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Ethnic and Racial Studies

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THE PERSISTENCE OF CASTE: THE KHAIRLANJI MURDERS AND INDIA'S HIDDEN APARTHEID
Manali Desai
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Department of Sociology, London School of Economics Available online: 01 Dec 2011

To cite this article: Manali Desai (2011): THE PERSISTENCE OF CASTE: THE KHAIRLANJI MURDERS AND INDIA'S HIDDEN APARTHEID, Ethnic and Racial Studies, DOI:10.1080/01419870.2011.639790 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2011.639790

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Ethnic and Racial Studies 2011 pp. 12, iFirst

BOOK REVIEW

Anand Teltumbde, THE PERSISTENCE OF CASTE: THE KHAIRLANJI MURDERS AND INDIAS HIDDEN APARTHEID, London and New York: Zed Books, 2010, 169 pp., 18.99 (paper) In this important book, Teltumbde offers a unique glimpse into the prevalence of caste violence and hierarchy in contemporary, neoliberalizing India. The focus of the book is the murder of four members of a dalit (former untouchable) family and the gruesome rape of two women at the hands of upper caste villagers in the state of Maharashtra in 2001. Through a forensic exploration of this violent event, Teltumbde unpacks the mechanisms driving caste violence in globalizing, neoliberal India. Rather than caste disappearing with market expansion and high economic growth, his contention is that the Khairlanji murders exemplify how caste has stubbornly persisted and become imbricated in the new material hierarchies and desires of India. In the early chapters of the book, Teltumbde outlines the systemic dimensions and mechanisms of caste in contemporary India, arguing that existing institutions even when designed with good intentions have proven woefully inadequate in addressing caste violence. Legalistic reforms of caste exclusion have paradoxically intensified such violence because they have merely reshuffled hierarchies, rather than eliminating caste as a meaningful dimension of Indias political economy. Indeed, a common perception of the caste system is that members of the Brahminical castes are largely responsible for atrocities against dalits. However, Teltumbde argues that most violence is perpetrated by so-called Other Backward Castes (OBCs) who, although lower than Brahmins in the status hierarchy, have benefited from affirmative action reforms since the late 1980s. As a significant majority in rural areas, OBCs are also landholders who have sought to control the labour of landless dalits and assert their domination. This assertion is effectively sanctioned by the Indian state, argues Teltumbde, because despite the existence of a plethora of laws designed to protect dalits from such atrocities they are rarely enforced. The murder and rape of members of the dalit Bhotmange family in the village of Khairlanji followed a long campaign of intimidation and harassment by upper castes in a bid to seize control of their land. The police ignored these incidents despite repeated appeals from those within and outside the family. Any act of defiance was viewed by the upper caste villagers as a double affront to their caste pride. On September 29, 2001, a large group of men and women attacked the Bhotmange household, armed with sticks, axes, chains and iron rods. The men were beaten to death, while the women were gang raped and then killed. The brutal, almost primordial and ritualistic violence described in this chapter through eye-witness accounts is stomach-turning. These are not images normally associated with popular celebrations of the new India. Yet, as Teltumbde chronicles in subsequent chapters, neither the police, nor the media or even dalit leaders pursued justice. The case, just like many similar atrocities against dalits, all but disappeared from public view. What explains this insidious persistence of caste? The book concludes with some reflections on the counter-intuitive relation between Indias market expansion and caste hierarchy. A number of scholars have suggested that caste may finally be eroding under the sheer force of market expansion because economic transactions and the search for profit are indifferent to caste. Teltumbdes counter-argument is not simply that caste is difficult to

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ISSN 0141-9870 print/1466-4356 online

2 Book review
erode he suggests more provocatively that neoliberalization thrives on caste and reinforces it. The process of accumulation, particularly land acquisition and the control over mineral resources, has enormous implications for dalit and tribal populations who overwhelmingly inhabit these areas. The Indian states war against so-called Naxalites or Maoist rebels, argues Teltumbde, involves dalits disproportionately. Because of its unwillingness to tackle land inequality and its encouragement of accumulation by dispossession the state has become complicit in the rise of caste oppression, even as its legal framework expands to tackle caste inequality. Rather than representation in the state or affirmative action, only political struggle that transcends caste can offer a solution to the problem of violence. For Teltumbde this can happen when class rather than caste becomes the focus of political action - however, rather than ignore caste as many liberals and leftists tend to do, such a politics would have to directly confront it. A starting point would undoubtedly be to make atrocities such as Khairlanji central to its agenda. This is an important book because it links a seemingly exceptional event of violence to the normal, bringing into question the mainstream analysis of caste as an issue that can be sidelined by adequate discussion, reforms, or the market. Teltumbdes argument is passionate and hard-hitting, but not without a robust, evidence-based assessment of how the new caste hierarchies of liberalizing India are breeding violence. It is appropriate for any audience interested in the politics and society of contemporary India. # 2011 Manali Desai Department of Sociology, London School of Economics m.desai1@lse.ac.uk http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2011.639790

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