State of untouchables in Anthrographs by Dr Sudhir Kumar

Indian democracy
Untouchables: Identity and History
Dalit which literally means broken or scattered as per the sanskrit origin are known
as untouchable. It is a name for people belonging to the lowest stratum castes in
India.

Dalits were excluded from the four-fold varna system of Hinduism (Brahmin,
Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra) and were seen as forming a fifth varna, also
known by the name of Panchama.

Dalits now profess various religious beliefs, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism,
Christianity, Islam and various other belief systems. Scheduled Castes is the official
Dalits have had lowest social status in the
term for Dalits as per the Constitution of India.
traditional Hindu social structure but James
Lochtefeld, a professor of religion and Asian
There are more than 160 million people in India are considered
studies, said in 2002 that the "adoption and
"Untouchable"—people tainted by their birth into a caste system that deems
popularization reflects their growing
them impure, less than human.
awareness of the situation.

The term Dalit is a self-applied concept for those called the "untouchables" and Modern History and Changes:
others that were outside of the traditional Hindu caste hierarchy. Economist and
In 1932, the British Raj recommended separate electorates to select leaders for
reformer B. R. Ambedkar (1891–1956) said that untouchability came into Indian
Dalits in the Communal Award. This was favoured by Ambedkar but when
society around 400 CE, due to the struggle for supremacy between Buddhism and
Mahatma Gandhi opposed the proposal it resulted in the Poona Pact. That in turn
Brahmanism.
influenced the Government of India Act, 1935, which introduced the reservation of
seats for the Depressed Classes.
Some Hindu priests befriended untouchables and were demoted to low-caste ranks.
Eknath, another excommunicated Brahmin, fought for the rights of untouchables
From soon after its independence in 1947, India introduced a reservation system.
during the Bhakti period.
In 1997, India elected its first Dalit President, K. R. Narayanan. While caste-
based discrimination was prohibited and untouchability abolished by the
In the late 1880s, the Marathi word 'Dalit' was used by Mahatma Jotiba Phule for
Constitution of India, such practices are still widespread. To prevent harassment,
the outcasts and Untouchables who were oppressed and broken in the Hindu
assault, discrimination and similar acts against these groups, the Government of
society. It was perhaps first used in this sense by Pune-based social reformer
India enacted the Prevention of Atrocities Act, also called the SC/ST Act, on 31 March
Jyotirao Phule, in the context of the oppression faced by the erstwhile "untouchable"
1995.
castes from other Hindus. The term dalits was in use as a translation for the
British Raj census classification of Depressed Classes prior to 1935.
In accordance with the order of the Bombay High Court, the Information and
Broadcasting Ministry issued an advisory to all media channels in September 2018,
It was popularised by Ambedkar, himself a Dalit, who included all depressed people
asking them to use "Scheduled Castes" instead of the word "Dalit".
irrespective of their caste into the definition of Dalits.
George Kunnath claims that there "is and has been an internal hierarchy between
Socio-legal scholar Oliver Mendelsohn and political economist Marika Vicziany
the various Dalit castes". According to Kunnath, the Dusadhs are considered the
wrote in 1998 that the term had become "intensely political ... While the use of
highest while the Musahars are considered the lowest within the Dalit groups.
the term might seem to express appropriate solidarity with the contemporary face
of Untouchable politics, there remain major problems in adopting it as a generic
term. Although the word is now quite widespread, it still has deep roots in a Discrimination against Dalits:
tradition of political radicalism inspired by the figure of B. R. Ambedkar." They went According to a 2007 report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), the treatment of Dalits
on to suggest that its use risked erroneously labelling the entire population of has been like a "hidden apartheid" and that they "endure segregation in housing,
untouchables in India as being united by a radical politics. schools, and access to public services".

While discrimination against Dalits has declined in urban areas and in the public
Other terms: sphere, it still exists in rural areas and in the private sphere, in everyday matters
such as access to eating places, schools, temples and water sources.
Scheduled Castes is the official term for Dalits in the opinion of India's National
Commissions for Scheduled Castes (NCSC), who took legal advice that indicated According to statewide data, Untouchability is most commonly practised in
modern legislation does not refer to Dalit and that therefore, it says, it is Madhya Pradesh (53 per cent), followed by Himachal Pradesh (50 per cent),
"unconstitutional" for official documents to do so. Chhattisgarh (48 per cent), Rajasthan and Bihar (47 per cent), Uttar Pradesh
(43 per cent), and Uttarakhand (40 per cent).
Some sources say that Dalit can include nomadic tribes and another official
classification that also originated with the British Raj positive discrimination A sample survey in 2014, conducted by Dalit Adhikar Abhiyan and funded by
efforts in 1935. ActionAid, found that among state schools in Madhya Pradesh, 88 per cent
discriminated against Dalit children. In 79 per cent of the schools studied, Dalit
An example of the limitations of the Scheduled Caste category is that, under Indian children are forbidden from touching mid-day meals. They are required to sit
law, such people can only be followers of Buddhism, Hinduism or Sikhism, yet separately at lunch in 35 per cent of schools, and are required to eat with specially
there are communities who claim to be Dalit Christians and Muslims, and the tribal marked plates in 28 per cent.
communities often practise folk religions.
Discrimination can also exist in access to healthcare and nutrition. A sample survey
The term Harijan, or 'children of God', was coined by Narsinh Mehta, a Gujarati of Dalits, conducted over several months in Madhya Pradesh and funded by
poet-saint of the Bhakti tradition, to refer to all devotees of Krishna irrespective of ActionAid in 2014, found that health field workers did not visit 65 per cent of Dalit
caste, class, or sex. settlements. 47 per cent of Dalits were not allowed entry into ration shops; and 64
per cent were given less grains than non-Dalits. In Haryana state, 49 per cent of Dalit
Mahatma Gandhi, notably an admirer of Mehta's work, first used the word in children under five years were underweight and malnourished while 80 per cent
the context of identifying Dalits in 1933. Ambedkar disliked the name as it placed of those in the 6–59 months age group were anaemic in 2015.
Dalits in relation to a greater Hindu nation rather than as in an independent
community like Muslims. In 2017, Supreme Court of India noted calling people
Religion:
harijan was offensive.
Most Dalits in India are Hindu. In the 19th century, the Brahmo Samaj, Arya Samaj
In Southern India, Dalits are sometimes known as Adi Dravida, Adi Karnataka, and the Ramakrishna Mission actively participated in the rights of Dalits.
and Adi Andhra, which literally mean First Dravidians, Kannadigas, and
Andhras, respectively. While Dalits had places to worship, the first upper-caste temple to openly
welcome Dalits was the Laxminarayan Temple in Wardha in 1928. It was
In Maharashtra, according to historian and women's studies academic Shailaja Paik, followed by the Temple Entry Proclamation issued by the last King of Travancore in
Dalit is a term mostly used by members of the Mahar caste, into which Ambedkar the Indian state of Kerala in 1936.
was born. Most other communities prefer to use their own caste name.
 Anthrographs by Dr Sudhir Kumar
In the 1930s, Gandhi and Ambedkar disagreed regarding retention of the caste
system. Whilst Ambedkar wanted to see it destroyed, Gandhi thought that it could
be modified by reinterpreting Hindu texts so that the untouchables were absorbed
into the Shudra varna. Western sociologists and anthropologists have largely viewed India as a society
characterized by caste in which social hierarchy was translated into a biological, and
Other Hindu groups attempted to reconcile with the Dalit community. Hindu hence cultural, idiom.
temples are increasingly receptive to Dalit priests, a function formerly reserved for
Brahmins. Brahmins such as Subramania Bharati passed Brahminhood onto a Dalit, Louis Dumont (1911-1998), for example, in his famous book Homo Hierachicus
while in Shivaji's Maratha Empire Dalit warriors (the Mahar Regiment) joined his (1966) championed this cultural notion of hierarchy to analyze caste system in
forces. structuralist terms. On the other hand, anti-Dumont interactionist scholars like
Mckim Marriott gave more emphasis to the local and regional variations in the caste
In 1956, the Dalit jurist Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) launched the Dalit hierarchy and M.N. Srinivas propounded a theory of social mobility occurring within
Buddhist movement, leading several mass conversions of Dalits from Hinduism to the caste system through a process that he termed “Sanskritization”.
Buddhism. Another Dalit Buddhist leader and reformer was Pandit Iyothee Thass,
founder of the Sakya Buddhist Society of Tamil Nadu. As early as 1916, B.R. Ambedkar made a novel attempt to explain the caste system
in India. Looking at not just caste but the caste system in which each jati is part of
Sikhism the whole was definitely a step forward in social and cultural anthropology.
Guru Nanak in Guru Granth Sahib calls for everyone to treat each other equally.
Social stratification exists in the Sikh community. The bulk of the Sikhs of Punjab For him, caste system was a division of the labouring classes rather than a
belong to the Jat caste; there are also two Dalit Sikh castes in the state, called division of labour. He observed that marriage outside one’s own immediate
the Mazhabis and the Ramdasias. kin-group, or clan exogamy, was the fundamental and universal feature of
human society and in India “tribal exogamy” survived through different stages
In 1953, Sikh leader Master Tara Singh succeeded in winning the demands from the of civilization, whereas in the modern world this was no longer the rule.
government to include Sikh castes of the converted untouchables in the list of
scheduled castes. Sikh women are required to have the surname "Kaur", and men, He wrote that exogamy has lost its efficacy, and excepting the nearest blood-kins,
the surname "Singh", in order to eradicate caste identities and discrimination. there is usually no social bar restricting the field of marriage. But regarding the
peoples of India the law of exogamy is a positive injunction even today. Indian
Jainism society still savours of the clan system, even though there are no clans; and
In 1958, a Sthanakvasi Jain called Muni Sameer Muni came into contact with this can be easily seen from the law of matrimony which centres round the
members of the Khatik community in the Udaipur region, who decided to adopt principle of exogamy, for it is not that Sapindas (blood-kins) cannot marry, but
Jainism. a marriage even between Sagotras (of the same class) is regarded as a
sacrilege.
Acharya Nanesh, the eighth Achayra of Sadhumargi Jain Shravak Sangha, had
preached among the Balai community in 1963 near Ratlam. His followers are called This is the logical foundation based on which Ambedkar advanced his arguments to
Dharmapal. In 1984, some of the Bhangis of Jodhpur came under the influence of elucidate the caste system. He cogently argued that since in India exogamy was the
Acharya Shri Tulsi and adopted Jainism. rule and not the exception, endogamy must have been a foreign idea. But then how
could caste system, for which endogamy was a prerequisite, come into being in
Christianity India?
Mass conversions of lower caste Hindus to Christianity and Islam took place in order
to escape the discrimination. The main Dalit groups that participated in these The various Gotras of India are and have been exogamous: so are the other groups
conversions were the Chuhras of Punjab, Chamars of North India (Uttar with totemic organization. It is no exaggeration to say that with the people of India
Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh), Vankars of Gujarat, and Pulayas of exogamy is a creed and none dare infringe it, so much so that, in spite of the
Kerala. The first people converted to Christianity by Jesuits of the Madura endogamy of the Castes within them, exogamy is strictly observed and that
Mission were members of Nadars, Maravars, and Pallar. there are more rigorous penalties for violating exogamy than there are for
violating endogamy. … Consequently in the final analysis creation of Castes, so far
Even after conversion, in some cases Dalits were discriminated against due to the as India is concerned, means the superposition of endogamy on exogamy.
"residual leftover" practice of caste discrimination from their previous traditions.
Ambedkar went on to explain how some of the social groups in ancient India that
Even after conversion, to some extent segregation, restriction, hierarchy, and were classes turned into enclosed endogamous groups probably to hold on to the
graded ritual purity remained. In many cases, the churches referred to the Dalits as privileges which they accrued from the ancient class system.
'New Christians'. It is alleged to be a derogatory term which classifies the Dalit
Christians to be looked down upon by other Christians. During the earlier days of According to Ambedkar, since the Brahmins and the Kshtriyas were the most
Christianity, in some churches in south India the Dalits had either separate seating, privileged classes it was these classes who began to enclose themselves to secure
or had to attend the mass outside. their privileges by becoming endogamous. Later other groups also emulated the
higher classes and the system spread over the wider region.
By an Anthropological point of view:
Endogamy or the closed-door system, was a fashion in the Hindu society, and
B. R. Ambedkar, theorized that untouchability originated because of the deliberate as it had originated from the Brahmin caste it was whole-heartedly imitated
policy of the upper-caste Brahmanas. Later scholars such as Vivekanand Jha have by all the non-Brahmin sub-divisions or classes, who, in their turn, became
refuted his theory. endogamous castes. It is “the infection of imitation” that caught all these sub-
divisions on their onward march of differentiation and has turned them into
Nripendra Kumar Dutt, a professor of history, theorized that the concept of castes.
untouchability originated from the "pariah"-like treatment accorded to the indigenous
people of India by the early Dravidians, and that the concept was borrowed by the
Indo-Aryans from the Dravidians. Scholars such as R. S. Sharma have rejected this Starting with the fundamental anthropological discovery of tribal clan exogamy
theory. Ambedkar was able to show how caste endogamy was superimposed on the former.
Secondly, his exposition of caste as an extreme form of class system as early as
Austrian ethnologist Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf theorized that untouchability 1917 was also exemplary.
originated as class stratification in urban areas of the Indus Valley civilisation.
According to this theory, the poorer workers involved in 'unclean' occupations such as The cultural denigration of Untouchables has long had important economic
sweeping or leather work were historically segregated and banished outside the city
implications. Untouchability, like racism in the Western world, has served to
limits.
rationalize and maintain a vast pool of cheap labor.
American scholar George L. Hart, based on his interpretation of Old Tamil texts such
as Purananuru, traced the origin of untouchability to ancient Tamil society. According
to him, in this society, certain occupational groups were thought to be involved in
controlling the malevolent supernatural forces; as an example, Hart mentions the
Paraiyars, who played the drums during battles and solemn events such as births and
deaths. People from these occupational groups came to be avoided by others, who
believed that they were "dangerous and had the power to pollute the others".

British anthropologist John Henry Hutton traced the origin of untouchability to the
taboo on accepting food cooked by a person from a different caste. This taboo
presumably originated because of cleanliness concerns, and ultimately, led to other
prejudices such as the taboo on marrying outside one's caste.

Scholars such as Suvira Jaiswal, R. S. Sharma, and Vivekanand Jha characterize

untouchability as a relatively later development after the establishment of the varna
and caste system. Jha notes that the earliest Vedic text Rigveda makes no mention of
untouchability, and even the later Vedic texts, which revile certain groups such as the
Chandalas, do not suggest that untouchability existed in the contemporary society.
According to Jha, in the later period, several groups began to be characterized as
untouchable, a development which reached its peak during 600–1200 AD.
Scholarly observations regarding persecution of Dalits: Anthrographs by Dr Sudhir Kumar
Untouchables are a distinct and separate category of despised, even hated,
people.

Historically they have suffered ‘traditional violence’ of stigmatization and

discrimination; segregation in housing; denial of access to wells, water, schools,
temples, and eating establishments; and restrictions on the clothes they can
wear, the paths they can walk on, and the people with whom they may eat.

Such practices are much mitigated in modernizing, especially urban, India, the
mitigation is more because of a ‘new civic culture’s’ pragmatism and convenience , Robert Deliège Oliver Mendelsohn Marika Vicziany
than of personal, inner conviction.

‘Modern violence’ of stigmatization conceals itself in the private sphere of the home,
yet shows itself in the economy’s growing, private sphere which fails to employ
Affirmative action, popularly known as ‘Reservations,’ has become the most
Untouchables except as janitors.
controversial policy relating to Untouchables.
Untouchables’ own increasing demands for their rights and freedom from
Mendelsohn and Vicziany make two significant observations:
exploitation provoke non-Untouchable ‘modern violence’ against them.

First, they consider violence arising from the policy of Reservations. They
Deliège emphasizes two important characteristics of Untouchable life: Difference
attribute the Mandal affair’s violence to a change in the nature of Reservations from
and Ambiguity. By and large Untouchables differentiate themselves by their caste
social amelioration to redistribution of power and issues over who would run India.
name and caste endogamy remains uncontested. Untouchables’ structural ambiguity
is both inclusive and exclusive.
But they fail to explain why Untouchables alone were violence’s victims. The
change, I think, was hated. Untouchables have often been metonymic signifiers of
Exclusive i.e = From full participation in village life. Higher-level positions of national
hatred and, therefore, became again its victims.
and state bureaucracies and the judiciary. Inclusive i.e = Need for their agricultural
labor and services in certain rituals, Lower level positions
Second, they argue for rather than against the ‘creamy layer’ of Untouchables
who purportedly through Reservations have achieved higher education and,
Untouchables’ response to the social, political, economic, and orthodox Hindu
thereby, moved into higher, reserved civil service posts as well as reserved
systems in which they live, then, is ambivalent. They contribute to, but are denied
elected positions at the state and national levels.
most benefits of, those systems.

Untouchables and non-Untouchables alike attack the ‘creamy layer’ as a class that
Deliège’s analysis of Untouchable myths describe their lowly condition as the
reproduces itself by monopolizing such positions and isolates itself from sharing
result of an historical trick or mistake, of human, not divine, action. Therefore,
knowledge and wealth with its community’s poorer members.
they resent and reject discrimination against themselves, but not against
Untouchables of other, ‘polluted’ castes. That is why, at no time in their history
For that reason Untouchable politicians, like Kanshi Ram, argue that
have Untouchables been able to unite into a single, cohesive political force.
reservations should be abolished. Non-Untouchables also stereotype ‘creamy
They remain ‘both victims and agents of the caste system, its defenders and its
layer’ members as having substandard minds and educations. Only because of
enemies’
Reservations have they achieved their positions; thus, they purportedly
promote inefficiency, not merit.

Ethnohistorical Case Studies

Prashad and Dube, both neo-subaltern ethnohistorians, have written case studies.
Prashad’s book is about capitulation to hegemony, while Dube’s is about
resistance to it.

Both books, too, are about how colonialism’s Foucaultian discourses have been
genealogically inherited and reworked in independence’s internal colonialism. They
reveal the historical precursors of contemporary state violence in an ‘uncivil
democracy.’

Prashad’s narrative is notable for its compelling analysis of state domination and
nationalist hegemony under which Delhi’s sweepers have capitulated. Before
1860, they were not a caste, but a community, Mehtar, composed of different lower-
caste members. That situation changed during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

By 1931 Delhi’s sweepers were 89.4 percent Chuhras from the Punjab. in 1901 , the
Mendelsohn and Vicziany emphasize Untouchables’
British, following upper caste stereotypes, fatefully classified Chuhras as
relations to the State and politics. They analyze State
sweepers. Their occupation thereby became their identity: sweeper.
policies concerning poverty’s elimination and those of
anti-discriminatory legislation and affirmative action.
Conditions progressively worsened and by 1930 many sweepers were in debt
Their main argument is that although State policies Oliver Mendelsohn Marika Vicziany
bondage to jamadars and contractors.
have to some extent ameliorated poverty among
Untouchables, amelioration has resulted from the
In 1957 after independence Delhi’s sweepers went on strike against the DMC. A
policies aimed at the entire population, rather than at
bill to reimpose the ESMO was brought to Parliament, where the bill’s
Untouchables alone.
supporters argued that the sweepers, as citizens, ‘have the privilege to serve
Landlessness has been the major problem for Untouchables. Rural the people by rendering essential services’ and that ‘the right to strike is not a
Untouchables remain without land ownership, the basis of effective political fundamental right’ which the Supreme Court in 1 965 confirmed.
power. Thus, the violence of ‘oppressive and exploitative dependence has
been the single greatest limitation on the Untouchables’ capacity to enjoy During the late 19th and early 20th centuries Chuhras followed the Bala Shahi
progress’. religion. It was composed of elements existing in the culture around them.
British investigators, anointed Valmiki, the author of the Ramayana, the
Mendelsohn and Vicziany convincingly argue that legislation’s impact has Chuhras’ ‘true’ ancestor. Thereby, they erased ‘entire centuries of [Untouchable]
undermined untouchability’s legitimacy more than it has ameliorated its religious innovation’.
effects. More effective has been the spread of a pragmatic, ‘new civic culture’
which has lessened many forms of symbolic and ritual discrimination. Yet, only in the 1920s did the earlier colonial question of whether Untouchables were
to be categorized as Hindus in the census interest Hindu nationalists in Untouchables.
Anti-discrimination legislation ‘has not been a powerful force in bringing
about an abatement of the practice of Untouchability’. An Arya Samaji, Ami Chand, went to live among Balmikis and wrote Valmiki Prakash, a
new Hindutva interpretation of Chuhra customs and religious history, which became a
‘staple tract of the Balmiki community.’ In that interpretation Muslims, not Hindus,
were originators of the Untouchable identity and status. Construction of
Valmiki temples was subsidized and Bala Shahi religion disappeared.
 Anthrographs by Dr Sudhir Kumar
Chuhras also experienced the strong arm of Hindutva in their dependence upon Hindu municipal officers File Photos
for credit and jobs. The new country was theirs and not necessarily the Chuhras’. Hinduization seemed the
best solution and ‘worship of Maharishi Valmiki became a way for the Balmikis to insert themselves in the
Hindu community as Hindus [not as Untouchables]’ (p. 1 5 3).

The 1957 strike confirmed the wisdom of that option and the histories of domination and hegemony
became one.

Saurabh Dube’s book on Madhya Pradesh (MP) state’s Satnami sect or ‘tradition’ from 1780 virtually to the
present is similar to Prashad’s.

At the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, mp’s Chamars (so called leather workers) of
Chhattisgarh area were agricultural laborers. Maratha rulers of that time opened new areas to cultivation.
That gave Chamar laborers some freedom from violent exploitation and allowed others to establish their
own villages.

In 1853 , the British took over from the Maratha rulers and introduced ideas of private property,
contract, and tenants-at-will, which allowed greater exploitation of Chamar agricultural laborers. By
the end of the 19th century some Chamars began to migrate seasonally to gain cash. Others became
involved in the carting trade outside the area as well as in temporary conversion to Christianity.

Yet, some Chamars also became owners of private property, malguzars, in their own villages where the
majority remained tenants. Under these contradictory conditions in 1820 a Chamar prophet, Ghasidas,
arose.

Ghasidas preached a new revelation and founded a new sect Satnam panth. Ghasidas opened his
sect to all but a few castes; rejected temples, worship of idols, and authority of Brahmans; and
offered a new deity, satnaam (formless maker of the universe).

Around 1850 Ghasidas’s son, Balakdas, succeeded to the guruship. His appropriation of upper-castes’
political symbols of rule, such as riding on an elephant and donning the sacred thread, janeo, enraged them.
Satnami gurus, as landowners, were also considered rajas and, thereby, mediated power and religion in a
way contrary to Dumont’s separation of them.

Dube makes two major theoretical interventions relevant to ethnographic practice.

First, he convincingly argues that these were not situations of Sanskritization which elides lower-
castes’ own logic of renegotiating those signifiers into meaningful rejections of the caste order.

Second, he therefore argues that by locating those practices in the flux of everyday life they can be
better understood as categorical mediations. Satnamis and their others are constantly negotiating,
reinterpreting, and mediating between state and local community, power and religion, myth and
contingency, caste and sect, and the like.

Of the four books Dube’s is the most theoretically innovative and ambitious. It holds special interest
for anthropologists. The second period recounted in Satnami myths covers 1900–50, the time of the
landlords (gaonthia zamana).

During this period Satnami landlords lost more of their land, conditions of forced labor intensified, and
opening new land closed. Colonial authorities seeking their own ends supported such violent conditions.

‘The rule by malguzars then constituted the reverse of order and legality for the Satnamis’ (p. 93).
Nevertheless, when times were unbearable Satnamis were occasionally able to rebel and strike.

During that period also, elite Satnamis organized the Satnami Mahasabha. Mahasabha leaders sought to
reform Satnami identity within a more orthodox Hindu tradition.
Sweeper community of Delhi
They also politically renegotiated notions of caste, sect, and kinship to recategorize their identities as Chuhra caste woman
‘depressed class’ in the state’s eyes; as Satnami, rather than Chamar, in the census; and as Hindu within the Chamar caste man from MP
nationalist movement. Satnami Revolution

In the 1920s a Hindu reformer, Baba Ramchandra, wrote a history of the Satnamis in an orthodox
Hindu mold. Satnamis themselves say that from that time ‘Hindu religious texts came to form a part Important related news articles:
of the modes of worship within the community’ (p. 1 88).
(Click to read)
The cumulative effect of Satnamis’ resisting violence’s many historical forms is that although Satnamis still
remain to some extent independent and creatively developing their own religious identity, they, like
Prashad’s Balmikis and many Untouchables today, are also increasingly enmeshed in the violence of
Hindutva’s hegemony and the state’s neglect of, or collusion in, their exploitation and imiseration.

For Untouchables, then, post-independence India is a ‘civil democracy’ insofar as its constitution,
institutions, parliamentary system, universal franchise, and new civic culture at least formally exist
and to some extent function.

Untouchables are among those most committed to ‘civil democracy’ in part because of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar,
an Untouchable, whom many of them consider to be the father of India’s constitution, and in part because
they feel India’s promise of ‘civil democracy’ is their only hope for full emancipation.

For Untouchables India also remains an ‘uncivil democracy,’ insofar as that promise is unfulfilled and they
remain uniquely victimized by the many forms of uncivil violence that have historically been their lot.

The evidence and arguments of these books demonstrate how and why that paradox of the Indian state
remains part of, and is reflected in, Untouchable everyday life.