Community and caste

Noun( communities)• A group sharing a common understanding and often the same language, manners, tradition and law. See civilization. • * Hallam Burdens upon the poorer classes of the community . • * Wordsworth Creatures that in communities exist. A community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime (Oscar Wilde) • A commune, or residential or religious collective. • The condition of having certain attitudes and interests in common. • * • (ecology) A group of interdependent organisms inhabiting the same region and interacting with each other. • (internet) A group of people interacting by electronic means for social, professional, educational or other purposes; a virtual community. • (obsolete) Common possession or enjoyment; participation. • * ( John Locke) The original community of all things. • * ( Washington Irving) An unreserved community of thought and feeling. • (obsolete) common character; likeness. • * H. Spencer The essential community of nature between organic growth and inorganic growth. • (obsolete) commonness; frequency • * Shakespeare Eyes sick and blunted with community .

Charting change from the cutting edge of knowledge, pursuing the frontiers of research to ever-widening horizons, the Social Scientist has built a reputation of being an outstanding journal in social sciences and humanities. For over three decades now, it has analysed trends, recorded changes, even roadmapped the future. Its writers , veteran and newcomer, tackle subjects with a breadth and depth that makes the Social Scientist indispensable to teachers and students, laymen and specialists. Recognized experts and brilliant young minds write on economic policy, social change, institutions and organizations, issues in history, methodology and theory.

By DEEPA BHARATH In California, members of an under-the-radar, minority religious community are stepping into the public eye to advocate for making the state the first in the nation to outlaw caste bias. They are the Ravidassia — followers of Ravidass, a 14th century Indian guru who preached caste and class equality. There are about 20,000 members of the community in California, most of them in the Central Valley. Guru Ravidass belonged to the lowest-rung of the caste system formerly considered untouchable and also known as Dalit, which means “broken” in Hindi. Today, many Ravidassia members share that caste identity, but they are hesitant to make that widely known, fearing repercussions for being exposed to the larger community as “lower-caste.” Members of the Fresno Ravidassia community say publicly championing the anti-caste bias legislation is worth the risk, noting that fighting for equality is part of their history and their spiritual DNA. The faith itself emerged in response to the societal exclusion of the lowest caste members, including persistent roadblocks to landownership, said Ronki Ram, professor of political science at Panjab University in Chandigarh, India. Caste-based discrimination was outlawed in India in 1947. WHO WAS GURU RAVIDASS? Ravidass was an Indian guru, mystic and poet who was one of the most renowned figures in the North Indian bhakti movement, which placed love and devotion to god above all and preached against the caste system. Ravidass was b...

• Share to Facebook • Share to Twitter • Share to Linkedin The brilliant Isabel Wilkerson, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Warmth of Other Suns, the Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, made quite a splash, for good reason, with her 2020 masterwork Caste: The Origins of our Discontents. In it, she compares the United States with its fraught racial history to the caste system in India, hence the title of her book. As Wilkerson writes, "caste is the granting or withholding of respect, status, honor, attention, privileges, resources, benefit of the doubt, and human kindness to someone on the basis of their perceived rank or standing in the hierarchy." There are obvious similarities between racism and casteism, as "what some people call racism could be seen as merely one manifestation of the degree to which we have internalized the larger American caste system." If we are to become a truly inclusive society, we must face the issue of caste and social class head-on. Prem Pariyar’s story reminds me of what my friend and business partner Charles Henderson has often told me about his own low social class background here in the US. Charles is not only Black, but he comes from what he refers to as the “projects.” Once he arrived in the Ivy League, he felt the class differences almost as much in the Black community as he did among the White students he encountered: Editor “It became clear to me when I arrived on the Ivy League campus of Penn as a community college transfer w...

Mrinmoy Pramanick| January 01, 2022 | Published Online Literary Studies in India is no mono-structural site, as there is no single language or literature as Indian language or literature. Even single Indian literature carries multiple traditions of thought. Moreover, there is a significant impression of syncretism of cultures even in a single literary tradition. The process of literary production, the definition of literature, and readership differ in literary concern from one linguistic area to another. Monolingual literary disciplines are also divided into canon and periphery, dominant literary culture and marginal literary culture. The literary study in various languages shows similar concern at the surface level but in the deeper structure they are significantly different from one another. Therefore, when I write caste in association with literary studies, I deal with mainly three disciplines of literature studied in India, those are Bengali, English, and Comparative Literature. Significant class differences are visible in the academic study of different disciplines of literature. Even a considerable class difference may be observed among the established Bengali scholars in Humanities and Social Sciences. They are primarily from urban spaces with a visible educational and cultural legacy. The kind of training one needs from school days to become a recognised scholar in Humanities and Social Sciences, perhaps our non-Calcuttan/non-urban education and the rural classes c...

A Survey of Caste in the United States Equality Labs is proud to release our report Caste in the United States. This report came out of a community driven survey conducted in 2016 and has now emerged as a crucial document that both presents the first evidence of Caste discrimination in the US and helps to map the internal hegemonies within our communities. It also provides insight into how the South Asian community balances the experiences of living under white supremacy while replicating Caste, anti-Dalitness, and anti-Blackness. As the South Asian American community, we are uniquely situated to redeem the errors of history as well as set the tone for a progressive conversation around Caste, both here and in countries of origin. This is an opportunity we must not squander. We hope that the data in this report tells the stories we haven’t always heard in our communities and inspires intentional efforts to create spaces that reject harmful and discriminatory ideologies. Instead, we hope this report opens new opportunities for dialogue, accountability, and most of all justice in all of our communities. Caste is a structure of oppression that affects over 1 billion people across the world. It is a system of religiously codified exclusion that was established in Hindu scripture. At birth, every child inherits his or her ancestor’s caste, which determines social status and assigns “spiritual purity”. Hindu origin myths state that different people were created from different par...

By DEEPA BHARATH In California, members of an under-the-radar, minority religious community are stepping into the public eye to advocate for making the state the first in the nation to outlaw caste bias. They are the Ravidassia — followers of Ravidass, a 14th century Indian guru who preached caste and class equality. There are about 20,000 members of the community in California, most of them in the Central Valley. Guru Ravidass belonged to the lowest-rung of the caste system formerly considered untouchable and also known as Dalit, which means “broken” in Hindi. Today, many Ravidassia members share that caste identity, but they are hesitant to make that widely known, fearing repercussions for being exposed to the larger community as “lower-caste.” Members of the Fresno Ravidassia community say publicly championing the anti-caste bias legislation is worth the risk, noting that fighting for equality is part of their history and their spiritual DNA. The faith itself emerged in response to the societal exclusion of the lowest caste members, including persistent roadblocks to landownership, said Ronki Ram, professor of political science at Panjab University in Chandigarh, India. Caste-based discrimination was outlawed in India in 1947. WHO WAS GURU RAVIDASS? Ravidass was an Indian guru, mystic and poet who was one of the most renowned figures in the North Indian bhakti movement, which placed love and devotion to god above all and preached against the caste system. Ravidass was b...

Community is a synonym of caste. As nouns the difference between caste and communityis that caste is any of the hereditary social classes and subclasses of South Asian societies while community is a group sharing a common understanding and often the same language, manners, tradition and law. See civilization. Noun( communities)• A group sharing a common understanding and often the same language, manners, tradition and law. See civilization. • * Hallam Burdens upon the poorer classes of the community . • * Wordsworth Creatures that in communities exist. A community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime (Oscar Wilde) • A commune, or residential or religious collective. • The condition of having certain attitudes and interests in common. • * • (ecology) A group of interdependent organisms inhabiting the same region and interacting with each other. • (internet) A group of people interacting by electronic means for social, professional, educational or other purposes; a virtual community. • (obsolete) Common possession or enjoyment; participation. • * ( John Locke) The original community of all things. • * ( Washington Irving) An unreserved community of thought and feeling. • (obsolete) common character; likeness. • * H. Spencer The essential community of nature between organic growth and inorganic growth. • (obsolete) commonness; frequency • * Shakespeare Eyes sick and blunted with community .

Mrinmoy Pramanick| January 01, 2022 | Published Online Literary Studies in India is no mono-structural site, as there is no single language or literature as Indian language or literature. Even single Indian literature carries multiple traditions of thought. Moreover, there is a significant impression of syncretism of cultures even in a single literary tradition. The process of literary production, the definition of literature, and readership differ in literary concern from one linguistic area to another. Monolingual literary disciplines are also divided into canon and periphery, dominant literary culture and marginal literary culture. The literary study in various languages shows similar concern at the surface level but in the deeper structure they are significantly different from one another. Therefore, when I write caste in association with literary studies, I deal with mainly three disciplines of literature studied in India, those are Bengali, English, and Comparative Literature. Significant class differences are visible in the academic study of different disciplines of literature. Even a considerable class difference may be observed among the established Bengali scholars in Humanities and Social Sciences. They are primarily from urban spaces with a visible educational and cultural legacy. The kind of training one needs from school days to become a recognised scholar in Humanities and Social Sciences, perhaps our non-Calcuttan/non-urban education and the rural classes c...

Charting change from the cutting edge of knowledge, pursuing the frontiers of research to ever-widening horizons, the Social Scientist has built a reputation of being an outstanding journal in social sciences and humanities. For over three decades now, it has analysed trends, recorded changes, even roadmapped the future. Its writers , veteran and newcomer, tackle subjects with a breadth and depth that makes the Social Scientist indispensable to teachers and students, laymen and specialists. Recognized experts and brilliant young minds write on economic policy, social change, institutions and organizations, issues in history, methodology and theory.