This book is an anthropological study of the contemporary Dalit movement. With its base in India, it has grown steadily since the beginning of the 1990s. The activist, who protest against caste discrimination, interact today extensively with other people across the globe, who express similar experiences and emotions. They have become part of the global justice movement.
The study focuses on Dalit activities and discourses as well as organizational aspects of the movement, so as to examine processes related to identity formation. In the Dalit movement the heterogeneity is striking, and we shall follow Dalit activists in quite different networks: in their local Buddha viharas, when they take part in regional party politics, or when formulating a Dalit Christian theology. They will also be found struggling internationally to enter the framework of the United Nations.
With an extensive discussion about field method, this book also hopes to contribute to the debate about how geographically dispersed fields, such as social movements, may be anthropologically dealt with.
