Thesis (Th. M.)--Dallas Theological Seminary, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [70]-76).

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Civil society has come to dominate the discourses of development and social change for the last few decades. This thesis is a critical engagement with the liberal ideas of civil society; it specifically explores the politics that surfaces in the civic sphere in the context of caste inequalities through the study of Dalit socio-political organisations that occupy the margins of civil society in India. This ethnography of Dalit politics interrogates the intersections of caste and civil society in current globalised times and spaces through exploration into post-Panther phase of Dalit politics in rural Maharashtra. The focus is on two socio-political movements; one is Manavi Hakk Abhiyan (MHA), a grassroots Dalit organisation with international networks and the other is Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) a national Dalit political party. This study offers insights into the dynamic nature of caste and its vitality in constructing localised form/s of civil society in India. A common running theme in the thesis is Dalit politics of resistance and their struggle to access justice through the state despite the continued denial of justice to Dalits through fragmented institutions of the state. The study, thus, observes how the participation of Dalit movements in claiming democratic citizenship through party politics occurs alongside the marginalisation of Dalit assertion in electoral politics. Looking beyond the state, the thesis charts the relationships between Dalits and the external relational fields within which they operate: it details the vernacular modes of communication in the civic sphere where protests and violence are important modes; the innovative uses of caste and cultural repertoires by Dalit movements in challenging caste hierarchy and forming collective identities of protest; and finally, the context of global associational revolution and engagement of NGOs and INGOs as new associations in Dalit politics of resistance. This thesis contributes to the larger debates on the makings of caste and civil society in India and argues that caste and Dalit movements have a key role in constructing localised forms of civility and civil society that challenge the dynamic hierarchies and exclusions of caste.

India has a population of 1, 2 billion people, and the country also has a great poor populationwhere 70 % still live in rural areas. The poorest are often Dalits, once called the untouchablesand they constitute one sixth, 167 million people, of India’s inhabitants. They are consideredoutside the caste system and are often on the bottom of the social ladder. Because of theircaste identity they are still discriminated. Since media has the power to influence this thesis focuses on how the Dalits arerepresented in three newspapers: Times of India, The Hindu and Indian Express. How dojournalists find their reporting about Dalits? The theories used are development journalism,the agenda setting theory and theory about minorities in media. A quantitative content analysis was done in Delhi during 17 days. 98 articles thatmentioned Dalits were found and coded. This was combined with a qualitative method: respondent research. Eight interviews withpolitical journalists were done. During the field work there was a legislative assembly electionin the state Uttar Pradesh, which affected the results since caste is closely related to politics inIndia. The results show that Dalits are mentioned quiet often in the newspapers, but the mainsubject is almost never Dalits and their situation in society. The most frequent topics were theelection, affirmative action, and crime and rape against Dalits. These subjects often have aconnection to sensation. The most quoted actors in the articles are the elite and not Dalits.Almost all respondents thought they could empower Dalits if they were reported about. Thisis a paradox since they almost never interview Dalits. There are no Dalit journalists at thethree newspapers, which can be one reason why they are not included in the news. There is little research done on this subject and therefore more research is needed.

The objective of this thesis is to analyze the philosophical implications of Ambedkar’s approach to Buddhism. This approach created a new social philosophy based on Buddhist ideas and a political commitment to social justice, particularly for the Dalits of India. What was the purpose of this social philosophy? To transform Buddhist philosophy? Or rather, to oppose Brahmanism and empower the lower castes? After a twenty-year-long study of Indian society and history, and Indian philosophical and religious traditions, Ambedkar came to the conclusion that Buddhism could have the power to transform the situation of the Untouchables. Why did he think that Buddhism would have this radical transformative impact not only for Dalits, but for Indian society as a whole? In 1956, in what became a historical event, he led a movement of conversion of more than five hundred thousand Untouchables from Hinduism to Buddhism. Ambekdar saw Buddhism as a way and as a tool to empower the lower castes of India. But what type of Buddhism did he envision? In 1956, in that historical event, Ambedkar founded what he called Navayana Buddhism. He used the word Navayana to refer to the birth of a new school. Nava means “new,” Yana means “vehicle”. Was he indeed creating a new yana, or new vehicle? What type of Buddhist school was this? What innovations did he introduce? Is the result still Buddhism, given Ambedkar's vision? This thesis aims to address all these questions.

My dissertation project, ‘Reimagining the Modern Hindu Self: Caste, Untouchability and Hindu Theology in Colonial South Asia, 1899-1948’ examines the interrelationship between modern forms of Hinduness and the narratives of Progressivism in the context of Maharashtra, a region in Western India. I present a thick description of the complex social world of Marathi intellectuals and cultural actors of the early twentieth century through various discursive/philosophical writings, journals, newspapers, pamphlets, personal correspondence, biographies, as well as a wide range of literary corpus of novels, plays and literary criticism in Marathi. My project hopes to demonstrate that a deeper engagement with the vernacular discourses would be enriching and productive for South Asian intellectual history. My methodology involved an exploration of the dialogic and transformational relationships between the centre and the peripheries of ‘Hinduness’ across disparate sites of discursive productions like non-Brahmin print publics, theological debates and literary culture. Through an examination of the ways in which the various peripheries of Hinduness – like Untouchables, the non-Brahmin, the non-Hindu and the women – had transformed the ideas of what constituted the core of modern Hinduness, I argue that the various narratives of Maharashtra’s progressivism and a complex phenomenon of modern Hinduness were deeply implicated in the production of each other in the first half of the twentieth century. My project identifies untouchables, women, anti-caste intellectuals, toilet cleaners, translators of Sanskrit texts and people who fasted unto death as crucial actors in this reimagination of modern Hindu self. Also, by providing a regionally specific history of Hindu ethic, my project challenges the Pan-Indian narrative of universal Hinduism that is privileged in the historiography of South Asia and enables me to argue that the ethical value of Hinduness was inherently political and the universal idea of Hinduness did not emerge through a singular genealogy. It is in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948, that the contradiction between the ethical and political aspects of Hinduness became significant. My project is to write a long and complex history of this imperative moment that coincided with the dawn of independent India.

This dissertation is about an anti-caste movement among Dalits (the oppressed as untouchable) in South India, the Parayar. Since the late 19th century, members of this caste, and a few others from Tamil-speaking areas, have been choosing to convert to Buddhism based on conscience and conviction. This phenomenon of religious conversion-social transformation is this study's focus. By combining archival research of Parayar's writings among Tamil Buddhists, as these Parayar, settled in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, are called, I have attempted to understand this movement ethno-historically. In pre-colonial times, though the sub-continent's societies were hierarchical, the hierarchies were fluid and varied: i.e., the high-low or self-other dichotomies were neither fixed nor based on a single principle. The most significant effect of the encounter of British Colonialism and India was to precipitate an unprecedented master-dichotomy of singular and absolute form of self and other, as colonizer and the colonized. This had three consequences. (a) India was itself seen as singular and served as the Self to the colonial Other in an absolute dichotomy; (b) the role of essentializing the Indian Self was assumed by the brahmin; (c) this in turn resulted in an internal dichotomy between the brahmin-essential self and the non-brahmin-non-essential other. The means chosen to fix this dichotomy was to nominate the non-essential other's paradigmatic representation, the Dalit. I intend to read against the grain of the binary logic that was inaugurated at the moment of the colonial encounter by means of Tamil Buddhists' oppositional, reconstructional, and representationaldiscursive practices.

Thesis (M.A. (Human Rights))--Mahidol University, 2006. / LICL has E-Thesis 0018 ; please contact computer services.

Thesis (M.A. (Human Rights))--Mahidol University, 2003.

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