political goals.

How can such people say that this is our land?

If owning bounded land is the essence of political power, as John Locke asserts in his

Second Treatise on Government(Brown 44), Dalits were not political subjects. While the history

of Dalits and land ownership remains murky, the Buddhist canon documents how Chandalas and

Nisadas assumed to be early Dalits were prohibited from being agriculturalists by the

dominant caste. Prior to British rule, there was a large landless class drifting about, providing

low-cost labour to peasants and landholders (Prashad, UF 26). By the 1890s, the Chuhrass (a

Dalit caste) designated occupation was manual labour for landholders (27). During British rule,

landholding policies likewise designated Dalits as non-agriculturalists, preventing them from

owning land (37).

Migration and landlessness affirm Dalitss alienation. In light of Lockes association of

political subjectivity with land ownership, Dalits remain foreigners on the land that they tended.

They were excluded from the rights of state subjects, and prohibited from public services and

facilities. Rajshekar recounts how Dalits are denied use of public wells, and how public schools,

the police and the military are inaccessible to them (50). Following John Rawlss delineation of

the relationship between individual and state, having access to public goods indicates ones

allegiance to the state. In not being allowed to partake in public amenities, Dalits are labeled as

non-citizens.


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Ambedkar describes similar deprivations of political rights, but goes further to suggest

that there is a political difference between Dalits and Hindus that makes unified rule

inappropriate. Stating that [e]very Congressman who repeats the dogma of Mill that one country

is not fit to rule another country must admit that one class is not fit to rule another class (41),

Ambedkar equates class relations to state relations. Rajshekar describes Hinduism as a group of

nationalities. Each caste or subcaste is a separate nation. Nay. It is a prison house of warring

nationalities (66). Castes/classes are not just different in terms of degree, but in kind. They are

each politically distinct, and share no collective interests.

Writing in the context of Britains waning powers and the throes of the Indian

independence movement, Ambedkar co-opts popular condemnation of colonialism to suggest a

similar condemnation of class dominance by implying that Hindus are akin to the British. He saw

Dalits and Hindus as separate political subjects belonging to separate states that have become

amalgamated through brutality and deceit. Claiming that Untouchables are entitled to separate

political rights as against the Hindus of India (Rajshekar 79), he posited that the colonial state is

not only biased towards Hindus but is an inadequate political form for addressing Dalitss needs.

His articulation of Dalithood as a kind of political subjectivity emerged in a call for a separate

state: Dalit Nation.

Dalit Nation

Dalit activists rationalized their sense of alienation through the idea of a lost homeland.

Like other diasporic narratives, Dalits constructed an ideal past that was associated with a

specific location. Unlike other diasporic narratives, their estrangement from the homeland was

not geographic but political. There was no journey that separated Dalits from their land. Instead,

activists believed that they were colonized by Aryans and lost legal ownership of their homeland.


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Portraying themselves as the original sons of the soil (Rajshekar 44), they asserted that they

had remained true to their ancestral culture. They claimed that they had not been assimilated into

Hindu culture, pointing to their separate gods, shrines, food habits and cultural identities,

despite the fact that they also worship Hindu Gods (44). This denial of acculturation is part of

the diasporic need to maintain an identity separate from ones adopted society, a need to believe

that ones identity is fixed and true to the past.

Dalitss appropriation of the diasporic narrative becomes murky and contradictory when

considering their relationship to the homeland. Dalits have to explain their loss of the homeland

and at the same time assert their unchanging tie to it through culture. While loss of the homeland

in other diasporic narratives is achieved through geographic removal, Dalitss loss of the

homeland takes the form of a sociopolitical defeat that entails a loss of culture and identity.

Dalits must simultaneously demonstrate their loyalty to the lost homeland by retaining ancestral

customs. The contradiction between cultural loss and cultural preservation is expressed in

Rajshekars conflicting claims as he laments Dalitss loss of identity, name, and religion (61),

while asserting that Dalits retain a separate identity and religion (44). This contradicting loss and

persistence is expressed in the publishers note to Rajshekars text: Dalits work to rediscover

and recreate the lost and still-existing elements of their original culture (8).

Activists trace Dalitss original culture to the Harappans, one of the earliest civilizations

in the Indus Valley. Extolled as a sophisticated society that was wiped out by Aryans, the

Harappans remained somewhat of an archaeological mystery, and Dalits wrote themselves into

their ambiguous history. In 1921, Sir John Marshall led the Archaeological Survey of India in an

excavation of two major Harappan settlements, sparking a number of theories about indigenous

rights to land (Prashad, UF 83).


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The Adi myth inspired Adi-Hindus, Adi-Dravidas, Adi-Andhras, Adi-Karnatakas and

Ad-Dharmis, all movements who claimed that their communities were the original inhabitants of

the land. Dalits identified with the Ad-Dharmis and asserted that they were a separate people

from the Hindus during the 1931 census, gaining confidence and dignity in their rediscovered

identities (85). By claiming Harappan descendance, Dalits asserted aboriginal rights to land and

cast Hindus as descendants of the intruding Aryans. Rajshekar describes the Aryans as nomads,

barbarians, without a civilization (43), conferring upon them the same invectives that are used

against Dalits.This narrative of origins accomplished three things: first, it freed Dalits from the Hindu

caste system and its conferral of Untouchability by claiming an independent lineage. Secondly, it

depicted Dalits as descendents of an advanced civilization, countering the notion that

Untouchability is inherent and permanent. Rajshekar describes the Harappans as innocent but

hardworking original inhabitants (43) who were brainwashed by Aryans into believing they

were inferior and Untouchable. Thirdly, it depicted Hindus as illegitimate colonizers, and

grounded the Dalit nation movement upon primordial legitimacy.

This use of the past to create traditions in a colonial setting is a complex process that

Indian Marxist D. D. Kosambi calls creative introspection. It produces what Wilson Moses

calls Afrotopia, or a vision of the past that draws from the materials at hand to generate texts

that vindicate or monumentalize an oppressed people (Prashad Afro-Dalits 191). The Black

Power movement and the Dalit liberation movement shared other commonalities, which will be

discussed later on.

Although Ambedkar did not endorse the Aryan invasion theory, he expressed the Dalit

desire for territorial recovery through proposals for secession during the 1940s. Alongside


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Afro-Dalits

This revolutionary impetus was led by the Dalit Panthers, a liberation movement that was

inspired by the spread of the Black Power movement. It was organized in June 1972 in

Siddhartha Nagar, Bombay and rooted in the Little Magazine Movement, which published non-

profit magazines by non-Brahmin writers of Maharashtra. Inspired by the Black Pantherss

militant literature and political struggles, it was formed by a generation of literate Dalit youth

who were dissatisfied with the mainstream Dalit political movement. They organized

demonstrations, an election boycott and attacked Hindu deities in addition to expressing their

anger through poetry. Following Ambedkars writings on Buddhism and Marx, the Panthers

began as a Buddhist organization with somewhat socialist tendencies (Contursi 325-326).

They did not simply draw upon Black Panther strategies, but genealogically identified

with them by asserting a common African descent. Rajshekars insistent labeling of Black

Untouchables is in keeping with Runoko Rashidis Global African Presence project. Rashidi

used archaeological and anthropological records to find Africans around the world, and

asserted that the founders of the Harappan civilization were Black (Prashad, Afro-Dalits 192).

The Afro-Dalit connection is furthered by studies by Chandler and Winter, who claim that

Indias philosophical and linguistic roots lie in Africa (193). Prashad notes that the need to

claim Harappans and Dalits as black is to constitute a political solidarity against the Aryans

(193), and that blackness was seen as primordial in order to make claims on soil and autonomy

(193).

The publishers note in Rajshekars book describes the Black Untouchables as originally

the African founders of the lush Indus Valley (4) and asserts that both African-Americans and

Black Untouchables share a history of slavery and apartheid (4). Both slavery and apartheid


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are loaded with international significance, apartheid in particular being characterized as a crime

against humanity: apartheid becomes shorthand for the most egregious instances of systemic

and overt racism that necessarily and automatically educe (or should educe) severe international

condemnation (Reddy 562). Co-opting coded terms that the international community would

readily react to was part of Dalit activistss strategy to mobilize support outside of India.

The Dalit diaspora situated itself within a larger African diaspora that united Blacks

against Aryans, claiming that the oppression of Dalits is the struggle of Diasporic peoples of

African descent (Jefferson 51). This nesting of diasporic narratives established solidarity with

African-American diasporic communities, whose struggles were perceived as successful. The

Dalit liberation movement found its place in a tapestry of global liberation movements that

emerged with the momentum of hope (49). It was driven not only by oppression, but by hope

and certainty - the belief that the end of oppression is near, that a better world is truly possible

(49). Although the Black Power movement was geographically far removed from Dalits, the

claim to a common ancestry allowed Dalit activists to claim proximity and make the Black

Power movements perceived success seem comparable and reasonably close (49).

Beyond the Black Power Movement, Dalit Panthers identified with the Vietnamese,

Cambodians and Africans to forge an international identity of the oppressed. Its manifesto

defined Dalits as members of Scheduled Castes and Tribes, Neo Buddhists, the working people,

the landless and poor peasants, women and all those who are being exploited politically,

economically and in the name of religion. By 1973, the Panthers were no longer fighting against

casteism, but for revolution (Contursi 326). In rewriting casteism as economic oppression and

expanding its constituency to include non-Untouchables, the movement hoped to gain more


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support, but also lost the specificity of the original Dalit liberation movement. Ambedkars call

for secession had dissolved into a call for rebirth of the Indian nation-state.

Dissolution

We will not be satisfied easily now. We do not want a little piece in the Brahmin Alley.

We want the rule of the whole land. We are not looking at persons but at a system.

Change of heart, liberal education, etc., will not end our state of exploitation. When we

gather a revolutionary mass, rouse the people, out of the struggle of this giant mass will

come the tidal wave of revolution (Dalit Panthers Manifesto qtd. in Contursi 327).

The Dalit Pantherss 1973 Manifesto was a far cry from the earlier calls for restitution of a

homeland, people, and culture. Activists were no longer situating themselves within a diasporic

narrative, having written themselves into an African diasporic narrative that made their original

homeland difficult to identify. Moreover, what were previously thought to be Dalit traditions that

were retained under Aryan colonization could no longer be considered truly primordial once

comparisons were made to their earliest forefathers in Africa.

Unlike Jews, Dalits have historically been illiterate so there is no recorded history to

confirm their origins and fix their traditions. Instead, Dalits circulate oral myths, all of which

involve stories of betrayal by a brother who is usually identified as a Brahmin. Chuhras, for

example, narrate a descent into Untouchability where a volunteer preserves the purity of a village

by removing an animal carcass having been promised that he will not be permanently defiled by

it (Prashad, UF27-28). By positing a fraternal tie to Brahmins and asserting common ancestry

with them, these stories counter the Afro-Dalit narrative of Aryan invasion and racial difference.

As ancestry and homeland became questionable, the experience of oppression became the

only bond that unified Dalits. While Gilroys Black Atlantic posits the specific unifying


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experience of the journey, Dalits had no particular rites of passage, and Untouchability

practices vary throughout India. Dalit oppression became a generalized experience and its

openness allowed it to absorb many non-Untouchables, changing the liberation movement from

one of social justice to one of political revolution. The Panthers began to call for redistribution of

land and the elimination of a class system (Contursi 326).

Ambedkars prolific writings were difficult to formulate into a coherent political and

economic ideology that could be used to structure the Dalit movement. Political economist S. K.

Thorat suggests that much of the factionalism that occurred within the movement was due to this

inability to produce concurrence (Contursi 326-327). The Dalit Panthers split into factions in

1974 and internal disputes continued to further fracture the movement, making it difficult for

political action without coalitions and compromises.

The Bharatiya Dalit Panther faction became active in slums along the Bombay-Pune

Road, working for all underdogs whether that person is Mahar, Muslim, or caste Hindu

(Contursi 328). Political factions in Tamil Nadu became institutionalized, dropped caste

terminology from their titles and allocated seats to upper castes to widen their political base

(Gorringe 56). Although Dalit political parties began with the intent of offering Dalits

autonomous representation, they soon became pawns to mainstream parties who needed Dalit

votes to win.

Alternative Terms

Race was the most universal language of condemnation. Race moved mountains like the

UN, the foundations and the corporations. If caste were defined as race in India, one

retained local turfs but could use international forums to embarrass the official Indian

image (Visvanathan qtd. Reddy 564).


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Moving away from a diasporic narrative, a deflated contemporary Dalit liberation movement has

turned towards articulations of caste as race. While a racial identification of caste has an

undeniable impact upon conversations in international human rights symposia (Reddy 561), the

ideological significance of this shift is problematic and warrants examination in comparison to

what diaspora offers.

Ambedkar himself rejected race as an understanding of caste. Arguing that racial purity

exists nowhere and that every caste has an admixture of alien blood, Ambedkar states that the

caste system is a social division of people of the same race (49). He was also a skeptic of the

Aryan invasion theory, and argued that the Aryans were not a race, drawing upon academic

studies of Aryanism as a language rather than a phenotypical group. Finding no evidence of a

racial understanding of Aryans in any historic texts, he also rejected interpretations of Dasyus

(forefathers of Dalits) as race. Analyzing ancient Sanskrit texts, he concluded that varna

(caste) signified a class of a particular religion (Sharma 860). He therefore proposed that caste be

understood as a people rather than a race, interpreting Aryans and Dasyus as cultic

communities rather than colonizing and colonized races.

Although Ambedkar did not believe that Hindus and Dalits were of the same race, he also

did not believe that they were the same people nor that Dalit liberation could coexist in the same

political space as Hinduism. He proposed a new understanding of nationhood, where nation is

understood as a homogeneous (read egalitarian) unit, and argued that India was a union of

different nationalities (Franco 37). It is with this understanding of nationhood that he proposed a

Dalit Nation.


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His philological and scholarly evidence aside, Ambedkars primary objection to race is

on the basis of its blanketing of political difference. Skin colour does not in and of itself produce

social cohesion or egalitarian relations. Prashad similarly criticizes Afro-Dalits for their

epidermal determinism, since many a dark skinned person has been complicit in the subjugation

of other dark skinned people (Afro-Dalits 191). The advantage to a diasporic identity is that it

takes into account political particularities. Maintaining the memory of an idealized homeland and

a separate identity from ones host country is a political project that unifies people from different

classes. Had Dalit activists elected to adopt a diasporic identity based upon maintaining their

differences from Hindus rather than seeking to build a community based upon oppression in

general, they may have arrived at a more politically cogent identity.

John Comaroff suggests that the construction of any collective identity is determined

through differentiation from the Other, producing a world in terms of We/Them (Reddy 554).

The dissolution of the Dalit liberation movement can in some ways be attributed to the growing

indistinction between Hindus and Dalits. Whereas diaspora clings to a fixed identity that is

alienated from its surroundings, the Dalit identity became increasingly fluid and its collectivity

eroded.

In the absence of a diasporic vocabulary, Dalit activists oscillated between racial and

class-based identities. One can see the confusion in Rajshekars writing: on the one hand, he

claims that Indias Untouchables are racially African (39) and that they originally resemble[d]

the African in physical features (43), but then he goes on to admit that Brahmins cannot be

distinguished from Dalits through skin colour (39). Finding phenotypical differentiation

untenable, he switches to a class-based understanding of Dalits who are defined not so much

from Black Untouchables color as from their cultural and historical economic, social and


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political circumstances (39). Fearing that this frames Dalit liberation as simply social uplift and

desegregation, he states that [n]either can [caste]be abolished by inter-caste marriage nor

inter-dining. Caste is a state of mind (41, original italics). This appeal to a psychological state

closely resembles the trauma of diasporic peoples, focusing on an internal state that neither race

nor class adequately describes.

Deepa Reddy proposes an ethnic understanding of caste, examining various

characteristics that are common to both terms. Arguing that caste was historically in flux and that

communities were fuzzy, Reddy suggests that the emergence of the modern nation-state and its

mode of governance through types gave them the appearance of fixity. She understands this

fluidity as a mark of ethnicity (555). However, Reddy overlooks the fact that for a very long time

the British government refused to acknowledge Dalits as separate from Hindus, and that Dalits

themselves fought for differentiation. Moreover, it was not the government that turned Dalits

into a type": Dalits chose their name themselves in an effort to identify themselves against

Hindus. If ethnicity adapts to political conditions, caste creates its own political conditions. The

political autonomy of caste resembles that of diaspora, where governing structures have little

impact upon the subjects identity, and it is the diasporic subject that establishes the terms of

differentiation, not the state. Whereas ethnicity falls under the control of the nation-state,

diaspora remains autonomous. Dalit activistss attempt to situate themselves beyond the state

structure speaks to diasporic autonomy more so than ethnicity.

Reddy notes that ethnicity, like caste, tends to take on the appearance of an unchanging,

primordial nature and that it constructs natural social categories despite its actual fluidity

(556). While the primordial character of natural social division does hold for both ethnicity

and caste, ethnicity does not connote the historical struggle and alienation that are part of Dalit


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identity. Moreover, while upper castes see the backwardness of Dalits as a natural

characteristic that justifies their inferiority, Dalit activists are adamant that Hindu hierarchy is not

based upon natural aptitude. Ambedkar refutes the association of caste and occupational

hierarchy by arguing that it creates the very competencies that it claims are natural by not

allowing individuals to develop any capacities outside of caste-designated careers (47). While

ethnicity can be used to describe caste in general, it is fairly detrimental to the Dalit agenda in its

upholding of natural hierarchy.

Reddy concludes her argument for an ethnicization of caste by stating that,

[] the popular word ethnicityhas the advantage of not making India look peculiar,

while simultaneously taking into account the tendencies of Dalit discourse to highlight

locality, uniqueness, concreteness. It is to collapse the local with the global while

recognizing their polarity, to reiterate Appadurais observation that ideas that claim to

represent the essences of particular places reflect the temporary localization (and the

global is by now also a location in its own right) of ideas from many places (571).

While her point that ethnicity removes the exotic stigma of caste is useful in light of

activistss past attempts to compare casteism to forms of discrimination in other countries, it is

important to note that the collapsing of the local with the global has not seemed to further the

Dalit liberation movement, but diluted its aims. In situating Dalit oppression amidst others,

activists found themselves not only widening their audience but also widening the number of

grievances they addressed. Their effort to stake claims to universal resources entailed a reduction

of casteist particularities to general oppression and transformed the movement into a socialist cry

for all underdogs.


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continuous, uninterrupted ownership of land. Indigenous peoples experience no alienation upon

their homeland. The social exile effected by Untouchability is markedly absent from an

indigenous identity.

In human rights discourse, caste itself has undergone a redefinition, being understood as

discrimination based on work anddescent, and falling under the category of racial

discrimination. It is conceived as a strictly social institution, its disassociation from religion

allowing it to take on a universality that is similar to race. As a result, caste has become a global

phenomenon, with groups such as the Sri Lankan Rodiya, Japanese Burakumin, Nigerian Osu

and Igbo, and Senagalese Wolof identifying themselves as castes (Reddy 565-566). As

definitions of caste continue to expand, it remains to be seen if diaspora can offer a useful

narrative for Dalit activists.

Identity

Identity formation is also the process of setting up boundaries, of demarcating who is

within the fold and who is outside it. It includes the process of defining who the other is

and to what extent that other is also our enemy. At the same time, identity is also a

choosing process, the fashioning of a self (Franco 13).

Dalit activists have struggled with establishing an identity that is both politically cogent

and socially sensitive, hopeful and marked by historical struggle, self-determined and relational.

As much as identity formation is a process of taking control and stepping outside of existing

traditions, Dalits are very much a reactionary product of the caste system. Ambedkars

theorization of Dalithood as a political identity, and his rationalization of subjugation through

class are attempts to counter established traditions of Untouchability. Dalitss new identity is

in many ways simply a negation of the old.


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Works Cited

Ambedkar, B.R.Annihilation of Caste with a Reply to Mahatma Gandhi: And Castes in India:

Their Mechanism, Genesis, and Development. Jullundur City: Bheem Patrika Publications,

1968.

Brown, Wendy. Walled States, Waning Sovereignty. New York; Cambridge, Mass.: Zone

Books!; Distributed by the MIT Press, 2010.Contursi, Janet A. Political Theology: Text and Practice in a Dalit Panther Community. The

Journal of Asian Studies52.2 (1993): 320339.

Franco, Fernando, Jyotsna Macwan, and Suguna Ramanathan.Journeys to Freedom!: DalitNarratives. Kolkata: Samya, 2004.

Gorringe, Hugo. Taming the Dalit Panthers.Journal of South Asian Development2.1 (2007):

51 73.

Jefferson, Antonette. The Rhetoric of Revolution: The Black Consciousness Movement and the

Dalit Panther Movement. The Journal of Pan African Studies2.5 (2008): 4659.

Prashad, Vijay. Untouchable Freedom!: a Social History of Dalit Community. New Delhi; NewYork: Oxford India Paperbacks, 2001.

---. Afro-Dalits of the Earth, Unite!African Studies Review43.1 (2000): 189201.

Rajshekar Shetty, V. T.Dalit!: the Black Untouchables of India. Atlanta; Ottawa: Clarity Press,1987.

Reddy, Deepa S. The Ethnicity of Caste.Anthropological Quarterly78.3 (2005): 543-584.

Rinker, Jeremy. Transnational Advocacy and the Dalit Rights Movement. (2009): n. pag.

Sharma, Arvind. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar on the Aryan Invasion and the Emergence of the Caste

System in India.Journal of American Academy of Religion73.3 (2005): 843-870.


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Spodek, Howard.Ahmedabad!: Shock City of Twentieth-century India. Bloomington, IN: IndianaUniversity Press, 2011.

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