DALIT

There must be now hundreds of websites devoted to Dalits; so what makes this website any different to to others?

'The argument will be that it is impossible to explain caste. (page 1). To this effect Quigley quotes Stevenson "There are exceptions to every rule of Hinduism and to every interpretation of caste."(1970:25) This observation is nothing new. It was first noted by the late DD Kosambi in the 1950’s.

'For example, caste organisation literally evaporates when one reaches a certain altitude in the Himalayas. The reason is not to do with altitude per se, or course; people do not think differently merely because they live at 5,000 or 6,000 feet above sea level. The reason is to do with the kind of social organisation that can be sustained by an economy, which because of infertile terrain, produces little or no agricultural surplus. Here then is one clue: caste organisation depend on agricultural surplus. This is obvious enough: if some groups or individuals are not themselves food producers, then their food must be produced by others.' (page 19)

Caste is very cumbersome even for someone who is obviously a world renowed expert in the field:

'In order to account fully for the development of caste, one would have to consider over 4,000 years of Indian history and a quite bewildering array of historical developments, ethnic groups, tribes, groups endorsing caste, schismatic sects, oppositional ideologies, political movements, major and minor conflicts. The list is truly endless. One way to begin explaining caste is to say what it is not-that is, to see it in comparative perspective. (page 166).'

'If there ever was a Pandora's box, caste is it. Immediately one is drawn in every sphere of anthropological concern: ritual, kinship, politics and economics, ethnographic and historical analysis, the nature of comparison and the difficulties which arise when trying to understand another society through indigenous and imported concepts. The central problem facing any explanation of caste is that , in the end, one is not confronting one question but several, and any form of reductionism is bound to fail (page 158).'

Caste is not limited to India only. Other South Asian  countries  for eaxample Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh also  have this system.

Caste is a social system, it is a system sanctioned by religion, it is an economic system; caste is most certainly political. Castes have their own psychologies as well. Caste is a multi system organism. How does then one arrives at the correct understanding of the caste system, let alone struggle against it?

Dalits in India are showing this every day in different ways. It is our belief that in order to understand the caste system you must try to practically oppose it and that in order to oppose it you must understand it correctly. Understanding the caste system correctly and opposing the caste system are interactive and dialectical processes.

The information contained in this website is to be found everywhere and yet nowhere. in one single place We believe that the information covered in Micropedia Dalitica is the minimum information that is required for a Dalit activists or their sympathiser or anyone else for that matter to understand the caste system properly.