Fourteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

While untouchability was outlawed in Article 17 of the Constitution of India adopted in 1950, caste/ism and untouchability as a form of pollution-purity based discrimination and humiliation peculiar to Hindu-India and a caste system dating back some two thousand years, continues to be the prevalent social reality for 19% of the Indian population who belong to the list of Constitutionally recognized (for ameliorative purposes) Scheduled Castes (SC), also referred to as Dalits (or the “downtrodden/broken people or outcastes”). Formal education as schooling is no exception to this trend and especially for female students who are subjected to double-barreled discrimination and its interpolations via gendered-casteist practices. Based on a recent (2014-ongoing) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) funded research initiative in the eastern state of Odisha (where 25% of the population belong to the SC category) undertaken with the Center for Research and Development Solidarity (a Dalit popular research organization) which engaged 401 Dalit students in grades 6-10 attending sixteen state schools in a twenty-five village zone, this paper reports on gendered-castiest, casteist and untouchability practices in these schools. Specifically, practices pertaining to: (1) food/meals; (2) water; (3) teacher-student classroom relations; (4) student-student classroom relations; (5) curricula; and (6) events/functions/extra-curricular activities are considered based on self-reporting by students engaged in a participatory survey process and micro-case study elaborations. The study is informed by theory pertaining to a critical sociology of education and caste discrimination in India.