Full Description
While the caste system has been formally abolished under the Indian Constitution, according to official statistics, every eighteen minutes a crime is committed in India on a dalit-untouchable.
The Persistence of Caste uses the shocking case of Khairlanji, the brutal murder of four members of a dalit family in 2006, to explode the myth that caste no longer matters. In this exposé, Anand Teltumbde locates the crime within the political economy of post-Independence India and across the global Indian diaspora. This book demonstrates how caste has shown amazing resilience - surviving feudalism, capitalist industrialization and a republican constitution - to still be alive and well today, despite all denial, under neoliberal globalization.
This insightful new analysis not only provides a fascinating introduction to the issue of caste in a globalized world, but also sharpens our understanding of caste dynamics as they really exist.
Contents
1. Introduction: Caste: A Historical Outline
2. Beyond Varna: Caste in the 21st Century
3. The Political Economy: The Shaping of the Macabre Spectacle
4. Anti-Atrocity Law: Mitigation and its Malcontents
5. The Khairlanji Murders: Genealogy and Aftermath
6. Post-Khairlanji: A Chronicle of Repression
7. Mass Media: Massive Prejudice
8. Atrocities by the State: Neoliberalism, Naxalism and Dalits
9. Exploding Myths: Globalisation, Civil Society and the Bahujan
