Race

This article begins with issues of mourning and commemoration that arose in the context of the killings in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. It then relates them with questions regarding the worth and visibility of Black life. It then connects the political present with the political economy of race and the experience of state violence as these have structured urban America. The article ends by discussing issues posed by the social facts of caste atrocity and Black killings. It probes the relationship between dehumanising violence, political subjectivity and social justice.

Whatever be the manner in which dalits and adivasis are classified - as belonging to a race or a caste - it is a fact that caste-induced oppression has been as agonising to a large mass of Indians as has been racial violence in South Africa. However, it is also time the intolerance, discrimination and divisions existing among the oppressed castes that have bred a great deal of violence and have thrown up unscrupulous leaders is confronted and acknowledged.

The idea that 'caste is race plus' may prove effective in drawing world attention to bear on the practice of caste. The practice of caste cannot, however, be eradicated by strategies that merely legitimise caste and caste-based politics. Hence, if we are intent on gaining more than mere political mileage from the proceedings of the Durban conference, it is time to recognise that non-caste secular strategies need to be innovative to eliminate the social evils of caste.

Racism was as uniquely institutionalised in South Africa as caste discrimination has been within the Hindu social order. Why then can we not permit the world community to express itself on the latter as we have, through the years, on the former?