Dalit politics and the Indian State: Changing landscape, emerging agendas

Abstract

The conscious effort on the part of dalit activism to take the issue of dalit empowerment beyond the pale of the agency of the modernising State and firmly place it in the arena of global civil society, and the frequent appeal to the United Nations or the international human rights bodies to pressurise and morally coerce the Indian State, is part of the new dalit political tactics. This dampens the formation of a critical dalit consciousness by altering the flow of discontent from the State towards an incipient global civil society. Downgrading those struggles which are political/economic in nature or seek to capture State power, the new dalit activism tries to hegemonise the entire dalit movement.