The Consequences of the American Caste System

2020 ◽  
pp. 19-56
Author(s):  
John U. Ogbu
Keyword(s):  
Caste System

Initial Decipherment of Indus script

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramkumar Unnipillai Santhakumari
Keyword(s):  
Caste System ◽  
Southern India ◽  
Early Form

A partial decipherment of Indus script is described. Sound values for Indus characters , readings obtained and conclusions derived are explained here. The Indus script seems derived from Protocuneiform script and in turn Brahmi script seems derived from the Indus script. The decipherment seems to indicate that the seals were a form of identification. There is evidence of an early form of caste system prevalent among Dalits in Southern India in these seals. The readings show that the language used was of Dravidian origin

History, the Hindu Right, and Subversion of Brahmanical-Hindu Political Thought

2019 ◽  
pp. 239-260
Author(s):  
Stuart Gray
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Positive Answer ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Caste System ◽  
Hindu Tradition ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Indian Nationalism ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Locus Classicus

How can scholars critically engage premodern Indic traditions without falling prey to Hindu conservatism or Brahmanical-Hindu apologism? This question is pressing for Indic political theory and contemporary Indian democracy because of ethnically exclusivist, Hindu nationalist movements that have emerged in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This chapter argues that a positive answer to the question must begin by taking seriously the tremendous pluralism in India’s political and philosophical history, which requires systematically engaging with premodern source material and uncovering the internal pluralism within a longer and larger Brahmanical-Hindu tradition of political thought. The author explains how it is both possible and politically necessary to internally subvert Brahmanical-Hindu political thought, which can help diffuse essentialist and exclusivist arguments coming from the Hindu right. Locating such plurality and engaging in internal subversion can help challenge historical justifications for Indian nationalism and contribute to decolonization, thus contesting the Hindu right on its own conceptual and genealogical turf. To advance this argument, the author provides a critical reinterpretation of the infamous “Puruṣa Sūkta,” which is often viewed as the locus classicus of the modern caste system, providing a novel interpretation that challenges caste hierarchy and supplies new resources for democratic thought and practice in India.

Caste and Untouchability in Jawaharlal Nehru’s Literary Masterpieces

2021 ◽  
pp. 2455328X2110093
Author(s):  
Tahira Tashneem
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Caste System ◽  
Indian Culture ◽  
Complete Eradication ◽  
Political Discourses ◽  
The World

As one of the major pillars of Indian social structure, the caste system distinguishes Indian culture from all other cultures of the world. Though the Constitution of India assures equality of status and opportunity for all citizens and various academic and political discourses also appealed for the complete eradication of the caste system, it has not been eradicated even after five decades of democracy. In this context, it becomes really interesting to re-examine the views on caste as reflected in Jawaharlal Nehru’s prose writings. Nehru’s major prose works unquestionably delineate his concern for caste. Focusing mainly on An Autobiography and the Discovery of India, this article seeks to examine the different representations of caste in his prose works and will also try to locate the gaps and the shifts underlying his views on caste.

scholarly journals “Educate, Agitate, Organize”: Inequality and Ethics in the Writings of Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arun Kumar ◽  
Hari Bapuji ◽  
Raza Mir
Keyword(s):  
Business Ethics ◽  
Caste System ◽  
Political Leader ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
Organizational Boundaries ◽  
Representational Politics ◽  
Institutional Contexts ◽  
Comprehensive Reform ◽  
Business And Management

AbstractScholars of business and management studies have recently turned their attention to inequality, a key issue for business ethics given the role of private firms in transmitting—and potentially challenging—inequalities. However, this research is yet to examine inequality from a subaltern perspective. In this paper, we discuss the alleviation of inequalities in organizational and institutional contexts by drawing on the ideas of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, a jurist, political leader and economist, and one of the unsung social theorists of the twentieth century. Specifically, we focus on Ambedkar’s critique of the Indian caste system, his outline of comprehensive reform, and prescription of representational politics to achieve equality. We contend that an Ambedkarite ethical manifesto of persuasion—focussed on state-led institutional reforms driven by the subaltern—can help management researchers reimagine issues of inequality and extend business ethics beyond organizational boundaries.

scholarly journals Intertwining Christian Mission, Theology, and History: A Case Study of the Basel Mission among the Thiyyas and Badagas of Kerala, 1870–1913

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 121
Author(s):  
Tiasa Basu Roy
Keyword(s):  
Caste System ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Christian Mission ◽  
Mission Theology ◽  
The People ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
History Of ◽  
Medical Aids ◽  
Basel Mission

For centuries, various denominations of Christian missionaries have contributed in a larger way towards the spread of Christianity among the people of Indian sub-continent. Each Church had its own principles of preaching the word of God and undertook welfare activities in and around the mission-stations. From establishing schools to providing medical aids, the Christian missionaries were involved in constant perseverance to improve the ‘indigenous’ societies not only in terms of amenities and opportunities, but also in spiritual aspects. Despite conversion being the prime motive, every Mission prepared ground on which their undertakings found meanings and made an impact over people’s lives. These endeavours, combining missiological and theological discourses, brought hope and success to the missionaries, and in our case study, the Basel Mission added to the history of the Christian Mission while operating in the coastal and hilly districts of Kerala during the 19th and the 20th centuries. Predominantly following the trait of Pietism, the Basel Mission emphasised practical matters more than doctrine, which was evident in the Mission activities among the Thiyyas and the Badagas of Malabar and Nilgiris, respectively. Along with addressing issues like the caste system and spreading education in the ‘backward’ regions, the most remarkable contribution of the Basel Mission established the ‘prototype’ of industries which was part of the ‘praxis practice’ model. It aimed at self-sufficiency and provided a livelihood for a number of people who otherwise had no honourable means of subsistence. Moreover, conversion in Kerala was a combination of ‘self-transformation’ and active participation which resulted in ‘enculturation’ and inception of ‘modernity’ in the region. Finally, this article shows that works of the Basel Mission weaved together its theological and missiological ideologies which determined its exclusivity as a Church denomination.

Neanderthal and the fossilization of the Third World

2020 ◽  
pp. 030631272098346
Author(s):  
Ryan Higgitt1
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
Third World ◽  
Caste System ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Investment Bankers ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Face ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Third World

Neanderthal is the quintessential scientific Other. In the late nineteenth century gentlemen-scientists, including business magnates, investment bankers and lawmakers with interest in questions of human and human societal development, framed Europe’s Neanderthal and South Asia’s indigenous Negritos as close evolutionary kin. Simultaneously, they explained Neanderthal’s extinction as the consequence of an inherent backwardness in the face of fair-skinned, steadily-progressing newcomers to ancient Europe who behaved in ways associated with capitalism. This racialization and economization of Neanderthal helped bring meaning and actual legal reality to Negritos via the British Raj’s official ‘schedules of backward castes and tribes’. It also helped justify the Raj’s initiation of market-oriented reforms in order to break a developmental equilibrium deemed created when fair-skinned newcomers to ancient South Asia enslaved Negritos in an enduring caste system. Neanderthal was integral to the scientism behind the British construction of caste, and contributed to India’s becoming a principal ‘Third World’ target of Western structural adjustment policies as continuation of South Asia’s ‘evolution assistance’.

The Caste-Class Association in India

Asian Survey ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 395-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Divya Vaid
Keyword(s):  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Caste System ◽  
Downward Mobility ◽  
Scheduled Castes ◽  
Over Time

Abstract This paper empirically analyzes the association between caste and class in India. I find a tentative congruence between castes and classes at the extremes of the caste system and a slight weakening in this association over time. Although Scheduled Castes have low upward mobility, higher castes are not entirely protected from downward mobility.

The European Factor in the Caste System: The Sri Lankan Model

1997 ◽  
Vol 25 (11/12) ◽  
pp. 3
Author(s):  
M. M. M. Mahroof
Keyword(s):  
Caste System ◽  
Sri Lankan

The Hindu Renaissance and its Apologetic Patterns

1970 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agehananda Bharati
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
Caste System ◽  
Protestant Ethic ◽  
Social Discourse ◽  
Urban Populations ◽  
Large Segment ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
Political Talk ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Scientific Base

An anthropological and linguistic analysis of the idiom of modern Hindu religious specialists and their followers, an audience which embraces all English speaking Indians and a large segment of the urban populations of India. The highly eclectic, quasi-secular and neo-Hindu ideology inaugurated by such charismatics as Vivekananda, other “Swamis” and interiorized by Indian nationalists, expresses itself in a highly stereotyped coded parlance, informed by Victorian English as well as by diffuse elements which could be described as a Hindu Protestant Ethic. Both systematic and conscious obfuscation of scriptural categories as well as complex but predictable patterns of dissimulation extending over virtually all types of cultural and social discourse—the caste-system, “superstitions,” the “scientific” base of Hinduism, political talk, etc., are adduced and investigated as paradigms of contemporary Indian parlance, which is not the grass-roots idiom, but which is gathering momentum as the forensic instrument of India's leadership and of Indian administrators, educators, and the Indian intellectuals.

79. Tribes, and the Caste System of India.

Man ◽  
1944 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 100
Author(s):  
P. D. Mehta
Keyword(s):  
Caste System
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