Suchergebnisse

After the British conquered Bengal and eventually the whole of India,they set out to administer the colony. In this context they encountered two phenomena with which they were not familiar: (1) the relation of people to land for production (and not for revenue receiving, household living, etc.), and (2) the caste system of India, viz. the jati strati?cation of society.

This position statement was posted by the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California, San Diego, on December 13, 2021. It documents an increasing awareness of caste-based discriminations and calls for institution, legal, and social interventions. The statement outlines an intention to recruit Dalit scholars.

M.N. Srinivas described rural India as characterised by the presence of locally influential 'dominant castes'. This article is an empirical engagement with the concept of 'dominant caste' in the context of electoral politics in a district of Bihar. An analysis of the patterns of caste interactions in this region shows that there is no settled 'dominant caste'. Numerical as well as economic and political strength is shared between several castes. Not only do the major castes compete and manoeuvre for power, even the minor castes challenge the major castes' attempts at establishing dominance, by approaching the courts and, in the case of disputes, making strategic alliances with one major caste in order to oppose another. This article examines the dynamics of these shifting caste responses and alliances in order to illustrate the fluidity of caste equations in contemporary Bihar. It also highlights the role of state institutions such as the police and the courts, but most significantly, electoral representation itself, as an instrument for fostering social change and political dynamism.

Although castes are organizing as cross-border formations empirically, the literature seems preoccupied with analyzing caste diasporas in terms of the boundaries of the nation-state. This article examines how digital caste networks serve as border-spanning caste diaspora by drawing on Steven Vertovec's conceptualization of a diaspora. The analysis draws on ethnographic data to analyze the case of theCyber Thiyyars of Malabar, a digital caste network that seeks to mobilize members of the Thiyya caste by foregrounding regional affiliations with Malabar.