But if upper castes continue violent attacks on Dalits irrespective of their sub-castes, it will force consolidation among them.
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Brahmins still have an outsize presence in intellectual life; the armed forces are still dominated by the martial castes; a majority of rich businessmen and industrialists are still of the mercantile castes; the lower castes still do the least desirable jobs.
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The age-old system's three groups are the upper castes, other backward classes and scheduled castes, further divided into sub-groups and communities.
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Because the alternative would be so horrifying; you'd basically have a fragmentation of our population into two castes — two biologically very different castes.
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Hindu nationalist workers campaigned among the lower castes with the message that affirmative action mostly benefited a particular lower-caste subgroup to the exclusion of other lower castes.
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Since India's lower castes had been systematically disadvantaged for so long, the state created a special quota of government jobs and university seats that would be reserved for the former lower castes.
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The lowest castes, or untouchables, were marginalized and faced persecution.
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His positions brought him immense popularity among the lower castes.
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He also championed women's rights and the eradication of castes.
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The upper castes resent the defiant and proud Ambedkar imagery.
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They have four distinct castes, each with their own life tasks.
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Seen as "unclean," they are considered untouchable by the higher castes.
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It is a formidable victory—enabled by voters across castes, classes,
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Its socialist policies have helped improve education and empower lower castes.
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Worker castes can be determined by the color of their badges.
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Seen as "unclean," they are considered untouchable by the higher castes.
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They campaigned for social reforms and for allowing Dalits entry to temples, and promoted shared meals between the upper castes and lower castes, but caste prejudice was deeply entrenched among their followers and change remained superficial.
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Perceived as being "unclean," Dalits are considered untouchable by the higher castes.
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The prime minister's own modest origins have lured in lower-ranked castes.
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But his halo has dimmed for the Hindu right and lower castes.
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"The lower castes don't have the critical numbers to counterattack," he said.
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Lower castes still face horrendous abuse, and Dalits — who represent close to 100 million votes — have long distrusted Mr. Modi and his party, which is rooted in a Hindu nationalist worldview that favors upper castes and emphasizes India's Hinduness.
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Political parties sprang up to demand new or bigger reservations for different castes.
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INDIA reserves a share of jobs in government for people of particular castes.
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Dozens voiced complaints over how castes and the so-called untouchables are portrayed.
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Hindus are traditionally grouped into thousands of castes, their membership determined by birth.
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Not allowed to come near sources of drinking water used by other castes.
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Assam has 16 Scheduled Castes with a total population of over 2.2 million people.
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It runs 300-odd websites in 15 languages, catering to different castes and religions.
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Not everyone from the lower castes is sure of who will best serve them.
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The "gau rakshaks", or cow protectors, are inflaming tensions among India's religions and castes.
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Mingma and her family are Sherpa, one of Nepal's 126 castes and ethnic groups.
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The two castes have separate water taps, like in the Jim Crow American south.
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He hires four men of lower castes to kidnap and remove the woman's nether-teeth.
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We both lived in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand but belonged to different castes.
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As noted, only minor workers explode, but the researchers also discovered other specialties among other castes.
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Chastened, the pair, which represent two different slices of the lower castes, are now in alliance.
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The survey also found a high prevalence of similar practices among different sub-castes of Dalits.
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How did you see the installation framing these castes of gesture as uncanny, efficient, or comical?
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Dozens of students told committee members that they were taunted after learning about castes in school.
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Here was a student from among the lowest castes, attending one of India's most prestigious universities.
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The painters came from different castes, different regions and different faiths: Hindu, Muslim and Roman Catholic.
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" No more the delicate, doomed "half-castes" of 19th-century novels like "Clotel" — "hybridity is in.
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He also promised to be a champion of the lower Hindu castes, known in India as Dalits.
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Most litigants are poor men belonging to so-called lower castes, with only basic education, it said.
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Modi's move late last year to scrap its two largest rupee notes also hit the lower castes.
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In India, a resurgent Hindu nationalism asks the upper castes why untouchables should benefit from affirmative action.
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For centuries, people belonging to lower castes were not accepted by the rest of the Indian society.
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"This section is discriminatory towards women, lower castes, tribals and is the source of terrorism," he claimed.
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In many recent lynchings, police say minority groups such as those from lower castes, have been targets.
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And what other society is fragmented into more than 221,000 castes, each with its own proud creation myth?
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You will find it's mostly the poor and the backward castes who are called seditious in this country.
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Meanwhile it has concocted an unlikely coalition of unhappy castes, headed by a trio of charismatic local leaders.
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Others believe that Jatts celebrating their caste does not necessarily mean that they look down on other castes.
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A star system economy in which the NFL's on-field labor force is split into two castes: 1.
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That the higher administrative offices of this period were manned largely by Hindu upper castes is conveniently ignored.
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These quickly spill into threats of physical violence with members of some communities claiming dominance over other castes.
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Despite their efforts, the Bharatiya Janata Party and its affiliate groups were always identified with the upper castes.
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A staple of electoral politics here is pitting Muslims against Hindus, and various Hindu castes against each other.
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Affirmative action programs, though they have generated deep resentments among upper castes, have helped some Dalits escape poverty.
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It's a common complaint: that the police (who are usually from higher castes) always side against the Dalits.
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The silver chariot of the Chettiars, a title used by various castes from South India, seen here in Saigon.
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An estimated 40 percent of those sex workers are trafficked children, mostly girls from ethnic minorities and lower castes.
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They will push the dalits to suicide, and fill the jails with lower castes if we don't stop them.
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"I think the whole issue of dominant castes including caste in their songs is completely wrong," she told me.
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They also say the foundation is trying to sanitize history by wiping out any link between Hinduism and castes.
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Activists say the rise of Hindu nationalism under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has increased the oppression of lower castes.
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Another can be seen in attacks on people of lower caste using water tanks customarily monopolised by the upper castes.
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Girls -- especially those with disabilities or from ethnic minorities or certain castes -- are therefore particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.
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Narendra Modi's government — supported largely by the middle classes, upper castes and large businesses — appeared to be caught off guard.
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They are joined in a parallel struggle by India's lower castes, tribal communities like Ms. Minj's and other marginalized groups.
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While he did stand up for the lowest castes, critics argue that Gandhi didn't question hard enough the system itself.
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The Dalits and members of other lower castes, for example, have been complaining for years about discrimination under Mr. Modi.
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Every aspect of their demeanour, from posture to speech, had to be modulated to convey unstinting subservience to the upper castes.
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The demographics of the electorate is 41 percent OBC, 21 percent Dalits, 19 percent Muslims and 19 percent from upper castes.
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Other castes in other parts of India have staged similar protests over the past year, several of which have turned violent.
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There is a lot of segregation with different castes, different classes with respect to the social background that you come from.
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Historically, Dalits were forced into occupations that were considered impure, blocked from formal institutions and regarded as "untouchable" by higher castes.
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When questioned further, some of them claimed there were occasions when people from specific castes had been requested for a job.
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The upper castes once considered Dalits so impure they were barred from sharing the same streets, water wells, temples and schools.
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Many Indians are extremely socially conservative, going to great lengths to arrange marriages with the right families, of the right castes.
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More recently, instead of calling for the abolition or reduction of reservations, relatively prosperous castes have agitated for inclusion in the quotas.
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The BJP in earlier times was closely associated with the higher castes, but under Mr Modi it has shed its exclusionary image.
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Meanwhile the old order, drawn from the elite castes, regrouped and won a majority in a second constituent assembly, elected in 2013.
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Some members of India's lower castes still engage in unsafe cleaning practices, including the capital, where recent deaths sparked off the protests.
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The Indian community in Tanzania alone consists of an assortment of castes and religions, and even the religions are split into subgroups.
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The upper castes once considered Dalits so impure that they were barred from sharing the same streets, water wells, temples and schools.
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Mr. Adityanath comes from an upper-caste group, the Rajputs, who have been displaying renewed aggression toward lower castes since his inauguration.
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India's caste system had historically prohibited members of the Dalit, the "untouchable" castes, from going to school and moving into decent employment.
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In all of the protests across India, you'll find banners with pictures of this leader of India's lower castes known as Dalits.
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Many were working in local restaurants, some as cooks, where former "untouchables" were now allowed to touch the food of higher castes.
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The constitutional term for these groups in India is "Scheduled Castes," and they eke out a sparse existence at the margins of society.
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The two largest Scheduled Castes in Assam are the Kaibarttas and the Namasudras, many of whom can be found toiling on tea plantations.
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While there is no data on the demographics of Indian jails, the police disproportionately target lower classes, castes, and those from minority religions.
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Other castes and ethnic groups have taken similar action in recent years, in the same hope of strong-arming their way into jobs.
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Increasingly castes are clamouring to be recognised as lowly in order to reap whatever benefits accrue from being counted in the bottom half.
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The first beneficiaries were "scheduled castes and tribes", in particular untouchables (now known as Dalits)—those at the bottom of the social order.
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According to the National Crime Records Bureau, the total number of crimes against people of lower castes was more than 47,000 in 2016.
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It can make the higher castes, whose numbers are small, insecure about their place in the world and drive them to reinforce it.
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What I didn't realize was that in one very important respect, caste did exist among us: because the lowest castes were not represented.
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His scripts, which generally excoriated India's upper castes while creating heroes and heroines out of the impoverished and championing secularism, were considered pioneering.
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One is a Brahmin, one a member of the "other backward castes," and the third a dalit (the term that has replaced "untouchable").
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Others increased their reputations through their associations, comportment, and military service, situating themselves closer to whiteness along Spain's vast colored spectrum of castes.
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Traditionally it is the lowest caste members whose job it is to clean latrines and sewers -- and they are considered "untouchable" by higher castes.
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The rapid economic growth of recent years, accompanied by growing social mobility, has taken castes from the places or professions that first defined them.
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Small wonder that among 19 newly minted ministers, ten are from what India officially classifies as "backward" castes, and three are from Uttar Pradesh.
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The problem is this: if natural selection favors those organisms which are best at reproducing, then how do castes of nonreproductive insects ever evolve?
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The current generation of upper castes and elites in Indian society are not exposed to this knowledge or do not wish to acknowledge it.
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The intermingling of different castes or religions, particularly in marriage, remains taboo not only among rural populations, but even among well-off urban families.
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Here, artists are concerned with depicting not just their own communities, but a mix of ethnicities, religions, castes, classes, and genders in group portraiture.
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But Thati still observes an old social order that the arrival of electricity, cellphones and more opportunity for the lower castes has not dismantled.
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"The next elections will be a plebiscite — the population and real life against old political castes and the 'lords of the spread'," he said.
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She called on the government to explain why proper, indoor toilets were often not available in villages where Dalits and other lower castes lived.
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It allows for equal distribution of water among all castes, including lower-caste Dalits like Sarki, and encourages villagers to meet and collaborate, he said.
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But just reading the story and seeing the story of these women — it was fascinating seeing the different castes of women pitted against each other.
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Tensions between higher castes like Brahmins and lower-caste Dalits — a community of people once known as the untouchables — have been escalating in recent years.
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Such lies have had lethal consequences, especially for Muslims and Dalits (people belonging to lower castes, some of them still considered untouchable by their compatriots).
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This ideology has been blamed for inciting mob rule and deadly vigilante violence across the country, particularly against Muslims and members of Hinduism's lowest castes.
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Its party leaders aggressively seek to secure votes of low castes during elections, but caste discrimination and prejudice doesn't disappear after the elections are over.
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That would allow members to qualify for affirmative action programs that set aside quotas of jobs and educational opportunities for people from historically disadvantaged lower castes.
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"Castes are a hot-button issue, and people living in the United States don't want to talk about it or want to deny it," he said.
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Women and lower caste Dalits often bear the brunt of such judgments, passed as punishment for perceived misdeeds such as marrying between castes or dressing immodestly.
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Granting job reservations to powerful castes takes away opportunities from genuinely oppressed groups like dalits, who are routinely discriminated against by most caste groups, including Jats.
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The two children belonged to what are known officially as "scheduled castes", but also called "Dalits", or "untouchables" for their position in India's ancient caste hierarchy.
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Are the guerrilla forces castes of beings serenely distant from the flesh, like nuns and monks in the Christian Church, but with M-16s and rocket launchers?
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"I just wanted to provide water for my whole locality so that we Dalits did not have to beg for water from other castes," he told reporters.
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Although 55% of Indians say they do not mind people of different castes marrying one another, only 4% say they have married someone from outside their caste.
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Hindus, who account for more than 85 percent of India's population of 1.3 billion, were traditionally grouped into thousands of castes, whose membership was determined by birth.
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With a constitution that guaranteed equality to all castes and charismatic leaders who heralded a new future, India completed its transformation from ancient civilization to modern nation.
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In 2010, the faithful were divided into two castes: An elite group of the most pious and obedient men and their families emerged at the United Order.
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Mob violence directed against India's religious minorities and lower castes have forced Modi to speak out explicitly against sectarian divisions between Hindus and Muslims in recent months.
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Critics of Modi's premiership point to a continuing employment crisis, a faltering agricultural economy and frequent outbreaks of communal violence against minorities and people of lower castes.
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Within a few years after independence, India had set aside for Dalits and other disadvantaged castes about 23 percent of government jobs and seats in public universities.
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Indeed, caste-based quotas in education and government jobs are so tempting that some "low" castes like Patels want to be officially recognized as a backward caste.
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Mr. Modi's rule has highlighted the antagonism between his party's pandering to the dominant upper castes and the radicalism of Dalits fighting for the elimination of caste.
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Running water was restored on Wednesday to parts of India's capital region, after protesters sabotaged a major canal in a dispute over preferential treatment for certain social castes.
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They believe that invasive northerners long ago installed themselves as Brahmins in the South at the expense of other castes, in whose favour they have tended to govern.
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Protests and riots by members of higher castes typically end with politicians and officials acceding to their demands; similar actions by Dalits tend to be met with repression.
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According to the South Asia Solidarity Group, the taboo surrounding mixed-caste relationships can make girls wary of approaching men of other castes, especially the supposedly lower ones.
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"The mainstream media only carried stories about the big cities, and the reporters were mostly educated, English-speaking men belonging to upper castes," said co-founder Shalini Joshi.
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A mob assaulted a group of Dalits (the castes formerly known as untouchables) last month in Mr Modi's home state of Gujarat, thinking they had killed a cow.
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He was a follower of Periyar E.V. Ramasamy, a social activist and politician who started the Self-Respect Movement that fought to end discrimination against the lower castes.
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Mr. Vemula identified as Dalit, a word meaning "crushed" or "ground down" and refers to the oppression, often violent, suffered by scheduled castes over centuries of Indian history.
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He won votes in places where his party almost never attracts support, like West Bengal, a leftist bastion, and from Muslim women and people in the lower castes.
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Ms. Lankesh, a fierce critic of majoritarian politics and a champion of equal rights for lower castes and minorities, stood up against the powerful and stood for justice.
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In this particular battle that is memorialized at Bhima Koregaon, 500 Dalit soldiers are said to have defeated 28,000 soldiers in the ruling army of the upper-castes.
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Jaitley said he also planned to double spending on a microfinance scheme and priority would be given to marginalized groups such as women, tribals, lower castes and minorities.
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The court order highlights the risks faced by India's underprivileged lower castes and indigenous groups as the country of 1.3 billion people pursues higher economic growth and development.
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Upper castes spoke of how the B.J.P. prime minister, Narendra Modi, was defending the Hindu way of life from the growing Muslim minority and reforming a corrupt economy.
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Human rights activists say the allegations are part of a crackdown on intellectuals who criticize Mr. Modi's record, especially his government's treatment of religious minorities and lower castes.
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Just under half of all jobs are earmarked for selected, disadvantaged castes; a quarter of all unskilled workers must be ex-servicemen or dependents of those killed in action.
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Out of 496 vice-chancellors—in effect presidents—of state universities, just six are from "scheduled" castes, as the lowest ranks of the Hindu caste hierarchy are officially known.
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Despite India's growing cosmopolitanism, the intermingling of different castes or religions remains a taboo in Indian marriages - not only among rural populations, but even for well-off urban families.
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I spoke to people who had been abused by higher castes, and a girl whose parents had moved cities to escape the stigma associated with their mixed-caste relationship.
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Since the decision, reservations have always played an important role in Indian elections as politicians promise affirmative action to different castes and cultures in an attempt to woo voters.
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An atheist, he challenged the monopoly that India's upper castes had on politics and what he described as the elitism of the country's founding party, the Indian National Congress.
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The Congress Party, once the nation's most dominant political force, has been supplanted in many states by regional parties, each championing one of India's thousands of castes and subcastes.
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However, magic — the superstitious belief in the efficacy of rituals and astrology, along with the measures taken to avoid pollution from contact with lower castes — is stupid, destructive, cruel.
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Its chief architect, B.R. Ambedkar, a brilliant jurist, was born a Dalit, that is, from one of the castes regarded as "untouchable" and kept wretched by untold generations of discrimination.
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The political undertone of the film coincides with real India-wide protests in the streets outside by Dalits (formerly called "untouchables"), revolting against centuries of repression from the upper castes.
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Higher castes previously avoided all relations with Dalits, even requiring them to wear a pot under their chins to prevent their spit from falling to the ground and contaminating it.
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A few said they voted for neither Congress nor the B.J.P. but for "the elephant," the symbol of the Bahujan Samaj Party, a party formed by members of lower castes.
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As the sheer brutishness of Mr. Modi's populism becomes clear, the memory of the aristocratic Nehru becomes more sacred, especially among politicians and commentators from India's English-speaking upper castes.
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Though Mr. Modi himself has been careful to court the Dalit vote by supporting a longstanding system of affirmative action for India's lower castes, officials in his party have questioned this.
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"The Manu Smriti (an ancient Hindu legal text) forbids lower castes from sporting mustaches, wearing colorful or good clothes," says D. Shyam Babu, a senior fellow at Center for Policy Research.
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The priests at a temple in Udupi, a southern Indian town — a stronghold of the Hindu nationalist movement — were segregating the lower castes, especially Dalit devotees, from the upper-caste Hindus.
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"Your money, money of our tribal brothers, lower castes, farmers was taken away and you did not even realize," Congress President Rahul Gandhi said in a state election rally late last year.
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A member of the "backward castes", Milly was raised in the Maoist-infested east of India, from where she was dispatched at the age of eight to work in a nearby town.
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The incident has caused an international outcry and shone a light on the frequency of sexual violence incidents in the South Asian nation, specifically with regards to women from the lower castes.
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About half of the respondents viewed "communal incidents," or tensions between religions or castes, as a very serious problem, but the issue ranked behind others such as corruption, crime, terrorism and unemployment.
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This blockade is in spite of the fact that Compassion and its development centers rigorously observe Indian law and serve children and families in India of all castes, creeds, classes and religions.
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More than a thousand workers, most belonging to India's so-called lower castes and tribes, met in the city of Bathinda last week in perhaps the first such gathering in the country.
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Two powerful parties representing India's lower castes in the rigid Hindu hierarchy as well as minority Muslims have come together in Uttar Pradesh and that is hurting the BJP, the surveys showed.
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But the new 10 percent quota is even worse than that: It contains a caveat that explicitly leaves out individuals belonging to India's disadvantaged castes, who benefit from other affirmative action measures.
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The case highlights the plight of India's underprivileged lower castes and indigenous groups as the world's second most populated country - with 1.3 billion people - juggles with environmental protection, poverty reduction and economic growth.
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REUTERS/Adnan Abidi India's upper castes, usually divided or supporters of the opposition Congress party, appear to have consolidated behind Modi, said Gupta, a veteran writer on politics and television talk-show host.
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One strong local party relies on Dalits or untouchables as its base; its chief rival, which currently runs the state and has forged an alliance with Congress, draws support from mid-ranking castes.
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The state of Tamil Nadu reserves fully 69% of university places and government jobs for disadvantaged castes—an apparent breach of the Supreme Court's ruling that has been the subject of long litigation.
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Remarkably, given the wide political spectrum, from royalists pining for a return to monarchy, to revolutionary communists demanding a new peasant uprising, nearly all of Nepal's leaders are indeed from Khas Arya castes.
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First in state laws and later in national ones, Indian governments have recognised myriad groups as OBCs, deemed to suffer some disadvantage compared with the uppermost castes, and deserving of a helping hand.
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In the late 1970s the government set up the Mandal Commission to study which other groups, even if not among the lowest castes, might also be suffering from social, economic or educational deprivation.
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Twitter (TWTR) CEO Jack Dorsey sparked controversy in the country during his maiden visit there in November, by posing with a poster deemed insulting to one of Hinduism's top castes, or social groups.
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As part of my doctoral research in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, I interviewed women from lower and middle castes living in a rural village to understand their perceptions of toilets.
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Mr. Rai and others said progress was more visible in the commercial sphere: Muslims and Dalits were no longer denied service at lunch counters; castes were no longer confined to divinely decreed occupations.
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I think about the Commanders drawing up the blueprints for a new society that divides women into rigid castes, back when they weren't Commanders but just dudes with an outsized sense of self-importance.
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The teenager's death is the latest in a string of violent mob attacks to have gripped India, with many alleging it is the country's minorities — Muslims, lower-castes and Christians — who are disproportionally targeted.
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Hylton told Refinery29 she did a lot of research about the system and on specific castes in the region to prepare herself, though she's worked in the South Asia region for almost seven years.
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India's top banker: Intolerance could stifle growth The importance of land The irony of the Patel and Jat clashes is that both groups are relatively wealthy, and the dominant castes in their respective states.
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The act is designed to protect people belonging to lower castes from retribution or intimidation that could follow after a complaint is filed and orders immediate arrest of the accused as a counter measure.
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The gap between the high and the low castes, between so-called backward and forward communities, not only persists, it also manifests itself through ever-more subtle and complex forms of discrimination and violence.
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Castes like Jats in Haryana, Patidars in Gujarat, Marathas in Maharashtra and Kapus in Andhra Pradesh have been agitating recently, asking to benefit from reservations, even though they often are wealthy or own land.
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Now that his economic strategy is losing its sheen, Mr. Modi may lean even more heavily on Hindu nationalism, a risky gambit as social tensions simmer, especially between Hindus and Muslims and among castes.
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The consensus among Indian activists and liberal political analysts is that their society, under Mr. Modi, has become more toxically divided between Hindus and Muslims, between upper and lower castes, between men and women.
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