A ritual to cleanse ground a Dalit leader stood on, and a commission that found no caste in it
Untouchability has never needed anyone to announce a motive. India's Scheduled Castes commission went looking for one in Haldwani.
Coverage
Anti-caste Ideas
Ambedkar, Phule, Periyar, and contemporary Dalit intellectuals as primary theoretical resources.
In focus
Untouchability & Modern India
The Commission looked for declared malice. Untouchability rarely declares itself. — DalPro Frames (AI-generated) – Why AI image?
But after my speech, you … tried to insult me by doing a purification ritual … you made me feel the sting of untouchability.
27%
Of respondents to the India Human Development Survey (2011–12) who said they practised untouchability in some form.
Marrying Across Caste
Seven years after he married across caste, a Dalit man was killed in a Rajkot street. India still has no national law against "honour" killings
Police suspect Vimal Vaniya's wife's brother and two other men killed him over a marriage her family tried to undo. The Supreme Court asked Parliament for a law in 2018, and there isn't one.
Intercaste marriage narrows India's child nutrition gap where it happens. Endogamy keeps it rare
The right to marry by choice is settled law. Protecting it is not. — DalPro Frames (AI-generated) – Why AI image?
The real remedy for breaking Caste is inter-marriage. Nothing else will serve as the solvent of Caste.
64%
Of Indians say it is very important to stop women in their community marrying into another caste; 62% say so of men.
Reading Ambedkar
Caste Cannot Be Reformed. It Can Only Be Annihilated.
The Supreme Court froze the campus rules Rohith Vemula's mother fought for, over whether caste discrimination runs one way. Ambedkar explained in 1936 why rules alone keep losing.
Ambedkar Compared Caste to Race in 1946. Here's Where a US Comparison Holds
A statue of B.R. Ambedkar at Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad. File photo. — Mohammad Anees Qamar, CC0 1.0
You cannot build anything on the foundations of caste. You cannot build up a nation, you cannot build up a morality. Anything that you will build on the foundations of caste will crack, and will never be a whole.
Where did untouchability go? How caste survived the law in modern India
India abolished untouchability in 1950. Surveys, audits and Dalit testimony show it moved into the rental interview, the hiring shortlist, the marriage market and the kitchen.
A ritual to cleanse ground a Dalit leader stood on, and a commission that found no caste in it
The notice doesn't mention caste. It doesn't need to. — DalPro Frames (AI-generated) – Why AI image?
You cannot move out of your lower caste. You can obscure it but cannot escape it.
48%
of Dalit home-seekers who met landlords in person got a positive answer, against 97% of dominant-caste Hindu home-seekers with matched profiles, in a 2012 in-person audit of 66 matched home-seekers per group in five cities of the Delhi region.
Showing —
The Commission looked for declared malice. Untouchability rarely declares itself. — DalPro Frames (AI-generated) – Why AI image?
Analysis
A ritual to cleanse ground a Dalit leader stood on, and a commission that found no caste in it
Untouchability has never needed anyone to announce a motive. India's Scheduled Castes commission went looking for one in Haldwani.
Explainer
Where did untouchability go? How caste survived the law in modern India
India abolished untouchability in 1950. Surveys, audits and Dalit testimony show it moved into the rental interview, the hiring shortlist, the marriage market and the kitchen.
Explainer
What Tamil Nadu's order to take caste off its street signs means
Tamil Nadu's SC/ST Commission has given Collectors a month to strip caste names from streets and settlements. For Dalits whose address told strangers their caste, the name is the point.
Opinion
Caste Cannot Be Reformed. It Can Only Be Annihilated.
The Supreme Court froze the campus rules Rohith Vemula's mother fought for, over whether caste discrimination runs one way. Ambedkar explained in 1936 why rules alone keep losing.
Profile
Shrujana Niranjani Shridhar and the archive the Dalit Panthers left at home
The Dalit Panthers' little magazines survived on their own people's shelves. Shrujana Niranjani Shridhar is scanning and translating them, arguments and art alike.
Analysis
Ambedkar Compared Caste to Race in 1946. Here's Where a US Comparison Holds
Ambedkar compared caste to race in a 1946 letter to W.E.B. Du Bois, decades before Isabel Wilkerson's Caste. Court data show where the comparison holds, and where it breaks.
Analysis
How Caste Began: Ambedkar's Endogamy Thesis
In a 1916 Columbia seminar paper, a 25-year-old Ambedkar named endogamy as caste's essence. A century of theory has mostly elaborated it, and matrimonial sites still run on it.