CASTE, POLITICS, CASTEISM AND DALIT DISCOURSE : THE SCHEDULED CASTES OF WEST BENGAL BY RUP KUMAR BARMAN [HARDCOVER]

‘Caste’ has been an intrinsic feature of Indian society since the very beginning of the Aryan civilization. As a social institution, the ‘caste system’ has inherited certain inequalities in terms of the location of various varnas (castes) and jatis (sub-castes) in the ‘caste hierarchy’. Thus, India was not free from social discrimination, the practice of untouchability and caste violence. On the other hand, protests against social injustice and attempts to create an environment of ‘social equality’ and adoption of egalitarian faiths were also common in India throughout the pre-colonial period. Social practices of diverse caste communities had received considerable attention from the ‘colonial administrators and Indian sociopolitical leaders. In most cases, the colonial ‘administrative scholars and official surveyors’ had preserved the pre-colonial notions and traditions of caste in their official records. They used ‘caste’ as a tool of stratification of Indian communities irrespective of their religious and economic differences. After the independence of India (1947), the ‘declared aims of the constitution makers’ for safeguarding ‘equality’ and ‘justice’ through the abolition of untouchability, injustice and casteism’ got solid ground, thanks to the adoption of the Constitution of India (1949) and various acts. Concurrently, welfare policies of the colonial and post-colonial state, including the continuity of ‘caste-based reservation policy’, have changed the basic perception of caste. But this trend has energized the dormant casteism that exists in the minds of the people of unreserved categories. Naturally, ‘perceptional casteism’, ‘soft casteism (psychological)’, ‘hard casteism (physical)’ and ‘behavioural casteism’ are very much common in West Bengal (like other provinces of India). Simultaneously, electoral politics has submerged the political consciousness of the Scheduled Castes of West Bengal to the feet of upper caste-dominated political parties. However, the Dalit Discourse is emerging as a parallel academic subject in India where the Scheduled Castes of West Bengal have substantial contributions. This book, after critically examining the changing perception of caste(s), has aspired to restructure the history of caste-based politics, changing nature of casteism and Dalit Discourse with a set of new propositions.