Meena Dhanda

Punjabi dalit youth: social dynamics of transitions in identity

This article is based on interviews with young urban dalits in the Indian Punjab and Wolverhampton, UK, and aims to chart their experience of caste border crossings in personal relationships. It links their narratives to the larger political economic context of their respective locations. It suggests that, perhaps due to their preoccupation with economic independence, dalit youth in Punjab are less concerned about maintaining caste borders in marriage than their counterparts in Wolverhampton. Dalit youth in Wolverhampton have experienced caste-related bullying during their schooling that is inexplicable to them given their location in a supposedly casteless society in the United Kingdom, and as a result they seem to be pessimistic about the erosion of caste through crossing caste borders in marriage. Whilst showing reluctance in risking further insult by crossing caste borders in marriage, in their friendships, including sexual relationships, they are willing and able to cross these borders. The paper concludes with a comparison of different explanations and remedies for dealing with caste prejudice in personal relations. It offers the suggestion that the negotiations of dalit identity are best understood by locating them in larger religious, immigrant, national contexts on the one hand and within the intra-personal on the other: radical positioning in the overt political domain may go hand in hand with the embracing of fluidity in the personal domain.

Ensuring protection against caste discrimination in Britain: Should the Equality Act 2010 be extended?

Section 97 of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 requires the addition of caste to the Equality Act 2010 by secondary legislation as ‘an aspect of’ the protected characteristic of race; but despite being mandated, no secondary legislation has been introduced and the addition of caste remains contested by some academics, civil society organizations and politicians who question the adequacy of any definition of caste, the estimates of the extent of caste discrimination, and whether legal protection against caste discrimination already exists under the Equality Act. In this article, we assess whether legal protection against caste discrimination is now assured following the Employment Tribunal judgement in September 2015 in Tirkey v Chandhok & Anor which held that discrimination on grounds of caste, depending on the facts, might be capable of falling within the scope of race as currently defined in the Equality Act. We argue that Tirkey is significant but not decisive and that it remains incumbent on government to extend the Equality Act to cover caste.

What does the hatred/fear of the veil hide?

This paper explores the confusion in values that underpin the stereotyping of ‘the Muslim woman’. From the point of view of the ‘woman who veils’, it addresses the idea of strategic self‐presentation geared by the logic of negotiation. Avoiding any uncritical celebration of such play of identities, it also engages with the internal struggle for self‐definition typified by feminist criticisms of the patriarchal control of womens bodies. It points out the limits of external criticisms, primarily because they rest upon a self‐aggrandizing view of the enlightened European. The paper concludes with the recommendation to listen to all the women who ‘speak’: the ones that adopt and the ones that abhor the veil from within the designated ‘non‐Europeans’ among the Europeans. It uses the idea of negotiation of identity to underscore the importance of such ‘listening’.