Word: dalits
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...course, that makes it difficult to know exactly how widespread Buddhist practice has become. About 1.7% of India's population, or 170 million people, were counted as Buddhist in the 2001 census, but the vast majority are the descendants of Dalits, who converted to Buddhism en masse in the 1950s as a reaction against their low status in the Hindu caste hierarchy. It was an inspiring political revolution, led by the great Dalit activist B.R. Ambedkar, but its success gave contemporary Buddhism in India the stigma of a lower-caste movement. That's changed with this recent move toward...
...Minister of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, turned 52 in January, aides and civil servants took turns to finger-feed her scoops of a 115-pound (52 kg) chocolate birthday cake at a party in the state capital Lucknow. The image of mostly high-caste men feeding a Dalit (formerly "Untouchable") woman was an incredibly powerful one in a country where discrimination based on caste has been banned for more than half a century but where many of the old barriers and prejudices endure. Just in case Mayawati's statement of arrival was missed by anyone, she turned...
...Mayawati's master stroke was to drop her weary slogans calling on her supporters to use their shoes to "beat" upper-caste Brahmins and to reach out to them; many feel as sidelined by the middle-ranking castes who control much of government these days as do the Dalits. That unlikely coalition, key to Congress's decades of dominance in Indian politics, is now working for Mayawati. "The difference with Congress is that they were using Dalits but keeping them on a bottom level, whereas we are all on an equal platform with a Dalit leader at the top," says...
...spend billions of dollars on a highway running beside the Ganges and has plans for a shopping mall next to the Taj Mahal. Such huge projects appeal to her supporters not only because they provide thousands of jobs but because, like her birthday parties, they project an image of Dalit power and wealth...
...Mahatma Gandhi went on a hunger strike that lasted 6 days. He refused to eat in protest of the way Dalits or “untouchables” were treated. His vigil was successful, and it forced the government to negotiate with Dalit leaders over representation and standards of living...