Karnataka is the only state in South India where the Bharatiya Janata Party is in power. It is now battling anti-incumbency and the after-effects of its recent interventions with regard to reservations. It has moved the Muslims into the economically weaker sections and has recommended internal reservations among the Scheduled Castes. These strategies might add to confusion among the electorate.
The Dalit Muslim/Dalit Christian opposition to the stipulation of religion in the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order of 1950 is a critical chapter in the postcolonial history of India. In this article, it is argued that the state’s inability to grapple with this challenge is explicitly visible in its unreasonable insistence that caste inegalitarianism is an exclusive domain of the Hindus (or “Indics”) and conversion is an absolute material and ideational break from the past.
Since its merger in 1975 with the Indian union, one of the major sociopolitical issues in Sikkim has been the demand for reservation in the state legislative assembly for two communities—Limbu and Tamang. The demand of reservation for the Limbus and Tamangs crystallised in Sikkim when these communities were notifi ed as Scheduled Tribes under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Act, 2002. The history and future of this political demand has been analysed.
Tribals and Dalits in Orissa: Towards a Social History of Exclusion, c 1800–1950 by Biswamoy Pati, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019; pp 248, ₹945.
The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data suggests that the percentage of convicts particularly from among the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Muslims are disproportionately higher to their respective population.
