Contemporary Voice of Dalit, Ahead of Print.
K. Raju (eds.), The Dalit Truth, the Battles for Realizing Ambedkar’s Vision. Penguin Random House India, 2022, 230 pp., ₹699 (Hard Cover). ISBN: 9780670093014.

Contemporary Voice of Dalit, Ahead of Print.
Communities who have experienced trauma find a way of dealing and coping with it. Writing is a known coping-mechanism for people on a path to healing. Healing for Dalit community, however, seems a distant dream in view of their ongoing struggle over centuries. Until 1995, Dalit men politically spoke on the behalf of Dalit women that obliterated their voice and existence. Their political engagement thereafter, brought to fore their immediate issues and consolidated their standpoint as political agents. Dalit women’s position is understood as a unique one from an epistemological perspective, considering their identity lies at the intersections of caste, class and gender. Studies that mark them, only use an objective criterion while overlooking the anxieties and traumas of their lived-experience. Dalit literature began in the 1960s with the aim of representing the voice of Dalits in their own terms and language. An urge to intellectually deconstruct their position alienates the nuances of their existential reality. A holistic approach to the question of Dalit women will require an insight into their lives both on the academic as well as pragmatic level. Dalit women writings can pave a way to an understanding of this hybrid. This study will trace how Dalit women channelize their trauma into their writing for the purpose of activism. By segregating trauma into two categories, namely intergenerational and cultural, this study will highlight the aspect of trauma that Dalit women engage with through their writings. How does their revolt take shape and what are the issues that have contributed to their trauma are some of the ideas that will be addressed through this study.

Contemporary Voice of Dalit, Ahead of Print.
The article broadly discusses significant debates around the Kerala Model of Development. The question of land redistribution and the significance of land as a vital resource ensuring upward mobility has been widely discussed since the land reform. The land reform of Kerala was reduced merely to a tenancy reform in which the dalits were offered not agricultural land but only homestead land for their mere survival. Landless people, often under the banner of dalit and adivasi organizations, conducted several important land struggles, effectively rejecting the solution of responsibilized welfare proffered by Panchayati Raj institutions. In this debate, the question of the inability of Kerala’s celebrated land reforms to redistribute hugely—concentrated plantation land came into prominence. Some of the most spectacular land struggles, such as those at Chengara and Aralam involved direct action by squatters to occupy plantation land. There were either struggle for access to land or struggle against forced dispossession. These struggles are mostly outside the formal sphere of politics and often regarded with hostility by entrenched political forces, at least in the initial phases. The article looks at the Chengara land struggle in which the squatter poor (landless) and the plantation workers were pitted against each other when the landless started illegally and forcefully settling in the plantation land of Harrisons Malayalam. The marginalization and exploitation faced by the two groups, their sharing and differences in various ways are analysed in this article. The work also questions certain characterizations of plantation workers, which portrayed them as enjoying considerable well-being. The broad framework of compromises—class compromise and caste compromise—is applied in analysing the opposition of the two groups to each other.

Contemporary Voice of Dalit, Ahead of Print.
Acculturative stress is linked to an increase in mental health concerns, such as depression, anxiety, loneliness, and hopelessness. This study investigates the role of demographics in acculturation stress in inter-caste married people. In India, most of the communities did not openly state that an individual from other castes was not to be married, but that it deliberately encouraged marriages from the same castes to support society. However, due to the urbanization, globalization amongst Indian youth ready to marry other caste. This study investigates the role of demographics in acculturation stress amongst inter-caste married individuals. Seventy-four inter-caste married individuals were selected through purposive sampling, and the data were collected with the help of the Social, Attitudinal, Familial, and Environmental (SAFE) Acculturation stress scale developed by Mena, Padilla, and Maldonado (1987). The results revealed that there is significant difference in acculturation stress amongst inter-caste married individuals based on duration of the marriage and income of the family. There is no significant difference in acculturation stress based on gender, area of living, and types of family. It concluded that acculturation stress has an important role in the inter-caste marriage. The lack of support from family, friends, and society contributes to increased acculturation stress of inter-caste married individuals.

Contemporary Voice of Dalit, Ahead of Print.
This article aims to study the relationship between caste and contemporary Naxal organizations through A Naxal Story (2008) by Diptendra Raychaudhuri. Through the text, the article explores how the caste identity and attempt to eradicate the intricate web of caste hierarchy played a prominent role in the formation of one of the contemporary Naxal organizations. The interweaving of the historical facts and the literary depiction is one of the prime reasons for choosing this text. This text acts as forming a bridge between the 70s’ Naxalbari movement and the contemporary organizations. It traces the political lineage of the Naxalbari movement and how the gap in recognizing the caste inequality acted as a motive in the formation of some of the new organizations. Through the attempt of the protagonist and its failure, the text reveals the reality of the caste scenario in India and the endeavour of at least a few left-militant organizations to end the structure despite the regular repression by state machinery and militant upper-caste organizations. Hence, this article traces the presence of caste inequality and how the caste identities contribute to the creation and development of contemporary radical Naxal organizations as well as militant Hindu organizations.

Contemporary Voice of Dalit, Ahead of Print.
This study explores contemporary Indian picturebooks’ take on Dalit childhood through a critical reading of Bhimrao Ambedkar: The Boy Who Asked Why (2015) by Sowmya Rajendran and Satwik Gade, Rinchin and Sagar Kolwankar’s I Will Save My Land (2017), and CG Salamander and Samidha Gunjal’s Puu (2018). These new-age narratives challenge, resist and replace the hegemonic ideals that have dehumanized Indian Dalits for several generations. The emergence of these picturebooks asserts a powerful call towards and beyond Dalit children in re-conceptualizing and reasserting the collective and individual Dalit identities to claim their rightful position in the Indian social system. This study reveals how the selected picturebooks not only offer insight into the veiled lives of the outcaste before the readers but also sensitize them about the subjects of social justice and inequity. This article examines a critique of representing Dalit childhood while addressing the plurality of oppression behind the monolith of caste inequality and establishing the significance of social inclusivity.

Contemporary Voice of Dalit, Ahead of Print.
This article examines the different aspects and the persistence of credit debt and over-indebtedness among the 227 rural agrarian households of seven representative villages in Krishnagar-ICD Block of Nadia district, West Bengal in India. This study employed three multiple regression models, one binary logistic regression model, percentage and frequency count to analyse the data. Overall, 41.41% of the total farmers faced an over-indebted burden. The majority of the borrowers are sub-marginal farmers (59.47%), availed their major proportion of credit (63.17%) from different non-institutional agencies and utilized their major proportion loan (69.37%) for several unproductive purposes. Over-indebtedness is strongly related to the farmer from a lower age group and experiencing the adverse shock of death from any family member. It is found higher among the more experienced farmer and the farmer having more percentage of cash crop and with the increase of overdue amount and credit demand per acre. On the other hand, it is found lower with the rise of per acre cost for production. To reduce the uncertain shock of the over-indebtedness burden, credit literacy, land productivity and non-agricultural income source should be increased, complicated procedural formalities of formal credit for the sub-marginal farmer and landless sharecropper should be minimized.

Contemporary Voice of Dalit, Ahead of Print.
Mid-day meal scheme is one of the largest schemes of its kind, which deals with the nutritional intake of children, student retention, gender equality and socialization values among primary and upper primary schools. It addresses pressing social concerns to make school education accessible to all. One of the major restraints in the effective implementation of the scheme is the caste prejudice against the Dalits, as there has always been an unequal relationship between food and caste hierarchy. To study this, in-depth interviews were taken in the schools of the Moradabad district, Uttar Pradesh, and secondary sources were used. This article analyses how identity-based discrimination is driven and reproduced on the school’s premises with the mid-day meal workers. The findings show that implicit caste biases still exist within the social structures despite various positive affirmations that impact the effective implementation of the mid-day meal scheme. It indicates that sub-categorization discrimination is practised within the ambit of the Scheduled Caste community that could not be revealed from a macro-perspective. Therefore, a discourse is needed regarding caste or identity-based discrimination until a stigma is attached to an individual’s identity.

Contemporary Voice of Dalit, Ahead of Print.
The present study aimed to determine the person perception of students on reservation in higher education. The respondents of the study were from three districts of Kerala. The data were collected using a Person Perception Scale. The brief profile of the total respondents (N = 490) shows 195 boys and 295 girls; 305 rural and 185 urban; 320 government and 170 private; 338 Above Poverty Line (APL) and 152 Below Poverty Line (BPL)), respectively. The study adopted a random sampling technique. The data collected were analysed for mean, standard deviation and t-test techniques. The result of the study revealed that boys have a higher person perception than girls; rural students have a higher person perception than urban students; government school students have a higher person perception than private school students; students who belong to the APL category have a higher person perception than BPL category; regarding reservation in higher education. And in total, students possess an average level (60%) of person perception on reservation in higher education.

Contemporary Voice of Dalit, Ahead of Print.
Historically, it has been observed that student movements have been essential in bringing about social change in the world. In the Indian context, the majority of these student organizations, whether they follow a leftist or a rightist ideology, have always tried to hide their Brahminical foundations and have ignored the problems of marginalized students on university campuses. When it comes to Odisha, one can witness the Brahmin and Karana castes’ historical monopoly over political power in the state, and as a result, neglecting caste issues in political parties and other academic institutions in many ways. In this project, the researcher has followed the qualitative approach and used the phenomenological technique to understand the lived experiences of the Dalit-Bahujan students located on three university campuses in western Odisha. The present study has demonstrated clearly how the hardships, struggles and measures taken by the Dalit-Bahujan student movements on the university campuses. Finally, it clearly outlined the different elements that motivated the Dalit-Bahujan students to join the movement and helped them to recognize their own responsibility for passing on this legacy to future generations.