Village Caste And Education

Study relates to villages in Tumkur District, Karnataka.

This volume is an introduction to the role of caste and class in Indian society, meant to emphasize certain important aspects of Indian society such as continuity and change in caste, economic classes, status of women, status of Harijans, village poli-tics, overseas Indians, and casteism and tribalism. Its theoretical interest is to explain the dynamics of social inequalities in Indian society. All but one of the essays are based on research conducted in India. The other is based on research on Indian plantation workers in Sri Lanka, and included here to demonstrate that the concepts of caste and class are relevant to understanding In-dians who have emigrated to overseas countries.

This book addresses the familiar issue of unequal access to education in a new perspective. In this regard, whether one looks at gender or caste or tribes or class differences, the gap between the privileged and the dispriviliged is a matter of everyday experience. In what manner and form are these asymmetries reflected in the domain of education is the question at the core of this collection of essays. This volume is likely to be useful to those interested in understanding the interface between education and society in India as well as in other developing countries.

This edited volume brings together a range of scholars to reflect on the varied ways in which caste is manifested and experienced in social life. Each chapter draws on different methods and approaches but all consider lived experiences and experiential narrations. Considering Guru and Sarukkai’s path-breaking work on ‘Experience, Caste and the Everyday Social’ (2019), this volume applies the insights of the theories to multiple settings, issues and communities. Unique to this volume, Brahmin and other dominant castes' experiences are considered, rather than simply focusing on the lives of oppressed castes (Dalits). Analysis of cross-caste friendships or romances and marriages, furthermore, brings out the intimate and ingrained aspects of caste. Taken together, therefore, the contributions in this volume offer rich insights into caste and its consciousness within the framework of everyday experiences.

Inspired by egalitarian doctrines, the Dalit communities in India have been fighting for basic human and civic rights since the middle of the nineteenth century. In this book, Shailaja Paik focuses on the struggle of Dalit women in one arena - the realm of formal education – and examines a range of interconnected social, cultural and political questions. What did education mean to women? How did changes in women’s education affect their views of themselves and their domestic work, public employment, marriage, sexuality, and childbearing and rearing? What does the dissonance between the rhetoric and practice of secular education tell us about the deeper historical entanglement with modernity as experienced by Dalit communities? Dalit Women's Education in Modern India is a social and cultural history that challenges the triumphant narrative of modern secular education to analyse the constellation of social, economic, political and historical circumstances that both opened and closed opportunities to many Dalits. By focusing on marginalised Dalit women in modern Maharashtra, who have rarely been at the centre of systematic historical enquiry, Paik breathes life into their ideas, expectations, potentials, fears and frustrations. Addressing two major blind spots in the historiography of India and of the women’s movement, she historicises Dalit women’s experiences and constructs them as historical agents. The book combines archival research with historical fieldwork, and centres on themes including slum life, urban middle classes, social and sexual labour, and family, marriage and children to provide a penetrating portrait of the actions and lives of Dalit women. Elegantly conceived and convincingly argued, Dalit Women's Education in Modern India will be invaluable to students of History, Caste Politics, Women and Gender Studies, Education Studies, Urban Studies and Asian studies.