The Dalit Movement’s Perspectives on Caste: From Anthropology to Social History?

Abstract

The Dalit movement appropriated and reformulated colonial/Western anthropological theories of
untouchability, thus locating caste within an essentialized notion of culture, while nevertheless
reintroducing historicity at an abstract and distant level.
Lately, this dominant cultural model of the anti-caste movement is being challenged. On the one
hand, powerful critiques are emerging from within the Dalit movement where they
arecontested on the grounds of political orthodoxy. On the other hand, some rare but noticeable
attempts by social historians and anthropologists to study histories of caste formation have
highlighted the historical trajectories of individual jati formations. Their rich empirical
findings could contribute to the new, heterodox political perspectives of the anti-caste movement
although highlighting the heterogeneity of Dalit experiences on the basis of jati may seem
divisive on the surface.