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School of Law

The West has imagined “caste oppression” and it is being weaponised against Indians

Dr Prakash Shah speaks to The Print about what constitutes caste discrimination and oppression.

Published:
Street market in downtown Hyderabad

Caste discrimination and oppression is claimed to have become a global phenomenon, however, unlike other exploitative and discriminatory systems, the blame is being placed squarely on one ethnic, religious, or racial group - Hindus and Hinduism. The article argues however, the caste system is a the sociological feature of the Indian subcontinent transcending every religion of the region, native or non-native. The article also says there is no framework to study caste and caste oppression.

Dr Prakash Shah, Reader in Culture and Law at Queen Mary University of London, writes “it is not at all clear what phenomena caste and caste discrimination are, or what caste violence or atrocities are.” and claims ' that most academic literature on the subject has created a set of “imagined victims and perpetrators of caste oppression,” which suffers from several fallacies.'

Read the full article in The Print.

 

 

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