Hidden Apartheid Caste Discrimination Against India S Untouchables

Some 160 Million People In India Live A Precarious Existence, Shunned By Much Of Society Because Of Their Rank As Untouchables Or Dalits - Literally Meaning Broken People- Ath The Bottom Of India`S Caste System. Dalits Are Discriminated Against, Denied Access To Land, Forced To Work In Degrading Conditions, And Routinely Abused, Even Killed, At The Hands Of The Police And Of Higher-Caste Groups That Enjoy The State`S Protction. Dalit Women Are Frequent Victims Of Sexual Abuse. In What Has Been Called India`S Hidden Apartheid , Antire Villages In Many Indian States Remain Completely Segregated By Caste. National Legislation And Constitutional Protections Serve Only To Mask The Social Realities Of Discrimination And Violence. A Loss Of Faith In The State Machinerry And Increasing Intolerance Of Their Abusive Treatment Have Led Many Dalit Communities Into Movements To Claim Their Rights. In Response, State And Private Actors Have Engoged In A Pattern Of Repression To Preserve The Status Quo. This Report Also Documents The Government`S Attempts To Criminalize Peaceful Social Activism Through The Arbitray Arrest And Defention Of Dalit Activists, And Its Failure To Abolish Exploitative Labor Practices And Implement Relevant Legislation.

Women and the Law.

"Every hour -- two Darts are assaulted. Every day -- three Dalit women are raped, two Dalits are murdered, two Dalit houses are burnt". -- Human Rights Education Movement in India

Human Rights from the Dalit Perspective portrays the efforts taken to bring the Dalit Discrimination issues under the purview of Human Rights since 1985. India has played a leading role in the United Nations Human Rights Commission activities and meetings and for the abolition of Human Rights paradigm is therefore appropriate and relevant to deal with Dalit discrimination issues to end the violence based on caste discrimination, which is confronting our people. In order to make India truly a progressive nation in the world and to achieve the goal of the new millennium of discrimination. The collection of articles on Human Rights for Dalits will be good source material for both the academia and the activists.

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.

On India; articles selected from a Japanese text and translated into English.

"This book addresses the problem of untouchability by providing an overview of the subject as well as penetrating insights into its social and religious origins. The author persuasively demonstrates that untouchability is a deeply ambiguous condition: neither inside nor outside society, reviled yet indispensable, untouchables constitute an original category of social exclusion." "The situation of untouchables is crucial to the understanding of caste dynamics, especially in contemporary circumstances, but emphasis, particularly within anthropology, has been placed on the dominant aspects of the caste system rather than on those marginalized and excluded from it. This book redresses this problem and represents a vital contribution to studies of India, Hinduism, human rights, sociology, and anthropology."--Jacket