Pathania, Gaurav;
Jadhav, Sushrut;
Thorat, Amit;
Mosse, David;
Jain, Sumeet;
(2023)
Caste Identities and Structures of Threats: Stigma, Prejudice and Social Representation in Indian universities.
CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion
, 4
(1)
pp. 3-23.
10.26812/caste.v4i1.470.
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Abstract
Caste is a complex ontological construction. Despite several anti-caste move-ments and constitutional provisions, caste exists in the Indian psyche as part of everyday life. Even in the advent of globalization, caste continues to foster social and economic inequalities and exclusion in newer forms and perpetuates violence. The available research on caste-based stigma and humiliation provides a limited understanding as it deals with Dalits only; and ignores caste-Hindus (upper-caste) agency. Based largely on qualitative data collected at an intense three-day workshop, including two Focus Group Discussions and a year-long ethnography, this article illustrates the micro processes of everyday life experiences of caste-based stigma and humiliation among university students, academic staff and administrative staff. It explores subtle and overt caste discrimination, prejudices and stereotypes existing in the spatial morphologies of Indian higher education, its perpetuation on campuses and its impact on students’ psyche. It highlights the dearth of scholarship in this area of caste identity and stigma; and proposes nuanced questions for future research to understand why universities in India are turning into places of social defeat for Dalit and OBC students. The article argues the basis of caste discrimination and humiliation in universities is not the same as it exists in other social institutions. Instead of asserting conclusions on this matter we set out justifiable lines of inquiry. There are two issues that this article examines first, how students in Indian higher education evolve strategies for coping with threatened identities. Second, what structural repair in higher education is required to heal the wounded (caste) psyche?
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Caste Identities and Structures of Threats: Stigma, Prejudice and Social Representation in Indian universities |
| Location: | US |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.26812/caste.v4i1.470 |
| Publisher version: | http://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v4i1.470 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2023 Gaurav J. Pathania et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. |
| Keywords: | Dalit, Caste, Stigma, Mental Health, Wellbeing, Passing, Higher Education |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Division of Psychiatry UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Division of Psychiatry > Epidemiology and Applied Clinical Research |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10170030 |
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