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AbstractThis article argues that the genealogy of modern anti-caste critique is incomplete without a contextualized and close reading of Jatibhed Viveksar, a nineteenth-century Marathi-language text written under the pseudonym Ek Hindu ('One Hindu' or 'A Hindu'). One of the first lower-caste commentaries in the Marathi print-world, the treatise clearly departed from the earlier iterations of non-Brahman caste politics in western India and laid the groundwork for what later came to be known as the 'anti-caste movement'. I demonstrate how Jatibhed Viveksar engaged with preceding expressions of caste politics in western India by disputing two commonly deployed concepts in early modern caste controversies: first, the received proscriptions against varna sankara (or the intermixing of castes) and, second, the idea that the Shudras were the progeny of the 'moral failure' of varna sankara. Ek Hindu argued that not just the Shudras, but the Brahmans too have mixed-caste ancestors and thus cannot claim purity of lineage. Moreover, the author wrested the Shudras from a constellation of negative meanings by deploying the 'Aryan invasion narrative'; he represented them as indigenous heroes who were vanquished by the Aryan-Brahmans. The conceptual innovations, intellectual sources, and frames of thought mobilized by Jatibhed Viveksar have significantly shaped the common sense of the ensuing articulations of anti-caste politics.

. . . according to Manu, for slandering a Vaisya or a Shudra the fines are only twenty-five or twelve panas, respectively. For members of the lower orders who slander their betters the penalties are much more severe . . . the equality of the law was never admitted in ancient India, and was quite contrary to most Indian thought. (A. L. Basham, The Wonder That Was India, 1954: 120).

The main objective of the present paper is to explore the relevance of Ambedkarism (thoughts of Ambedkar) and how it brings political consciousness among backward sections. B.R. Ambedkar advocates the path for emancipation through his personal experiences and he gave three mantras: 'educate', 'agitate' and 'organize'. The idea of 'education' would be main objective of this paper because education is one of the key mantras. Education makes a person to a complete human being. Therefore, Ambedkar express that the socio-political status of shudra (SC/ST/OBC) had been socially and economically backward only because there was a severe lack of education. The present paper would explore the connection between political consciousness and Ambedkarism (thought of Amberdkar), because his thought does not accept any religious discrimination, apartheid, caste-discrimination, orthodoxy, superstition, ignorance, etc. in any form and this concept seeks the path of socio-economic and political upheaval through education

This contribution to the 'Commentary' series is based on the conversation contained in fourteen letters exchanged electronically in January–February 2005 between Neshat Quaiser, Ahmad (full name withheld) and Satish Saberwal. The text rests in major part on Quaiser's response to issues raised by Ahmad and Saberwal. The conversation focuses on the various facets of being an 'Indian Muslim', with reference to the binary opposition between the high caste elite and the Shudra Muslim sections of the community. The conversation is confined to processes affecting North Indian Muslims. However, the central argument on caste and revivalist thinking as crucial structuring principles is, it is felt, applicable equally to Muslims of other parts of the country. It identifies the ways in which the high caste elite hegemonise readings of the 'Muslim' role in India's history and the agenda they advance to further the 'community's' more favourable location in India's polity, economy and society.

This article reflects upon the discourses responding to the hegemony in Indian society, particularly from the perspectives of most marginalised sections, that is, the ex-Untouchables or the present day Dalits. Their exclusion being not merely social but a collaborative exclusion, where exclusion is both in multiple spaces of politics, society, culture, economy; as well as from multiple groups like Brahmins, Vaishyas, Kshatriyas, Shudras, Minorities, etc., their response to the hegemony also remains problematic and perplex. Here it is argued that in the modern times, apart from others, Ambedkar and Kanshi Ram confronted it. The former realised that the nationalist agenda during British rule was representing two hegemonic blocs, Hindus led by Congress and the Muslims by Muslim League. Nevertheless, he maintained equi-distance from the duo and worked on alternatives. He could visualise the mounting hegemonic propensity in the Shudra leadership that was pragmatically confronted by Kanshi Ram through the 'beneficiaries of reservation', thus challenging the politics of representation, governance, equity and consequent hegemony as per their times and context.

Der Beitrag untersucht Prozesse politischer Mobilisierung durch Bildung in einem kolonialen Kontext. In Indien entwickelte sich Bildung im 19. Jahrhundert zu einem wichtigen Kristallisationspunkt sozialpolitischer Auseinandersetzungen: Einerseits richtete sich die Forderung nach einer Ausweitung von Bildungschancen unmittelbar gegen bestehende Ausschlüsse im Rahmen der Kasten- und Geschlechterhierarchien. Andererseits sollte über Bildungsangebote eine Solidargemeinschaft der unteren und untersten Kasten gestiftet werden, die sich unter dem Begriff Dalit Bahujan zu einer wichtigen politischen Kategorie im modernen Indien entwickelt hat. Insgesamt beleuchtet der Beitrag das spannungsreiche Verhältnis von kolonialer Herrschaft, Nationenformierung und subalterner politischer Mobilisierung. (DIPF/Orig.) ; The article analyses political mobilization through education in a colonial context. In the 19th century education became an important field of socio-political contestation in India. Gaining access to schooling and critical world knowledge became a crucial means in the struggles of the lower and lowest castes, the so-called shudra-atishudras, to contest the social hierarchies and educational privileges of 'brahminical patriarchy'. The early anti-caste movement deployed schooling, public entertainment, and various literary forms to create a community of the 'oppressed majority' of the lower and lowest castes. Thus, they contributed to the emergence of an important political identity in modern India, the Dalit Bahujan. Looking at these processes, the paper sheds light on the complex relations of colonialism, nationalism, and subaltern mobilization. (DIPF/Orig.)

An examination of India's anticaste movement, during which it has engaged in dialogue with the Marxist Left while maintaining its own history, analysis, & discourse. The revolutionary ideology of the nineteenth-century Phules, & the non-Brahman & Dalit movements (particularly the influence of Ambedkar) of the twentieth century are discussed. The Dalit Panthers were formed in 1972 in response to the dominace of capital & a large bureaucracy controlled by Bania castes & an aristocratic Brahman elite. The Dalit-Shudra unity gradually developed during the 1980s to gain power as a majority alliance. It is contended that the thrust of the present National Front-leftist party alliance will be the implementation of the Mandal Commission, whose core rhetoric is the language of power. However, the commission's program is without an economic-social foundation & has failed to give attention to many of the concerns of the Left, including land reform, the right to work, the demands of the farmers' movements, & alternative development arising from the environmental movement. It is suggested that the new movements of the 1990s, particularly the environmental & farmers' movements, are forcing a reconsideration of exploitation & destruction. 8 References. S. Millett

On the 125th birth anniversary of Dr B. R. Ambedkar, this essay acknowledges the great leader's life, vision and contributions to the cause of marginalized humanity in India. It attempts to examine Ambedkar's agenda for social reform and his efforts towards the empowerment of the abused caste and gender categories through intense satyagraha (a form of nonviolent resistance), widespread education and supportive state laws. The article concludes with a review of caste and gender issues in the present times and argues for the need to revamp the education system. This essay begins with Ambedkar's early life and education facilitated by the patronage of the philanthropic reformer and King of Baroda Province, Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III. Second, it examines Ambedkar's endeavours to educate and empower the women and depressed castes of India through his research, scholarship and rewritings of the Indian social history. And third, the essay attempts to understand the concept of the untouchable Dalit as a category that comes close to the Greek phenomenon of the homo sacer—a Greek concept synonymous with the rational of the Dalit/Ati-shudra. Through the ancient concept of the homo sacer, Giorgio Agamben explores agencies that conspire to draft, long-drawn statements of abuse and exploitation of the ostracized social and political underdog.

Anti-caste traditions in India work to understand and examine the idea of personhood which the majority in India is deprived of by virtue of being born in the lower rungs of the caste hierarchy. This paper examines the historical continuity in Brahminism and the rupture Jotiba Phule presents to it through his art and activism which serves to disturb the regular flow of singular continuity of what is perceived as history and historiography. Jotiba's quest is for finding the essence / personhood of, what Butler calls, a 'precarious subject' and recognizing that precarious subject – the Shudra, as a subject of history. But the personhood of this precarious subject is never a complete personhood. Therefore, Jotiba attempts to unveil the path towards achieving complete personhood which is embedded in reaffirming the lost or concealed truth – by discontinuing the historical flow of the social structure of caste and establishing a new subject rising out of crisis in social structure in history. I have chosen two works from Jotiba's works as new methodological tools for history writing and historical criticism, and made hermeneutical and phenomenological readings of the both. The works are his poem Kulambin (a peasant woman), and the Satyashodhak (truth-seeker) marriage as the public performance of protest- as they are both - the essential and the mundane to his life, which exemplifies the truth Jotiba followed and established an organization Satyashodhak Samaj (Society of Truth Seekers) as a testament to it.