The Persistence of Caste: The Khairlanji Murders and India’s Hidden Apartheid
The book sheds light on the prevalent caste violence and hierarchy in contemporary neoliberal India. It focuses on the murder of four Dalit family members in 2006 and the gruesome rape of two women at the hands of the upper-caste villagers in the state of Maharashtra in 2001.
Even though the caste system has been formally abolished under the Indian Constitution, official statistics indicate that every eighteen minutes, a crime is committed on a Dalit.
Teltumbde examines the dynamics that fuel caste violence in globalizing, neoliberal India. Rather than caste vanishing with market expansion and rapid economic growth, he argues that the Khairlanji killings demonstrate how caste has persistently endured and grown entwined with India’s new material hierarchy and desires after Independence.
Review
This is an important book because it links a seemingly exceptional event of violence to the ’normal’, bringing into question the mainstream analysis of caste as ’an issue’ that can beside lined by adequate discussion, reforms, or the market. Teltumbde’s argument is passionate and hard-hitting, but not without a robust, evidence-based assessment of how the new caste hierarchies of liberalizing India are breeding violence. It is appropriate for any audience interested in the politics and society of contemporary India.
Manali Desai
About the author
Anand Teltumbde is a scholar and civil rights activist. He teaches at the Indian Institute of Management, Kharagpur, and is a columnist with the Economic & Political Weekly.