Word: dalits
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...DIED. KOCHERIL RAMAN NARAYANAN, 85, diplomat who climbed from the depths of India's caste system to become President; in New Delhi. Born into a poor Dalit (once called "untouchable") family, Narayanan attended college in India and later earned a degree from the London School of Economics. In the foreign service, Narayanan served as India's ambassador to Beijing and Washington; he was appointed to the largely ceremonial post of President in July...
...After his death Ambedkar was all but forgotten, and the political party faded in significance. But the 1990s saw an extraordinary revival of interest in the great untouchable leader. India's 160 million former untouchables (who now call themselves Dalits, or "the oppressed") have become more politically aware and assertive thanks to education and government jobs, and Ambedkar has been resurrected as their rallying symbol. Patel's film on Ambedkar is drawing large Dalit audiences, and the screenings are like political carnivals. The audience identifies completely with the hero, cheers him wildly at every opportunity and hurls insults...
...Delhi's Parliament compound stands an oversized bronze statue of Ambedkar. In one hand he holds a copy of India's constitution (the one he helped write); the forefinger of the other points toward parliament. Beyond parliament lies President House, occupied for the first time by a Dalit, K.R. Narayanan, who rose from a poor outcaste family in Kerala to hold the highest office in the land. Every Dalit who goes to see Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar will no doubt walk away with the hope that one day his life too will be transformed...
...accomplished and Westernized to date, is the ironic, not entirely unhappy victim of those reforms. Brahmans are losing out in India's equivalent of affirmative action, while other castes, including the lowest of the low, are at least partial winners. As testament to that transformation, Namdeo Dhasal, a militant dalit (untouchable) leader and poet, tells Naipaul, "There was a time when we were treated like animals. Now we live like human beings...
...Bombay, India, Doctoral Student Raja Dhale was distressed by the continued oppression of the harijan, or untouchable caste, to which he belonged. After reading about the Black Panthers in TIME, he founded the Dalit (Oppressed) Panthers, a group composed almost entirely of members of the untouchable caste who have since attracted considerable attention by protesting the iniquities of Indian society in polemics and poetry that have come to be known as "Dalit literature...