Hinduism Is Fascism

Modern Hinduism is fascism and racism. It is the origin of what we would call modern Fascism. Based on a religious caste system that is Aryan in origin, it divides up the world into three castes, warriors, priests, merchants, and in a slave class; the Dalit's or Untouchables. India Caste System Discriminates

The influence of Hindu Fascism on the Occult is well documented. Especially in the racialist constructs of Madame Blavatsky and her Theosophical movement. It is the concept of the Secret Chiefs, of higher beings who contact select humans, usually Caucasian Europeans, while relegating other 'races' of humanity to lesser rungs in the celestial hierarchies. Hence the belief in reincarnation, karma, dharma, etc. gets interepreted as the need for these lesser races to evolve to be accepted into the divine prescence fo the Secret Chiefs.

Later Aryan racialists would look at India as the home of the purist of the Aryan social constructs, that is the caste system, which they equated with the Indo-European peoples and as dating back to the orginal Aryan/Germanic expansion into the region. Savtri Devil, Hitlers Priestess was such a Indo-Aryan revivalist. The underlying construct of Hinduism is of whiteness/light verus black/darkness, which appealed to the Aryan racialists.

Dalit: The Black Untouchables of India
Originally published in India under the title Apartheid in India, V.T. Rajshekar's passionate work on the plight of the Indian Dalits was first introduced to North American readers through the publication of DALIT: The Black Untouchables of India in 1987. This book is the first to provide a Dalit view of the roots and continuing factors of the gross oppression of the world's largest minority (over 150 million people) through a 3,000 year history of conquest, slavery, apartheid and worse. Rajshekar offers a penetrating, often startling overview of the role of Brahminism and the Indian caste system in embedding the notion of "untouchability" in Hindu culture, tracing the origins of the caste system to an elaborate system of political control in the guise of religion, imposed by Aryan invaders from the north on a conquered aboriginal/Dravidian civilization of African descent. He exposes the almost unimaginable social indignities which continue to be imposed upon so-called untouchables to this very day, with the complicity of the political, criminal justice, media and education systems. Under Rajshekar's incisive critique, the much-vaunted image of Indian nonviolence shatters. Even India's world-celebrated apostle of pacificsm emerges in less saintly guise; in seeking to ensure Hindu numerical domination in India's new political democracy, Mahatma Gandhi advocated assimilating those whom Hindu scriptures defined as outcastes (untouchables) into the lowest Hindu caste, rather than accede to their demand for a separate electorate. Rajshekar further questions whether the Brahminist socio-political concepts so developed in turn influenced the formation of the modern Nazi doctrine of Aryan supremacy, placing the roots of Nazism deep in Indian history.

At the Culture and the State Conference at the U of A three years ago there was a concurrent conference of Dalit's from across North America. It was organized by my comrade John Ames. It was there I picked up their materials denonucing Hinduism as Racism and Fascism. These texts advocated a secular socialist humanist perspective on the Dalit struggle against the feudalist religion and politics of Hinduism.

Many Dalit groups, taking their cue from civil liberties organizations, ignore much of the economic ground for untouchability. Communist leader Brinda Karat notes that “only Communist inspired movements, enabled by the active participation of Dalits, have led to concrete gains against casteism.” In West Bengal, she shows, the Communist government initiated land reform that now forms “the backbone of Dalit self-respect and dignity in the State.”Badges of Color

Dalit Voice - The Voice of the Persecuted Nationalities Denied Human Rights
Dalit Voice was the first Indian journal to expose this closely guarded secret and shock the outside world and make history. That is how Dalit Voice has become the organ of the entire deprived destitutes of India, the original home of racism. Started in 1981 by V.T. Rajshekar, its Editor and founder, Dalit Voice, the English fortnightly, has become the country's most powerful "Voice of the Persecuted Nationalities Denied Human Rights". A veteran journalist, formerly of the Indian Express, powerful and fearless writer, V.T. Rajshekar, had to face the wrath of the ruling class, arrested many times, several jail sentences, passport impounded and subjected to total media boycott.

The Dalits are not only literal shit collectors in India they are also the largest group of workers in the service sector including government and the public sector. The political activism of the Dalits has been to unite in unions, broad based populist political parties, movements for womens rights, etc. to confront the Hindu Caste State in India.

Dalit Rising

Ghettoised Indians of the gutter society, eternally condemned. Not anymore, writes Amit Sengupta. The uprising is not a revolution, but it is no less

Buddha Smiles: Mass-conversion of dalits to Buddhism, November 4, 2001 Delhi

The sun of self-respect has burst into flame Let it burn up these castes!
Smash, Break, Destroy These walls of hatred
Crush to smithereens this aeons-old school of blindness Rise, O People!
Marathi song, anti-caste movement, 1970s

In other words, five thousand years and more after, almost 60 years after ‘Independence’, dalits in India are a priori condemned, even before they are born. Even after they die when they are buried in separate village graveyards. Even when they become educated or employed, within or outside the politics of half-fake affirmative action.

Unlike in Punjab, with plus 30 percent dalit population, many of them economically well-off, not dependent on land, where Kanshiram begun his first mobilisation. The dalit-sufi secular traditions (they control dargahs) are as strong here, as is the old Ghadarite-Leftist-radical traditions — be it during the freedom struggle, or in the great sacrifices made against terrorism. The Mansa and Talhan movements are examples of organised dalit reassertion: political and ideological (see story).

In Bant Singh Inquilabi’s amputated limbs, lies the epic story of a nation defiled, like his raped daughter in Mansa. But the truth is that this ‘invisible nation’ is refusing to accept its fatedness anymore. As in Gohana in Haryana, in Bhojpur in Bihar, Ghatkopar in Mumbai, Talhan in Punjab, this rising is rising like a wave on a full moon night. It’s only that we only want to see the dark side of the moon.

The Politics of the Caste System and the Practice of Untouchability The Hindu religious belief that" ALL HUMAN BEINGS ARE NOT BORN EQUAL" is deeply entrenched in the psyche of the upper-caste Hindus, leading them to see themselves as a superior race destined to rule and the out-castes (the Untouchables or Dalits) an inferior race born only to serve. This system, which has resulted in the destitution of millions of people due to racial discrimination, has not changed one iota after 50 years of Indian independence.

"For the ills which the Untouchables are suffering, if they are not as much advertised as those of the Jews, and are not less real. Nor arc the means and the methods of suppression used by the Hindus against the Untouchables less effective because they are less bloody than the ways which the Nazis have adopted against the Jews. The Anti-Semitism of the Nazis against the Jews is no way different in ideology and in effect from the Sanatanism of the Hindus against the Untouchables.The world owes a duty to the Untouchables as it does to all suppressed people to break their shackles and set them free."

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar in a preface to his book,

"Gandhi and the Emancipation of Untouchables" - 1st September 1943

Man who redefined Dalit politics- The Times of India

October, 10, 2006

NEW DELHI: Kanshi Ram, the Dalit icon who changed the political landscape of north India, was cremated as per Buddhist rituals at a funeral conducted by his political legatee, Mayawati, after Delhi High Court turned down the plea of his family for staying the last rites.

For a man who single-handedly turned the politics of North India on its head by thrusting Dalits as a factor in the regional power-play, Kanshi Ram's end was rather sedate, passing away on Monday, at 72, after being confined to bed for almost four years.

As in life, Kanshi Ram, in death, did not miss to shock his main haters — the urban middle classes — as he pulled the subaltern in droves on to the Capital's roads, throwing them off gear in sweltering heat.

Post-independence, Kanshi Ram redefined Dalit politics in the idiom of defiance. Hailing from a Ramdasiya Sikh family of Ropar and employed as a research assistant in a defence ministry lab, he resigned over the right of Dalit staff to get leave to celebrate Ambedkar and Valmiki jayantis.

What unfolded was a long-drawn mobilisation of Dalits, which changed political faultlines of the Hindi belt, marked by rebellious rhetoric and neat networking.

Kanshi Ram first targeted the better-off among Dalits, who had benefited from job quota. The result was the birth in 1978 of the Backwards and Minority Communities Employees Federation (BAMCEF), the first countrywide network of government employees from these categories.

APPRAISAL

KANSHI RAM

The Dalit Chanakya

If Ambedkar was theory, Kanshi Ram was practice. Roaring practice.

RAMNARAYAN RAWAT

Magazine | Oct 23, 2006

The dalit in India - caste and social class

THE dalit or "Untouchable" is a government servant, the teacher in a state school, a politician. He is generally never a member of the higher judiciary, an eminent lawyer, industrialist or journalist. His freedom operates in designated enclaves: in politics and in the administrative posts he acquires because of state policy. But in areas of contemporary social exchange and culture, his "Untouchability" becomes his only definition. The right to pray to a Hindu god has always been a high caste privilege. Intricacy of religious ritual is directly proportionate to social status. The dalit has been formally excluded from religion, from education, and is a pariah in the entire sanctified universe of the "dvija." (1)

Unlike racial minorities, the dalit is physically indistinguishable from upper castes, yet metaphorically and literally, the dalit has been a "shit bearer" for three millennia, toiling at the very bottom of the Hindu caste hierarchy. The word "pariah" itself comes from a dalit caste of southern India, the paRaiyar, "those of the drum" (paRai) or the "leather people" (Dumont, 1980: 54).

Barbaric Assault on Bant Singh (AIALA Leader)
Petition to Prime Minister of India

We the undersigned condemn the savage and barbaric assault by powerful Congress-backed Jat landlords which has left Bant Singh, Dalit leader of the Mazdoor Mukti Morcha (All-India Agrarian Labour Association) in Mansa, Punjab, with both hands and one leg amputated. Further we note that this criminal attack was planned in retaliation for Bant Singh’s sustained campaign against caste and gender based power and violence, and in particular, his struggle to bring his minor daughter’s rapists to justice. We stand by Bant Singh and his family in the face of this unspeakable tragedy and we believe passionately that such atrocities cannot be acceptable in 21st century India.




Dalit Religious Conversion

A Struggle for Humanist Liberation Theology

The development of Buddhist and Christian conversions as a political force for change is key to the Dalit philosophy. Rather than being absorbed into their new religion, the Dalit's use religious conversion to counter the hegemonic cultural domination of Hinduism. In that they adapt their new religious affiliations to meet their needs, ironically which are based on a humanistic and secular view of the world that oppresses them.

Hindus set to convert to Buddhism

Despite advances, India's lowest Hindu castes remain downtrodden

Tens of thousands of people are due to attend a mass conversion ceremony in India at which large numbers of low-caste Hindus will become Buddhists.

The ceremony in the central city of Nagpur is part of a protest against the injustices of India's caste system.

By becoming Buddhists low-caste Hindus, or Dalits, can escape the prejudice and discrimination they normally face.

The ceremony marks the 50th anniversary of the adoption of Buddhism by the scholar Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar.

He was the first prominent Dalit - or Untouchable as they were formerly called - to urge low-caste Indians to embrace Buddhism.

Similar mass conversions are taking place this month in many other parts of India.

Several states governed by the Hindu nationalist party, the BJP, have introduced laws to make such conversions more difficult.

Dalit Theology-

Dalit-liberative hermeneutics is scientific and praxis-oriented.

The Travancore Pulaya mass conversion movement to Anglicanism in the latter half of 19th century was an expression of social protest. For thousands these conversions were protests heralding exit from the inhumanity of the caste system. These oppressed also saw the doors opening for them as a way out of the misery with the success of the anti-slave campaign championed by the missionaries.

Guru Ghasidas

Guru Ghasidas according to delivers of the Satnami panth was born on 18th December 1756 and died at the age of eighty in 1836. He was born in village Girodhpuri in Raipur district in a dalit family. Ghasidas was born in a socio-political milieu of misrule, loot and plunder. The Marath the local had started behaving as Kings. Ghasidas underwent the exploitative experiences specific to dalit communities, which helped him the hierarchical and exploitative nature of social dynamics in a caste-ridden society. From an early age, he started rejecting social inequity and to understand the problems faced by his community and to find solutions, he traveled extensively in Chhattisgarh.

Ghasids was unlettered like his fellow dalits. He deeply resented the harsh treatment to his brotherhood', and continued searching for solutions but was unable to find the right answer. In search of the right path he decided to go to Jaganath Puri and on his way at Sarangarh attained true knowledge. It is said that he announced satnam and returned to Giordh.On his return, he stopped working as a farm worker and became engrossed in Tapasya. After spending six months in Sonakhan forests doing tapasya Ghasidas returned and formulated path-breading principles of a new egalitarian social order. The Satnam Panth is said to be based on these principles formulated by Ghasidas.

Dissident Sects & Anti-Caste Movements:

Both Vedic ritualism and gnosis [supremacy of Brahmans] were bound to be called in question by the common people. The popular discontent found expression in dissident sects like Jainism (540-468 B.C.) and Buddhism (563-483 B.C.). There is no doubt that Jainism and Buddhism were the first attacks or revolts in general against the caste system.

Lord Buddha initiated a radical critique of contemporary religion and society. He was forthright in repudiating the caste system and the notion of ritual purity associated with it. One of his famous sayings runs like this:

No Brahmin is such by birth,

No outcaste is such by birth.

An outcaste is such by his deeds,

A Brahmin is such by his deeds.”

From out of the struggle between Vedic religion and heterodox movements like Jainism and Buddhism was born what is today called Hinduism, which reached its golden age in the Gupta period (300-700 A.D.). Many factors were responsible for this new development. Brahminism succeeded in integrating within itself popular religions. Popular deities were absorbed into the Vedic pantheon through a process of identification or subordination. Even Buddha was given the status of a vishnuite incarnation.

Dalit poems and sayings on evil brahminic system

Tell a Slave is a Slave!

Surely and invariably he will rebel!

For most of times Slaves know not they are Slaves!

Always they only keep enjoying and relishing their Slavery!

They say that had been their lives generations after generations!

That too over the many many millenniums!

Slogging in the fields and mines for the landlords!

Taking just a pittance in return and still be proud and happy!

Listen to this! This is what the landlords, who had raped butchered killed otherwise murdered in cold-blood, and burnt SC&ST Dalits say –

We had all along for generations employed them paid them given them grains, fed them and looked after them! Now they had forgotten all that, to believe in the Govt, go for Education, seek Govt Employment, trust the Parties, run behind the Party Workers, follow the useless Leaders, pin their Hopes on the meaningless Govt Programmes, lean on the fake NGOs, and repose faith in all those stupid Activists! And, they have turned against us, we who have been feeding them for Generations! We can’t understand this! Hence we had to teach them a Lesson! Discipline them! Put them in their Places! They are like our Children! They are our Responsibility! And in fact it is our Duty to Discipline them, and bring them back to the right path – their old ways!

That is it. The Landlords want now to reclaim the SCs&STs, bring them back under their total and tight control, and keep them in their fold, as in the good old days! The old bondage and slavery!

Yes, it is true! Many SC&ST Dalits still toil as Slaves to crude cheap landlords and goons! They don’t realise their status and slavery. They don’t know that the World had changed!

One need not be surprised or feel shocked by this ignorance, and lack of knowledge or realisation of the World. After all they are poor rural labourers of backward feudal areas! But even the educated and employed SC&ST Dalits are not aware of all their Dues and Rights! In fact the depth of their ignorance is shocking! If the Dalits’ Knowledge of Dalit Issues are so shallow, what can we say of others understandings of Dalit Problems! It is for this reason that any writings on Dalit Issues, and Dalit Views have to be in so much of, perhaps what appears to be too detailed! That includes Dalit Poetry on Dalit Issues and Problems! Hence, the Prose like Poetry, or Prose rendering of Poetry! That may not matter, but that also so inevitable!

Dalit Womens Struggles

The oppression of women is a double burden in slave societies, and amongst the Dalit's women have played an important role in linking their struggles with that of being Dalits and women. It has created a syncratic feminism that is reflected in the movement regardless of their religious affiliations. Again emphasising the humanist nature of Dalit relgious conversion.

Ruth Manorama, voice of Dalits
Ruth Manorama is a women's rights activist well known for her contribution in mainstreaming Dalit issues. Herself from the Dalit community, she has helped throw the spotlight on the precarious situation of Dalit women in India. She calls them "Dalits among the Dalits." A peacewomen profile from the Women's Feature Service and Sangat.

DALIT WOMEN: The Triple Oppression of Dalit Women in Nepal

Terai Dalit Women - Violation of Political Rights

Attacks on Dalit Women: A Pattern of Impunity - Broken People ...

FEMINIST DALIT ORGANIZATION

Dalit Women Literature Review

Dalit Feminism By M. Swathy Margaret

EMPOWER DALIT WOMEN OF NEPAL is a small human rights organization for Dalit women, the “untouchable” women on the lower rungs of Nepal’s caste hierarchy.

Five pledges for dalit shakti By Freny Manecksha
Martin Macwan’s Dalit Shakti Kendra in Gujarat provides vocational training to dalit youth. More importantly, it gives them a sense of identity
It began as a small agitation in Ranpur, Dhanduka taluka, Gujarat. Women of a particular dalit sub-caste, who still performed the menial task of manual scavenging despite legislation against it, had asked the panchayat for new brooms but were refused on grounds that there was no budget for it. This was a seminal moment for Martin Macwan, a dalit activist who had set up the Navsarjan Trust in 1989 against scavenging. “What totally devastated me was that they were not agitating against the practice. They were merely begging the panchayat to give them more brooms to prevent their hands from being soiled with shit. They didn’t dream of eliminating scavenging.” (Mari Marcel Thekaekara in Endless Filth, Saga of the Bhangees)

Globalization and the Dalit

The Green Revolution in India as well as the later developments around GMO's etc. have had a disproportionate negative impact on the Dalit's agricultural communities. Modernization and industrialization have not benefited these peasant economies, as much as chaining the Dalits to their landlords.

Free Trade – A war against Dalits & Adivasis

Dalits and Adivasis have never been the part of the conventional trade systems. Today they are faced with the horrible hostility of trade and market policies. In recent times trade entered the scene on mass scale through the principles of globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation. Mega industrial production still plays the key role in all trade deal not only at the national level but also at the international level.

Industrialisation, which made a colourful and dreamy entry, is turning out to be the worst form of human development. The steady economic growth of industries with active support from the state machinery is directly proportional to the unchecked exploitation of masses. Most of them belong to marginalized communities such as Dalits, Adivasis, women, working class, etc. Though during the independence struggle “land to the tillers” and “factory to the workers” prominently came on to the national agenda, nowhere in India had we witnessed the later one being implemented in the post independence era. Resultant displacement, migration, repercussion of workers, loss of land and livelihood, pilfering state revenue, forest resources, etc. has outgrown to monstrous level.

This has amplified particularly with WTO taking the centre stage of all sorts of trade related agreements and transactions at the international level. Trade is no longer buying and selling of goods and services but it encompasses issues like Intellectual Property Rights. With this the global market has wide open for exploration and exploitation of resources under the aegis of free trade. Industrialised nations found their tools to maintain supremacy on world trade. Prophets of trade and commerce argue that free trade maximises world economic output. This is what is considered to be progress. But what we have been witnessing with the Dalits and Adivasis in India is diametrically opposite to these claims.


Dalit woman shows the way to better yields


Dalit Academic Perspectives

A Dalit Bibliography

558, February 2006, Dalit Perspectives

Seminars and Workshops of Deshkal Society | Seminars on Dalit


Dalit Resources

Nepal Dalit Info

CounterCurrents.org Dalit Issues Home Page

Dalit Freedom Network: Abolish Caste, Now and Forever

Dalit foundation - Accelerating change for equality

Dalit Welfare Organisation (DWO)

Dalit Human Rights

Punjab Dalit Solidarity-A blog

National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR)

The Bhopal Dalit Declaration

International Dalit Solidarity Network

Formed in March 2000, the International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN) is a network of national solidarity networks, groups from affected countries and international organisations concerned about caste discrimination and similar forms of discrimination based on work and descent.

IDSN campaigns against caste-based discrimination, as experienced by the dalits of South Asia to the Buraku people of Japan, the sab (low caste) groups of Somalia, the occupational caste people in West Africa and others.

The work of IDSN involves encouraging the United Nations, the European Union and other bodies to recognise that over 260 million people continue to be treated as outcasts and less than human and that caste-based discrimination must be regarded as a central human rights concern. IDSN insists on international recognition that "Dalit Rights are Human Rights" inasmuch as all human beings are born with the same inalienable rights.

IDSN brings together organisations, institutions and individuals concerned with caste-based discrimination and aims to link grassroots priorities with international mechanisms and institutions to make an effective contribution to the liberation of those affected by caste discrimination.

More than 260 million people worldwide continue to suffer under what is often a hidden apartheid of segregation, exclusion, modern day slavery and other extreme forms of discrimination, exploitation and violence.

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 Indian Dalits leave Hinduism in droves in blow to ruling BJP

Nikkei Asia ^

Posted on 2022-11-06, 

NEW DELHI -- Recent mass conversions to Buddhism by Indian Dalits have underscored anew the fears and frustrations of a community of about 200 million people considered to be at the bottom of the traditional Hindu caste system.

"We refuse to be punished any longer," said Ramji Lal, 34, who attended a conversion event in New Delhi on Oct. 5. He was one of a crowd of around 8,000, according to organizers, who made a point of leaving Hinduism. Such conversions are seen as a protest by people commonly known as "untouchables" due to their descent, leading to a life of exclusion and often abuse.

On Oct. 14, in the southern state of Karnataka, more than 100 Dalit men and women did the same, throwing pictures of Hindu deities into the Krishna River to renounce their faith.

Converting to Buddhism is not new for Dalits. Indeed, the Karnataka event came on the anniversary of social reformer B. R. Ambedkar's public conversion to Buddhism in 1956, a move that continues to reverberate generations later. "If you continue to remain within the fold of Hinduism, you cannot attain a status higher than that of a slave," Ambedkar said in a speech 20 years before he made the change, according to a collection of essays and speeches published on the Indian Ministry of External Affairs website.

In 2013, organizers of a conversion event in the state of Gujarat claimed that 60,000 people abandoned Hinduism at once, local media reported at the time.

The trend stands out given the Hindu nationalism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government, and raises further questions about the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) record on human rights, which is already under scrutiny for alleged discrimination against Muslims, an accusation the BJP denies.

The BJP appears to have mixed views on such conversions, but after the Oct. 5 event in the capital, parliamentarian Manoj Tiwari tweeted that the event was "anti-Hindu," and criticized a Delhi legislator and minister from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for attending. The Delhi BJP chief urged the AAP, which runs the capital territory government, to sack the minister, Rajendra Pal Gautam, "for his attempt to stoke communal tensions and spread hatred along religious lines within the country."

BJP & the Hindu Right: Are Dalits as Much a ‘Common Enemy’ as Muslims?

The ‘othering’ of the Dalits, like that of Muslims, helps the right-wing consolidate its traditional base.

HARISH S. WANKHEDE

Published: 14 Jun 2022, 


Many have suggested that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has improved from being an upper-caste party. The post-2014 BJP has emerged as an umbrella organisation that ‘allows’ Dalit-Bahujan sections to become an influential part of its political mobilisation. The BJP has influenced sections within the Dalits by executing smart socio-cultural strategies. Further, by invoking Babasaheb Ambedkar as a nationalist icon and by promising that the government will follow the constitutional mandate in defence of social justice policies, the right-wing has built an effective connection with Dalits.

However, the rise of caste atrocities and the growing police action against Dalit activists demonstrate that Hindutva lacks sincerity in dealing with the Dalit agenda. Instead, by raking sentimental issues against Ambedkarite Dalit activists, a systematic public antagonism is manufactured against them.
Snapshot

In the same way as Muslim issues help Hindutva forces form communal ‘unity’, the ‘othering’ of the Dalits at the social level helps the right-wing consolidate its traditional base.

The current BJP regime uses Ambedkar as only a symbolic artefact, divorcing him from his radical and revolutionary ideas.

The Hindu right-wing projects conscious Dalit agents as the ‘social other’.

Expecting that a Hindutva-driven regime will facilitate a sensitive discussion about Dalit problems and class concerns is wishful thinking.

For the Hindutva camp, the idea of a robust Dalit who possesses a strong socio-political consciousness and is ready to challenge the conventional authority, as Ambedkar did, will always be a threat.

Was Congress More Sensitive to Dalit Issues?

The Dalit movement is inspired by Ambedkar’s social thoughts and political ideas. His writings and speeches on a caste-based social order, Hindu religion, patriarchy and classical Sanskrit texts open a rational and serious debate to understand the precarious conditions of the untouchables in India. Ambedkar is known not only for his reformist zeal that challenged the caste system, but also for his radical transformative thoughts. He envisaged a complete destruction of the base structure over which the Hindu caste citadel has been erected.

Also Rea
‘Family iIn Safe House Due to Threats’: Dalit Scholar Fighting Google on Caste

Ambedkar’s conversion to Buddhism has been upheld as a ‘revolutionary’ act. He pledged that the new converts will offer an agnostic distancing and critical inquiry towards social rituals, Hindu Gods and Brahmin priests. In his writings and speeches, Ambedkar courageously reprimanded and dissected Hindu religious legends and thoughts to test their applicability in building social ethics. He elevated the stature of the former ‘untouchables’ and helped them become robust political agents, inspiring them to claim their economic and political rights fearlessly.

Importantly, the nationalist elites of the Congress viewed Ambedkar’s critical inquiry as a righteous approach to examining the social virus that has contaminated the Hindu order.

Ambedkar’s prominent role in the making of the Constitution suggests that the political elites were keen to understand caste problems and wanted to eliminate the brutal practice of untouchability.

How Dalit Radicals Joined the Mainstream

The post-Ambedkar social and political movement heralded Ambedkar’s radicalism and offered it a new life. The last political party that Ambedkar formed, the Republican Party of India, used secular or Buddhist symbols to mobilise vulnerable castes and communities and was critical of Dalits that retain allegiance to Hindu rituals and customs. The Dalit Panthers’ movement in the late 1970s published a revolutionary manifesto that denounced the hegemony of social elites over social and political spheres and challenged religious scriptures for dehumanising the lower castes. The arrival of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in north India further elevated the critical stance towards the Hindu social order and belittled the authority of the social elites.

Also Read
A Dalit Man's 20-Year Struggle for a Gate and a Road in Punjab Village


In various social and political spheres, the Dalit movement highlighted their precarious social conditions, issues of caste discrimination and economic exploitation, and staged a rational and radical opposition. Even though Congress regimes were apprehensive of Dalit critics, they refrained from issuing criminal warrants or bracketing them as the ‘enemy camp’. Instead, many popular Dalit radicals joined mainstream political parties (not only Congress but also the Shiv Sena – the revolutionary poet Namdeo Dhasal had joined the Sena).

What Is Hindutva’s Dalit Agenda?

But the current Hindutva-driven regime has not shown a similar sensitivity. It uses Ambedkar as only a symbolic artefact, divorcing him from his radical and revolutionary ideas. Today, Dalit protests are often condemned as uncivil, criminal or even ‘anti-national’. The arrest of scholars and social activists like Anand Teltumbde underlines the growing hostility of the state towards Dalit activism. Recently, police booked a Dalit faculty member of Lucknow University for hurting religious sentiments. Similarly, professor Ratan Lal of the prestigious Hindu College at the Delhi University was arrested for a satirical social media post on the Gyanvapi mosque row.

Also Read
‘Bhimti Hai Kya? Kaat Daalo’: The Anti-Dalit Side of Delhi Riots


The right-wing is insensitive when it comes to dealing with Dalit socio-political claims. It hardly offers a crucial road map to ensure substantive Dalit participation in state institutions, or to execute policies that examine the problems of caste atrocities. Instead, it often defends the perpetrators of caste violence and legitimises the use of coercive state actions when the Dalit protests in rage.

In April 2018, 14 people belonging to marginalised communities died due to police action while participating in protests to defend the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.

The state’s antipathy towards Dalit tragedies is further visible in the Rohith Vemula case, the Una flogging case, the Bhima-Koregaon protest movement and the Hathras rape-murder case.

Further, the recent arrest of legislator Jignesh Mevani on flimsy grounds only underlines the fact that the BJP regime has developed a vengeful psyche against Dalit issues and activists.

Hindutva proponents often demean Dalit-Bahujan voices as irreligious or see them as contempt against the Hindu civilisational ethos. The Hindu right-wing projects conscious Dalit agents as the ‘social other’. In the same way as Muslim issues help Hindutva forces form communal ‘unity’, the ‘othering’ of the Dalits at the social level helps the right-wing consolidate its traditional base.

The Mirage of 'Subaltern' Hindutva

The post-Ambedkar Dalit movement belongs to the rich heritage of non-Brahmanical traditions and upholds the modern constitutional values of social justice. Dalit-Bahujan thoughts supplement Buddhist principles, herald the egalitarian teachings of Guru Nanak, Kabir and Chokha Mela, and find inspiration in the radical ideas of Mahatma Jyotiba Phule, Periyar and Ambedkar. This school of thought offers alternative sources of knowledge and dynamic liberal perspectives that enrich the democratic fabric of new India. It is this transformative ideological spectrum that has consistently been critical of the ruling socio-political elites for keeping Dalit-Bahujan masses poor, alienated from power and undignified in social relationships.

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‘Can’t Build a Nation on Caste’: What Ambedkar Meant By Equal Representation



For Hindutva proponents, the Dalit-Bahujan ideological school is a bête-noir that shall be clamped down by coercive and violent means. Though the BJP has embraced the Dalit constituency to expand its social base, it remains just a political strategy that has little impact or care for changing the conditions of these groups.

Expecting that such a Hindutva-driven regime will facilitate a sensitive discussion about Dalit problems and class concerns is wishful thinking. For the Hindutva camp, the idea of a robust Dalit, who possesses a strong socio-political consciousness and is ready to challenge the conventional authority, as Ambedkar did, will always be a threat.

(Dr. Harish S Wankhede teaches at Centre for Political Studies, JNU, New Delhi. He writes on identity politics, Dalit questions, Hindi cinema and the new media. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)

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India: Dalit journalists give a voice to the marginalized

Adil Bhat in New Delhi
06/29/2023June 29, 2023

India's 300 million Dalits are largely unrepresented in mainstream media. But Dalit journalists are changing that with news platforms dedicated to telling their stories.

Meena Kotwal runs a Dalit news platform with a team of 14 journalists

Image: Adil Bhat


Meena Kotwal comes from a family of manual laborers and grew up in a Dalit neighborhood in the Indian capital of New Delhi.

She became a journalist and worked for several mainstream media outlets. However, her experiences as a young journalist made her realize that a major part of Indian society was being overlooked.

"I realized the burden of my Dalit identity in mainstream Indian newsrooms where rampant caste blindness was normalized," she told DW.

"This gap pushed me to start my own media platform that would tell the stories from the [caste] margins of India," she said.

In 2019, Kotwal launched an online news platform called Mooknayak, which means "leader of the voiceless." Along with 14 journalists coming from diverse social groups in India, Kotwal aims to highlight stories of Dalits and other marginalized groups that go unreported in mainstream media.

The name for the platform was inspired by the architect of India's constitution B.R. Ambedkar. She runs her newsroom on the donations that she receives from crowdfunding. Recently, she secured funding from the Google News Initiative.

The news outlet publishes articles in both Hindi and English for wider reach. They shoot videos for their YouTube channel, aiming to cover stories that others do not, including atrocities and social injustices faced by Dalits.

Kotwal runs her news platform from Pushpa Bhawan, the same Dalit neighborhood in Delhi where she grew up.

India's caste-based newsrooms

The Hindu caste system dates back thousands of years and places around 300 million Dalits at the bottom of a social hierarchy.

The upper castes use the disparaging term "untouchables" to refer to Dalits. While the practice of untouchability in India has since been prohibited by the constitution, Dalits are still subjected to caste-based discrimination and violence.

Ashok Das says he faced discrimination as a Dalit while working in mainstream media

Image: Suresh K Pandey

A report released in October 2022 by Oxfam and the Indian digital news outlet, Newslaundry, revealed the glaring disproportionate representation of Dalits in Indian newsrooms.

According to the report, nearly 88% of journalists in India were from the general category or upper caste in 2019. Today, that percentage remains nearly unchanged.

Another Dalit journalist, Ashoka Das, founded the monthly magazine and news portal Dalit Dastak, which aims to spread awareness about Dalit society through news and mass media.

"The upper-caste gatekeeping is pervasive in Indian institutions, including, judiciary, and academia. Media is no exception here," Das told DW.

His experience as a Dalit journalist in upper-caste-dominated Indian newsrooms made Das realize how his identity created limitations.

"You don't rise above a certain rank. Your promotion is delayed. And this is clearly because of your caste identity," he said.

The challenges for Dalit media

In 2012, Das launched Dalit Dastak to provide a space for Dalit issues that were absent in mainstream media. Since then, the platform has risen in popularity, but faces lingering challenges like finding funding and maintaining a stable team.

Apart from these alternative Dalit media outlets, there is an emergence of other media initiatives, like Round Table India, and The Dalit Voice, which report extensively on Dalit issues with the purpose of raising awareness and consciousness among the citizens of India.

According to the Oxfam-Newslaundry report, of the 121 newsroom leadership positions examined, including editor-in-chief, managing editor, executive editor, bureau chief and input/output editor, 106 are held by upper-caste journalists.

Only five are held by other castes, and six by journalists from the minority communities. The identity of the remaining four individuals was unknown.

Is India's justice system failing low-caste Dalit women?  03:46

Harish Wankhede, a professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi whose research focuses on caste in Indian media, said the coverage on Dalit issues by mainstream media is "disturbing."

"The rise of Dalit media as an alternative is very crucial and important to challenge the dominant narrative of the mainstream media that always buries the coverage of Dalit atrocities and Dalit perspectives in their stories," he told DW.

He added that Dalit media faces a considerable challenge in competing with well-funded competitors.

"To compete with mainstream media that is run by the upper caste businessmen, Dalit media is almost insignificant and has a long way to go."

Back in Pushpa Bhawan, Kotwal is busy at her desk thinking of how to arrange financing before the start of the next month. She hopes crowdfunding will come through. Her team is motivated and ready.

Edited by: Wesley Rahn

Adil Bhat TV reporter and correspondent with a special focus on politics, conflict and human-interest stories.

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Dalit Scientists Face Barriers in India’s Top Science Institutes

Despite decades-old inclusion policies, Dalits are systematically underrepresented in science institutes in India. Why?


Top: Dalit researcher Rajendra Sonkawade has advocated for the rights of lower-caste scientists like himself. But he believes his advocacy has hampered his career. “I paid the price for speaking up,” Sonkawade said.

Visual: Ankur Paliwal for Undark

BY ANKUR PALIWAL
07.26.2021

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IN THE SUMMER OF 1976, 26-year-old Raosaheb Kale entered the School of Life Sciences at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, alongside about 34 other incoming doctoral students. At the time, a committee of teachers at the school would review the students’ records and assign each to a Ph.D. supervisor to mentor them through graduate school. When the school posted the list of assignments, Kale scanned the piece of paper: Every single student, he said, had been matched with a supervisor, except for him.

“Nobody wanted to take me,” recalled Kale, who is now 71, sitting on his apartment’s balcony in Pune, in western India.

Kale knew why his name was missing: In his class, he was the only one from the Dalit community — formerly known as the untouchables. The teachers didn’t want to supervise Dalits, Kale said, because they perceived that Dalits “won’t perform well.”

Historically, Dalits were considered so low that they fell outside the caste system, a rigid social hierarchy described in ancient Hindu legal texts. Brahmins (priests) occupied the top of the pyramid, followed by the Kshatriyas (warriors), Vaishyas (traders), and then Shudras (artisans) at the bottom. Today, caste, which is defined by family of origin, remains an ever-present reality in Indian culture, and functions somewhat similarly to race in America.

Growing up in the drought-prone Beed district of western India, Kale shared a mud-walled, tin-roofed house with his parents and four younger siblings. Like other Dalits, his parents were unable to own land and barred from entering temples. In his village, Dalits were assigned various jobs such as sweeping streets, supplying firewood, delivering messages, and picking cotton. In return, they received grains, leftover food, or, on very rare occasions, one rupee for a day’s labor — well below a livable wage.

When Raosaheb Kale, a member of the Dalit caste, entered graduate school in the 1970s, he was the only student the school did not match with a Ph.D. supervisor. “Nobody wanted to take me,” Kale said. In Indian culture today, caste, which is defined by family of origin, functions similarly to race in America. 

Visual: Ankur Paliwal for Undark

The village was peaceful as long as Dalits followed the Hindu caste hierarchy. “You know your limits,” Kale recalled. “The moment lower caste crosses the limit, ignorantly or otherwise,” anything can happen, he said. Once, when Kale was a kid, he recalled holding the hand of a higher-caste boy to cross a river in the village. A furor erupted. An older upper-caste person from the village warned parents of both boys that such close contact should never happen again.

Against staggering odds, Kale excelled in academic science. He fought his way through the upper-caste dominated School of Life Sciences, became its dean, and received a prestigious award for his contributions to radiation and cancer biology research. In 2014, he completed his tenure in one of the top academic posts — vice chancellor of a university — in India.

But his story remains rare. In 2011, around 17 percent of India’s population, which now totals over 1.3 billion people, were Dalits, who are officially referred to as “Scheduled Castes” in government records. Caste discrimination is illegal, and India’s reservation policy — a form of affirmative action that has been around since 1950 — currently mandates that 15 percent of students and staff at government research and education institutes, with some exceptions, come from the Dalit community. But records obtained by Undark under India’s Right to Information Act from some of the country’s flagship scientific institutions, along with data from government reports and student groups, reveal a different picture.

At the elite Indian Institutes of Technology in Delhi, Mumbai, Kanpur, Kharagpur, and Madras, the proportion of Dalit researchers admitted to doctoral programs ranged from 6 percent (at IIT Delhi) to 14 percent (at IIT Kharagpur) in 2019, the most recent year obtained by Undark. At the Indian Institute of Science, or IISc, in Bengaluru, 12 percent of researchers admitted to doctoral programs in 2020 were Dalits. And at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research — a major government research institution — of the 33 laboratories that responded to Undark’s data requests, just 12 met the 15 percent threshold.

The numbers are even lower among senior academics. IIT Bombay, in Mumbai, and IIT Delhi had no Dalit professors at all in 2020 — compared with 324 and 218 professors, respectively, in the General Category, which includes upper-caste Hindus and some members of religious minorities, like Muslims. (In India, the term “professor” refers to senior-ranking positions and does not include assistant or associate professors.) IISc had two Dalit professors and 205 General Category professors in 2020. None of the department heads at IISc were Dalit last year. And five out of the seven science schools of Jawaharlal Nehru University did not have a single Dalit professor.


“You know your limits,” Kale recalled. “The moment lower caste crosses the limit, ignorantly or otherwise,” anything can happen, he said.

Similar disparities exist in other professions in India; Dalits face continued discrimination and violence from upper-caste people across the country. But researchers who study casteism in science say that even as Dalits have mobilized for their rights, they have encountered distinctive barriers in scientific institutions, which remain especially resistant to reservation policies and other reforms. At a time of growing attention to inequities in global science, those barriers leave Dalits systematically underrepresented in the major research and academic institutes of the world’s largest democracy.

Undark sent repeated interview requests to the directors of IISc and five leading IITs. Only one responded, but declined to comment. In interviews, some upper-caste researchers said that finding qualified Dalit researchers can be difficult. “When you’d sit in the interview board, you will find out yourself,” said Umesh Kulshrestha, the dean of Jawaharlal Nehru University’s School of Environmental Sciences, who is upper caste. Some Dalit candidates “can’t answer even easy questions,” he said, later adding that he has “some good quality Dalit researchers” in the school. Several other upper-caste researchers simply denied that caste prejudice was common in Indian science, saying that they didn’t believe in caste.

But interviews with Dalit scientists and scholars show a different picture — one in which systematic discrimination, institutional barriers, and frequent humiliation make it difficult to thrive at every step of their training.

KALE WAS BORN in 1950 — three years after India became free from British rule, and the same year India’s constitution came into force. That constitution abolished untouchability and declared caste discrimination illegal. It also introduced reservation policies in public sector jobs, politics, and education for marginalized communities, including Dalits and Indigenous groups known as Adivasis. By the 1970s, the government had settled on the 15 percent quota for Dalits that’s still in place today.

Caste discrimination, however, continued. Sitting on his balcony in Pune, Kale described how casteism followed him on his path to higher education. As a small child, he studied in a public school with only one teacher. When the teacher died of cholera, the school closed. Kale walked to a nearby village every other Sunday to meet the headmaster of a bigger school there and ask when he’d get a new instructor. Eventually, the headmaster, who was Dalit, invited Kale to join his school and stay with him. “He really treated me like his son,” said Kale. He would later dedicate his Ph.D. thesis to the headmaster.

When Kale was in the sixth grade, and attending a new school, a teacher invited him over to take special classes at his home. When Kale arrived, the teacher’s wife was going to offer him some food in a “tasla” — an iron pan that laborers use to carry mud — instead of a plate. Kale refused both the meal and the classes.

But he kept getting grades so good that he eventually won admission to Milind College of Science — part of a group of colleges founded by Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, a Dalit leader and lawyer who is sometimes compared to Martin Luther King Jr.


In the late 1940s, a couple of years before Milind College opened, the Indian government began planning to set up a network of exclusive technical institutes to train engineers and scientists who would help build a new India. The first branch of the Indian Institute of Technology, or IIT, opened in 1951 near Kharagpur, and the government soon termed the schools “institutions of national importance.” At the time, a government committee described advanced scientific research as the work of a “few men of high caliber,” the Harvard University anthropologist Ajantha Subramanian writes in “The Caste of Merit,” a study of caste and engineering education in India. IITs were highly selective, and upper-caste Indians quickly dominated their ranks, despite the official reservation policies.

In the early 1970s, when Kale was applying to graduate schools, he didn’t seriously consider IITs, which he said looked like “closed spaces.” Instead, he enrolled in Marathwada University, in Maharashtra state. Part of a wave of new, more democratic state institutions, the university had become a fertile ground for student movements. (It has since been renamed in honor of Ambedkar.) Kale decided to study chemistry, partly because he thought that could get him a job as a chemical engineer in the fast-industrializing country. As the eldest sibling, Kale wanted to support his family as soon as possible. But at same time, he said, “I had an internal desire to get as much education as I can and the highest honorable degree.” So instead of heading straight into the workforce, he began considering doctoral programs.

Kale used some of his saved-up scholarship money to buy a train ticket to New Delhi, where he would take the Ph.D. entrance exam for Jawaharlal Nehru University, or JNU, which attracted students for its interdisciplinary approach, and where Kale’s battle against institutional casteism would begin.

AFEW WEEKS after the JNU faculty failed to match Kale with a Ph.D. supervisor, they offered him a mentor in a different field from the one he hoped to study. He began contemplating what to do next. He learned that Araga Ramesha Rao, a radiation biology researcher, had worked at a cancer research institute in Mumbai, a field he wanted to pursue. Kale managed to arrange a meeting. After several discussions Rao, who has since died, agreed to supervise the aspiring scientist. He did so, Kale said, despite the advice of an upper-caste colleague who urged Rao to avoid mentoring a Dalit student. (Kale was careful to clarify that various upper-caste colleagues, like Rao, supported him throughout the years.)

Alok Bhattacharya, who later joined the school as an associate professor, and belongs to an upper caste, said experiences like Kale’s are not uncommon, and that the only form of discrimination he has observed in his career is that the “lower caste” students faced difficulty in getting a supervisor: “They are the last ones to be picked.”

Kale completed his Ph.D. in 1980, and the school hired him as an assistant professor the next year. But Kale had to wait 17 years to become a professor — much slower than some of his upper-caste peers.

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Kulshrestha, the dean of the School of Environmental Sciences at JNU, and Pawan Dhar, a professor and former dean of the School of Biotechnology, both said that delays in promotions are common for researchers, irrespective of caste. But Govardhan Wankhede, a Dalit sociologist and former dean of the School of Education at the Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Social Sciences, believes that Dalits tend to face more delays, something he said he has experienced firsthand. According to Dhar, there’s little data analysis on caste-based discrimination in promotions — a gap, he said, that he hopes future research will address.

As Kale was waiting on his promotion, he was also waiting to get a lab to advance his research on making radiation therapy more effective in cancer treatment. While administrators gave most of his upper-caste peers their own laboratory space, Kale said, he worked out of a small corner office with broken furniture. When a senior professor vacated his lab to move to a bigger one, Kale declared the space his own. The ploy worked. “You have to have decency for some time, but not beyond certain limit. If it is your right, you have to snatch it,” he said. “We cannot wait.”

Over the years, Kale held several positions, including dean of students and head of the equal opportunity office at JNU. He would invite Dalit students from his and nearby villages to stay with him, helping them navigate the admissions process for universities. Kale also became the chairperson of the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies in New Delhi, and served on a government committee on Dalit and Adivasi reservation in universities.

Despite his success, all through his career, Kale said, he has feared just one thing — making mistakes. He and several Dalit researchers described experiencing a constant internal pressure to prove themselves in institutions dominated by upper-caste researchers who think Dalits don’t deserve to be there. “If I do a mistake, it is not my mistake,” said Kale. Instead, he said, it would be labeled “the mistake of the community.”

IN THE LATE 1990s, when Kale became a professor at JNU, he sat on a committee to select junior researchers at the Nuclear Science Center, about a mile away from the university in New Delhi. Among the candidates was a Dalit researcher named Rajendra Sonkawade. “He was the best among the lot,” recalled Kale. Sonkawade got the job.

Like Kale, Sonkawade had grown up in the western state of Maharashtra and planned to become an engineer. After high school, he applied to some engineering colleges but couldn’t score high enough to gain admission. He enrolled instead at Marathwada University, where he excelled in physics.

As Sonkawade worked his way through graduate school, the Dalit movement gained momentum in Indian politics, and the Bahujan Samaj Party, a pro-Dalit political party, rose to power in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh.


“You have to have decency for some time, but not beyond certain limit. If it is your right, you have to snatch it,” Kale said. “We cannot wait.”

During the same time, though, India witnessed new opposition by upper-caste Hindus against the reservation policies. In 1990, the Indian government announced that it would implement a commission’s recommendation to expand reservation policies to include Other Backward Classes, an official designation for various other marginalized castes. Adding to the existing quotas, the new policy meant that 49.5 percent of seats were now, at least officially, reserved for lower-caste candidates. “Merit in an elitist society is not something inherent,” the commission had argued in its report, “but is the consequence of environmental privileges enjoyed by the members of higher castes.”

That “ignited a firestorm,” Subramanian writes in “The Caste of Merit.” “Upper-caste students took to the streets, staging sit-ins; setting up road blockades; and masquerading as vendors, sweepers, and shoe shiners in a graphic depiction of their future reduction to lower-caste labor.” More than 60 upper-caste students, many of whom said they were protesting the new policy, died by suicide.

The tension was palpable in educational and research institutes. At the Nuclear Science Center — later renamed the Inter-University Accelerator Center, or IUAC — Sonkawade began to study radiation safety. Often, he said, he would hear some of his upper-caste colleagues say that Dalits were incompetent. Frustrated, he waited for the standard new-employee probationary period to end. Then Sonkawade worked with Dalit and Adivasi researchers in the institute to form an association to represent their rights.

“We became more active with our demands,” said Sonkawade, thumping his palm on the table in his office at Shivaji University, in the west Indian city of Kolhapur, where he now teaches physics. On the wall to his right were some photographs, including one of Ambedkar, whom Sonkawade calls his role model.

After forming the association, Sonkawade began to push IUAC to set up a special committee to tackle Dalit and Adivasi issues to ensure implementation of the reservation policy — something required of government-funded institutes, but which the school had not established. His group also asked for the representation of marginalized communities in the governing boards of the institute.

Described by Kale as “the best among the lot” of junior researcher candidates, Rajendra Sonkawade was hired in the 1990s at what is now called the Inter-University Accelerator Center, where he began advocating for the rights of lower-caste researchers. In his office at Shivaji University, a portrait of Dalit leader Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar hangs on the wall next to an image of Mahatma Gandhi. 

Visual: Ankur Paliwal for Undark

While Kale was tactful in navigating institutional casteism, Sonkawade was more confrontational. His advocacy soon brought him into conflict with the IUAC administration, several of his colleagues said. “He became very unpopular,” Debashish Sen, a scientist at IUAC, recalled. Others felt, Sen said, that Sonkawade was operating out of his own self-interest rather than for the betterment of his community.

In interviews, many of Sonkawade’s colleagues described him as hard working. But, around the mid-2000s, the scores on Sonkawade’s annual performance reports — essential for promotion — began to drop. Sonkawade was overlooking his responsibilities in the lab, said Devesh Kumar Avasthi, a senior scientist who was one of the evaluators of Sonkawade’s performance. But Satya Pal Lochab, who oversaw the lab in which Sonkawade worked and also participated in the evaluations, said that his “anti-establishment activities” affected his scores. Eventually, the lagging scores delayed a promotion.

Dinakar Kanjilal and Amit Roy, both former directors of IUAC, said the delay in promotion had nothing to do with caste. In national labs, “I don’t see anybody bother about caste,” said Kanjilal, who is upper-caste. “They see your contribution.”

Feeling harassed, Sonkawade left and joined Shivaji University. Even at his new post, he kept pushing IUAC to recognize that it had owed him a promotion. Although IUAC eventually yielded — and Sonkawade said he won partial backpay. By that point, he said, the promotion “wasn’t of any use” for his career. “The whole system was against me,” he said. “I paid the price for speaking up.” An IUAC employee who used to field discrimination complaints confirmed seeing many cases where Dalits received performance review scores just a few decimal points below the requirement for promotion. The person requested anonymity, fearing reprisal from the institute.

Between 2018 and 2020, Sonkawade was invited to interview for the position of vice chancellor at three universities in Maharashtra, and for the director’s position at IUAC. In at least three of those four cases, an upper-caste person was chosen.

After his promotion was delayed due to lower scores on his annual performance reports, Sonkawade joined Shivaji University, where he teaches physics today. A senior scientist who participated in the evaluations said that Sonkawade’s “anti-establishment activities” affected his scores. 

Visual: Ankur Paliwal for Undark

EVEN AS DALIT researchers like Sonkawade and Kale recount fighting against casteism, many upper-caste researchers describe themselves as caste-blind, or beyond caste — a phenomenon, critics say, that has made it more difficult to address ongoing disparities in top scientific institutions.

In 2012, social anthropologist Renny Thomas joined a chemistry laboratory at the Indian Institute of Sciences to study caste dynamics at the institute, arguably India’s most elite science university. That year, he interviewed 80 researchers, and later observed a cultural festival celebrated at the institute. Again and again, Thomas found, Brahmin researchers denied that caste existed in their lives or on the campus. “Caste!?? Oh, Please! I have nothing to do with caste,” one molecular biologist from a Brahmin family told Thomas, according to a paper he published last year. “It never registered in my mind.”

Such claims aren’t limited to academic science. In a 2013 paper, University of Delhi sociologist Satish Deshpande argued that for many upper-caste Indians, caste is “a ladder that can now be safely kicked away,” but only after they convert those high-caste privileges into other forms of status, such as “property, higher educational credentials, and strongholds in lucrative professions.” Many Dalits, Kale said, would also like to forget their caste. But upper-caste people, he added, “don’t let us.”

“The whole system was against me,” Sonkawade said. “I paid the price for speaking up.”

Interviews with young Dalit scientists, along with a growing body of academic work, detail the obstacles Dalits still face on their path through scientific training. Those barriers begin early: Just getting into science and engineering education has been a challenging and uncommon choice for Dalit students in the first place, according to Wankhede, the educational sociologist. “Science education is very expensive. Highly inaccessible,” he said. Students pay higher tuition rates for science courses than in other areas, because they are required to take additional classes to do experiments. And to keep up with their coursework, science students often pay for instruction in pricey private academies called coaching institutes, something many Dalit families cannot afford.

For those Dalits who make it into elite scientific institutes, cultural barriers remind them of the caste divide. During his time at IISc, Thomas found that his lower-caste and Dalit sources identified reflections of upper caste culture throughout the institute. Thomas focused on the Carnatic music concerts that Brahmin students organized. Traditionally, Carnatic music, a type of classical music, has long been the domain of Brahmins in southern India. In one instance at IISc, after the singer finished her song, the Brahmin audience continued singing, showing their familiarity with the art form, writes Thomas. But such events alienated researchers who were not Brahmin. One saw Carnatic music as a “symbol of domination” and said he preferred “folk songs and songs of resistance by Dalit reformers.”

“The mindset remains extraordinarily Brahminical in these elite institutions,” said Abha Sur, a historian of science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has written about caste and gender in Indian science. That mindset, she added, tacitly aligns itself with caste hierarchy: “There is implicit devaluation of people that continuously erodes their sense of self.”

In a predominantly Dalit neighborhood of Mumbai, people gather around a statue of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar to read their newspapers. Ambedkar, a Dalit leader who founded a group of colleges, is sometimes compared to Martin Luther King Jr. To many, the casteism Ambedkar fought against still exists today. 

Visual: Ankur Paliwal for Undark

Undark spoke with eight early-career Dalit science researchers who declined to be identified, fearing retaliation from their institutions or harm to their careers. Most described receiving humiliating reminders about using reservation quotas from upper-caste students and teachers, which implied they weren’t there on their own merit. Many also said their institutes make no effort to create awareness about casteism, and just overlook it. “It seems that the untouchability still exists, but in a different form,” said one student, who’s pursuing a Ph.D. in engineering at IISc.

These tensions sometimes bubble into the public eye. In 2007, for example, a government committee found widespread discrimination and harassment against Dalit and Adivasi students at the All India Institute of Medical Science in New Delhi. The humiliation and abuse by upper-caste students was so bad, the committee reported, that Dalit and Adivasi students had moved to the two top floors of their hostels, seeking safety together.

In 2016, Rohith Vemula, a Dalit Ph.D. researcher at Hyderabad University, died by suicide. The press reported that discrimination at the university had contributed to Vemula’s death. His loss sparked outrage on several campuses across India and led to the formation of more student organizations like Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle, which offer support to Dalit and other oppressed castes.

In a copy of one 2019 discrimination complaint leaked to Undark, a Dalit Ph.D. student at IISc describes experiencing several instances of caste discrimination. In one incident detailed in the report, the student’s supervisor didn’t let him enter a lab where cells are grown in a carefully controlled environment, saying he was “not clean.” Later, the supervisor justified his actions by saying that the student sometimes scratched his skin. The report alleges that the student’s supervisors also kept delaying a critical exam required within two years of starting a Ph.D., saying the student had not gathered enough data. But, the student said in the complaint, other students from the same lab had taken the exam with far less data. The student asked for a transfer to another lab, where he passed the exam and transitioned to a senior fellow position.


“It seems that the untouchability still exists, but in a different form,” said one IISc student.

Such formal complaints may be relatively rare. Akshay Sawant, an upper-caste member of Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle, a student organization at IIT Bombay, said that discrimination cases remain underreported because students fear retaliation from their upper-caste supervisors. The special Dalit and Adivasi affairs committee at IIT Bombay received only one complaint between 2019 and 2020, which, as of May, was still being investigated. IISc received three complaints in 2020, of which two, as of late April, were unresolved.

Caste divisions occasionally spill over into scientific communities beyond India’s borders. Since the mid-1960s, for example, United States policies designed to incentivize the immigration of skilled STEM professionals have led hundreds of thousands of scientists and engineers — most of them upper-caste — to move from India to the U.S. In June 2020, California state regulators sued the technology company Cisco Systems, alleging that two upper-caste supervisors had harassed and discriminated against a Dalit employee. According to the complaint, one of the supervisors had disclosed the engineer’s caste to colleagues, telling them he had attended an IIT in India under the country’s reservation policy. The complaint also states the engineer was subjected to a hostile work environment and pay discrimination based on his caste. (The hearings have been postponed until September of this year.) ­­­

A 2016 survey by Equality Labs, a progressive Dalit civil rights organization, found that 67 percent of Dalits in the Indian diaspora in the U.S. reported facing caste-based harassment and discrimination in the workplace. In Silicon Valley, most of the Indians come from institutions “where caste discrimination is rampant,” Subramanian wrote in an email to Undark. “Therefore, the entry of caste discrimination into the American tech sector is not in the least bit surprising.”

WHEN KALE entered graduate school in the 1970s, there were no Dalit role models for him in science. Fifty years later, many early-career Dalit researchers say the same.

One early-career Dalit scientist willing to speak openly about her experiences is Shalini Mahadev, a researcher pursuing a doctorate in neural and cognitive sciences at the University of Hyderabad, one of India’s top-ranked universities. In an interview, Mahadev said she badly wants to see more senior scientists from her community, and to have teachers who can relate to the life experiences of students like her. “Having them in your classroom, in your research, in your lab is something else, because you are coming with so many anxieties, you know,” she said. “And you are feeling inefficient all the time.”

Mahadev is in her late 30s and grew up in Hyderabad. Her father, who was part of the first generation in his family to go to school, had received an engineering diploma — a specialized course shorter than an undergraduate degree — in order to get a job quickly. Her mother discontinued her studies after marrying young. The family had modest resources, and Mahadev remembers feeling intense pressure to study and perform. Her father told her that he has always lived with a gnawing feeling that he couldn’t study more, and that he didn’t want her to feel the same way, recalled Mahadev.

Early-career Dalit researcher Shalini Mahadev says she badly wants to see more senior scientists from her community.
Visual: Courtesy of Shalini Mahadev

After high school, Mahadev took a break to prepare for national examinations to become a doctor. Like many students in India, she turned to coaching institutes that help students prepare for the exam. The atmosphere in these institutes is extremely competitive. On her first day of classes, she said, teachers would ask Dalit students to stand up, while upper-caste students sat in their chairs. The teachers would tell the Dalit students that, even if they didn’t study hard or get great marks, they were likely to get admission in medical colleges because of reservation policies — unlike the upper-caste students who needed to study harder.

Standing in the class, Mahadev could feel the eyes of her upper-caste classmates on her. Teachers “are already making people hate me,” she remembers thinking. As demeaning incidents piled up, Mahadev said, she began avoiding going to the institute. Eventually, she decided she didn’t want to become a doctor. Instead, she chose to study biology, because she liked learning about genes. Later, she became fascinated with neurons. Today, she studies the connection between neurons and the sense of hearing in grasshoppers.

Reminders of caste shadowed her. On campus, she said, upper-caste people would assert their status in subtle ways — through what they wore, how they talked, even how they walked. At one point, when Mahadev was a junior research fellow, another fellow told her that science is not for poor people, she recalled. That broke Mahadev’s heart, because it also seemed true to her. In her view, historically, “science was only done by rich people,” she said — people who have the time and resources to pursue it. And for Mahadev, time often seemed scarce: Living in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Hyderabad, she spent four to six hours each day commuting via bus between her house and the university, until she could finally get a place in the university hostel.

Many elite institutes have resisted change. In April 2020, following growing criticism in Indian media about the low representation of marginalized communities at IITs, India’s Department of Higher Education formed a committee to suggest ways to implement the reservation policy. The committee, in its report, said that because few students from the “reserved category” receive Ph.D.s, few are available to be hired as teachers or researchers. The committee also recommended that IITs, as “institutes of national importance,” should be exempted from following the reservation policy in hiring teachers.


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