The Politics of Protest

The oppressed people of India have variously been addressed and catalogued in different demographic categories (such as scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, and other backward classes) or in diverse discursive spaces such as untouchables, harijans and dalits. The institution of caste is undemocratic as it sanctions the oppression of dalits through different ideological instruments such as sacred texts or spaces, religious customs or- rituals and traditions. This caste-based apartheid was resisted though in different yet important ways, by the bhakti-poets of medieval period and the radical activists like Jotiba Phule, Pandita Ramabai, Gandhi and Ambedkar in the modern period. The nature of the contemporary dalit movement is suffused with protest and non-conformism, which is the cumulative accretion of long simmering grievances and sufferings of the outcasts of Indian society.The present study is an attempt to map the theoretical dimensions of Dalit discourse in contemporary India.