7B The Confluence of Caste and Religion
To present a chapter in two sections, A and B, and put each in a different part of a book, I and II, is a rather unconventional thing to do. We have chosen to take this approach partly to emphasize continuities between Parts I and II of this book. Having a split chapter in this way seemed to us to suggest a kind of overlap, which is appropriate to our desire to see the two parts as complementary and integrated. At the same time, we wanted to signal a key shift in the book’s focus at this point. We have done this by taking the same general theme (caste) and approaching it according to two different foci. It is central to our argument that any of our themes can be approached in multiple ways. Chapters 7A and 7B demonstrate one important way of doing this.
So, what is the shift in approach or focus that we are making? Our movement is away from exploring the variety and social embeddedness of South Asian religious traditions, which has frequently led us to recognize patterns of practice and ideas that seem to defy our normative understanding of how religious traditions should operate. It is towards mapping the ways in which these kinds of practices and ideas have been organized, or aligned, in relation to just such normative understandings, through a range of specific historical processes. You will find that we are still very strongly wedded to the idea that, to understand South Asian religious traditions, you must get a sense of the contexts within which they are enacted. But if our emphasis in Part I was on diversity as context, our emphasis in this part is on these historical processes as context. We want to develop themes that explain how contemporary South Asian religious traditions have come to be seen as they are seen. Of course, it is impossible to do this comprehensively in one volume (let alone half a volume!), so our focus will again be on specific issues, particular themes we see as significant to developing such an understanding. At the heart of this has to be the issue of religion itself. So much of what we saw in Part I appeared to subvert the idea of religions as clearly identifiable systems. ‘Religion’ is nevertheless a critical concept in modern South Asia – it provides a very significant lens though which many people understand and interpret South Asian societies, politics and so on. How have the multiple traditions of South Asia encountered the category of ‘religion’? What synergies and tensions have developed through this encounter? In Part II of the book we explore these general questions.
To begin this change of focus, we return to the issue of caste, the theme of Chapter 7A. Here, however, we want to explore the ways in which caste has contributed in particular to the construction of particular religious identities in the modern period. Most significant here is the religion called Hinduism. Caste in the modern world is undoubtedly perceived most immediately as a phenomenon associated with Hinduism as a religion.1 But this statement is one we need to treat with caution. First, we have of course seen in Chapter 7A that caste practices sometimes seem to cut radically across the boundaries of what we would normally consider to be discrete religious traditions. Second, we shall see in Chapter 7B that modern perceptions of caste have also had a major impact on the way that other, ‘non-Hindu’ religious traditions are conceptualized. Third, we should note the ambiguity that informs the relationship between Hinduism and caste. Some Hindus, Hindu organizations and representative groups are keen to downplay the importance of caste, saying that this institution is not a part of genuine Hinduism.2 Others claim that caste has degenerated from a former ‘pure’ varna form, and that the future of caste is to work towards a reinstatement of that pure ordering of society.3 Still others see caste as a form of political consciousness to be deployed against (and sometimes, paradoxically, in coalition with) the domination of other caste groups. Such consciousness has become a major feature of modern Indian politics, with some political parties developing clear caste identities, and winning elections on the basis of especially low-caste assertion.4 This variety of evidence suggests a social phenomenon that by no means has a settled, uncontroversial existence in modern environments. Despite the idea of caste being a fixed, immoveable feature of an individual’s identity, the evidence rather suggests that its significance and meaning shifts from situation to situation. This should be a familiar idea to you from Chapter 7A. Our key aim in Chapter 7B will be to explore the ways that this shifting significance and meaning has related to and influenced the development of particular religious identities, especially that of Hinduism. We will see that low-caste identity has been particularly significant here.
Case Study: Jotirao Phule on the Origins of Caste
Our case study is a piece of writing produced in the late nineteenth century by a social activist from western India (present-day Maharashtra) called Jotirao Phule. This particular piece of writing, produced in 1885, refers to an issue that frequently preoccupies students studying the idea of caste: Where does it come from? How has it developed? This is an issue that we have already commented on in Chapter 7A; we look at it here as an example of how caste has been self-consciously debated by Hindus and others in the modern period. You might also note that issues examined in earlier chapters are also apparent here: issues such as the Aryan ‘invasion’ and the culture of the Aryans, discussed in the introduction and in Chapter 3, and the importance of myths, explored in Our case study is a piece of writing produced in the late nineteenth century by a social activist from western India (present-day Maharashtra) called Jotirao Phule. This particular piece of writing, produced in 1885, refers to an issue that frequently preoccupies students studying the idea of caste: Where does it come from? How has it developed? This is an issue that we have already commented on in Chapter 7A; we look at it here as an example of how caste has been self-consciously debated by Hindus and others in the modern period. You might also note that issues examined in earlier chapters are also apparent here: issues such as the Aryan ‘invasion’ and the culture of the Aryans, discussed in the introduction and in Chapter 3, and the importance of myths, explored in Chapter 4.
Gulamgiri (1885)
The extreme fertility of the soil of India, its rich productions, the proverbial wealth of the people, and the other innumerable gifts which this favourable land enjoys, and which have more recently tempted the cupidity of the Western nations, attracted the Aryans … . The original inhabitants with whom these earth-born gods, the Brahmans, fought, were not inappropriately termed Rakshasas, that is the protectors of the land. The incredible and foolish legends regarding their form and shape are no doubt mere chimeras, the fact being that these people were of superior stature and hardy make … . The cruelties which the European settlers practised on the American Indians on their first settlement in the new world had certainly their parallel in India in the advent of the Aryans and their subjugation of the aborigines … . This, in short, is the history of Brahman domination in India. They originally settled on the banks of the Ganges whence they spread gradually over the whole of India. In order, however, to keep a better hold on the people they devised that weird system of mythology, the ordination of caste, and the code of crude and inhuman laws to which we can find no parallel among the other nations.
(Quoted in Omvedt 1995: 17–18)
Explaining Terms
Rakshasa – normally translated as ‘demon’, and frequently portrayed fighting the gods in puranic literature
Task
Discuss or make some notes on the view of caste presented by Phule here. What is his view of the origin of caste? What strategies does he use to develop his argument? How might this approach resonate with people in nineteenth-century India? What questions would you like to ask about Phule himself to help broaden your understanding?
It may be clear to you that Phule is engaged here in an exercise that might be described as ‘debunking established myths’ through the provision of ‘rational’, or historical, explanations. He refers to the ‘incredible and foolish legends’ that depict the original inhabitants of India as demons (he interprets ‘rakshasa’ as developing from the Sanskrit term ‘raksh’, to protect), and compares the coming of the Aryans to the decimation of indigenous American cultures by Europeans in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and beyond. You might also note that the narrative he is presenting is all about domination, and the subjection of the ‘original inhabitants’ of India to a ‘code of crude and inhuman laws’, otherwise known as caste. The overall impression is of the construction of a system of oppression by an invading force, designed to keep the indigenous inhabitants in a state of what, in other contexts, he described straightforwardly as slavery. In this narrative, the brahmins – the archetypal high castes – are the descendants of those invaders; the low castes in particular are the descendants of the indigenous inhabitants.
Reading this short extract may raise questions for you about Phule’s own social location, his caste status and how and why he developed this strong public voice about caste in the nineteenth century. More generally, we might pose questions about how this vision of the origins of the caste system relates to other versions, and how myths support or challenge the system. Phule certainly alludes to the way in which myths relate to caste. Having noted that Phule was from Maharashtra, and on the basis of material in Chapter 7A that emphasized the localized understanding of caste, we might also reflect on how far his views were rooted in the Maharashtrian experience, and the extent to which his critique had an impact in this region and beyond. From the latter point, we might ask how far his views were singular, or whether they reflected a more general questioning of established ideas about caste in this period. First, however, we will see how our understanding of Phule himself helps us to contextualize the evidence from Gulamgiri.
Social Activism in the Colonial Arena
As we saw in Chapter 7A, caste operates on the ground as a connected web of social groups that are often related, at least nominally, to occupational tasks. Jotirao Phule (1826–90) was a Mali – this is a gardening caste, which in many areas (including Maharashtra) was seen as a relatively low caste. Growing up in the city of Poona, Jotirao was educated in the 1840s at a Christian Missionary school. Very soon after he left school himself, he went on to open several schools, first for girls, and then for low castes and untouchables. These activities brought him very much into the public sphere in Poona, particularly as there was a degree of opposition to the education of these social groups. Phule became engaged in a variety of social activist movements, and in 1873 he established the Satyashodak Samaj – the ‘Truth-seeking Society’ – as a focus for his activities. The Samaj was a classic organization in the colonial milieu, reflecting the formation of similar social activist organizations such as the Prarthana Samaj in western India (see Jones 1989: 137–44). These organizations were distinctly modern: they had membership lists and subscriptions, officers and regulations, and one of their key activities was to present petitions to the local colonial administration in relation to their concerns. The only difference was that, whereas the Prarthana Samaj, for example, was exclusively high caste in its membership, the Satyashodak Samaj had a membership that was mixed in terms of caste, with both low castes and radical high-caste members. Because of this modern form, the Satyashodak Samaj provided Phule with a platform on which to develop and present his views in a way that had resonance in the context of colonial public space. His views were, in this sense, ‘heard’ both by agents of the state, and, more importantly for us, by a public that was primarily made up of the literate middle classes, those who had established themselves socially and economically through the expansion of colonial influence.
Phule’s critique of Indian society, developed and reiterated in a series of publications, was fairly straightforward. He opposed social inequality and the domination of high-caste groups. He was concerned in particular with the way in which brahmins and other high castes controlled knowledge in society, and saw the education of disempowered groups as a key means of breaking this monopoly. Significantly, Phule understood caste inequality as rooted strongly in what he perceived as the religion of Hinduism, and saw this as a key barrier to both social and political progress in India. The latter half of the nineteenth century was a time of developing activism, both political and social, amongst mostly high-caste elites, and Phule was aware of the claims that such organizations were making to represent Indians (or ‘Hindus’) more generally. His response was clear, bold and challenging: ‘if our learned Aryans really want to build unity amongst all the people, and improve the country, then they will have to get rid of this vile religion of winners and losers’ (as quoted in O’Hanlon 1985: 267). This ‘vile religion of winners and losers’, as he called it, was inextricably linked to what he perceived as the source of Hinduism in Vedic culture. The extract with which we began demonstrates this point, as it makes reference to the Orientalist account of Vedic culture deriving from an ‘Aryan invasion’ from the north. The difference here, however, was that whereas the Aryan invasion was generally perceived in Orientalist accounts as the harbinger of the ‘Golden Age’ of Vedic civilization in India – the ‘true’, unsullied Hinduism of ancient times – Phule interpreted this set of events as the end of ideal society in India, the disruption of indigenous culture and the beginning of caste oppression.
This simple strategy of inversion was one that Phule deployed time and again in his analysis not just of history, but also of myth. An example of this is provided by a long poem called ‘Priestcraft Exposed’, published by Phule in 1869. Here is an extract:
They made Brahma their chief
They plundered and caused chaos
Beating the people and bringing them to their knees
Degrading them into slaves
See, these are the Shudras
The rest left over, a tiny number
Rose up and challenged Parashuram
They took care to remain united
Of their countrymen, their beloved brothers
Many were slain
The Shudras no longer cared for unity
The maha-ari attacked Parashuram
Many women became widows
Parashuram routed the maha-ari
In constant fighting he broke their spirit
He did not spare pregnant women
He killed the newborn children
The great enemies of the twice-born
Came to the end of their strength
Thrust down and defeated
Those that were left were punished severely
Abused as Mangs and maha-aris, great enemies
See, these are the Kshatriyas of the olden days
(Quoted in O’Hanlon 1985: 142–3)
Explaining terms
Brahma – a significant deity (see Chapter 2); Phule innovates here by including Brahma as a leader of the Aryans
Maha-ari – ‘the great enemy’ in Marathi; Phule deduces this as the meaning of Mahar, the name of one of the principal untouchable castes of Maharashtra
Mang – another untouchable caste of the region
Parashuram – ‘Rama with an axe’, one of the descent forms (avatars) of Vishnu
In the same manner as the opening extract from Gulamgiri, this extract tells a story of indigenous inhabitants being oppressed by an invading force. In the second half of the nineteenth century, when elements of the middle classes of different regions of British India were beginning to develop a strong critique of British rule, this was a story with a certain piquancy. But of course the invading force Phule was referring to was not the British; rather it was the Aryans, who as we have noted were believed to have invaded India from the north. In this extract in particular, Phule weaves well-known mythic narratives into this story. He refers to Parashurama, ‘Rama with an axe’, who is an avatara, or descent form, of Vishnu. We saw in Chapter 4 how avatara myths, although many and varied, are generally related to the idea of the restoration of dharma. Dharma, of course, is a multi-layered concept, which encompasses what in Chapter 7A we understood as varnadharma – in its loosest sense, the order of different castes in relation to one another. In order to live a dharmic life, one is required to fulfil duties associated with one’s caste status, and dharma is threatened when castes do not act in accordance with their duties. The restoration of order explored through the avatar myths is frequently related to this form of dharma. Parashurama, for example, who features in the extract above, was the sixth avatara. He is particularly associated in a number of narratives with the suppression of kshatriya rulers who had apparently exceeded their dharma, restoring the supremacy of brahmins in the process. Phule’s inversion strategy represents Parashurama as a brutal suppressor who enforced his rule by degrading kshatriyas, forcing them into servitude as a means of preserving brahmin domination.
An interesting feature of this inverted story is its particular resonance in western India. Myths associated with Parashurama are strongly associated with the Konkan coast, which stretches between the present-day states of Maharashtra and Karnataka, and with the restoration of a Brahmindominated order in the face of the adharmic actions of a particular set of rulers, the Haihaya-Kshatriyas. In the extract from Phule’s poem, kshatriyas are brutally suppressed, leading to the creation of both shudras and the Mahars and Mangs, two of the principal untouchable castes of this region. Phule’s narrative, then, is regionally specific, looking to provide a common kshatriya past for low castes and untouchables. Interestingly, the history of Maharashtra in the nineteenth century demonstrates that there was a great deal of debate over the status of a group of castes covered by what Rosalind O’Hanlon (1985: 15–49) describes as the ‘Mahratta-kunbi caste complex’ during this period. Claims to kshatriya status amongst elements of this low-caste cluster were contested by dominant brahmin castes. Phule’s poem builds on this debate, whilst at the same time drawing on the genealogical traditions through which specific jatis build their caste identities by linking them with broader mythic narratives. Phule’s inversion of the Parashurama narrative appeared to present an alternative mythology for low castes in Maharashtra. His innovation was to make this mythology inclusive of a range of caste groups, including the untouchable Mahars and Mangs, in order to support a broad anti-brahmin front. He was able to do this, of course, because of the power of print. Whereas traditionally such caste narratives would be carried primarily in oral form, told and retold in specific localities to support the local status of particular caste groups (as we saw with the Meos in Chapter 7A), Phule’s poems and prose accounts were published and distributed more widely, projecting broader identities and critiquing the notion of brahmin oppression in a more global sense.
Low-Caste Politics
We will explore the impact of ‘print culture’ in more depth in Chapter 10. Here, the example of Phule’s quite forceful critiques and mythic inversions in print is useful for demonstrating how, during the period of the late nineteenth century, we see the emergence of a kind of corporate low-caste consciousness, defined to a greater or lesser extent against a projected corporate high-caste oppression. From this period onwards, low-caste identity began to develop into a major feature of Indian politics. A succession of low-caste leaders entered the political sphere of colonial India. They argued that institutions like the Indian National Congress – which was established in 1885 and developed into the main nationalist organization – simply could not represent the oppressed because they were dominated by high castes.
The most famous of these was undoubtedly Dr B. R. Ambedkar (1891– 1956), another leader from western India, who had a profound impact on national politics in the lead up to and aftermath of Independence in 1947. Ambedkar was an untouchable from the Mahar caste, who nevertheless worked his way through college and then on to education at Columbia University, United States, and the London School of Economics, before qualifying as a barrister. Ambedkar was a fierce critic of caste privilege, and he drew heavily on republican ideals and notions of equality framed by his knowledge of global history in order to inform this critique. In terms of religion, he linked caste oppression directly to Hinduism, describing the latter at one stage as a ‘veritable chamber of horrors’ (‘What Gandhi and Congress have done to the Untouchables’, see Hay 1988: 331). He also performed dramatic symbolic acts, such as the public burning of the Manu Smriti, the Dharma Shastra text that was perceived by many educated lower castes as the textual source for many oppressive caste regulations (e.g. Manu Smriti 8: 270–2, see Olivelle 2004: 182). This kind of performative act drew much from the strategies employed by his contemporary and at times rival M.K. Gandhi.
Ambedkar’s political success and wide popularity is indicated by the existence of statues like the one in Figure 7B.1, which inhabit squares, roundabouts and educational institutions across India. He has inspired a great number of low-caste people to become involved in politics, and today in India there are some very prominent political parties who claim his inspiration. One of the most important of these is the Bahujan Samaj Party, or Majority People’s Party, which is particularly prominent in the populous north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, and which defines itself as a party of ‘Social Transformation and Economic Emancipation’. A brief review of the party’s website (http://bspindia.org/) will demonstrate to you the sustained power of Ambedkar’s name, image and ideas in contemporary politics.
Figure 7B.1 A statue of B.R. Ambedkar at a road junction in Pune. Reproduced courtesy of James Madaio.
One further factor, however, is particularly interesting to us here: Ambedkar’s dramatic decision, first signalled in the 1930s, to convert from Hinduism to Buddhism. This eventually occurred in 1956, at a very public ceremony in Nagpur in central India, accompanied by nearly a million of his followers who were also, like him, untouchable Mahars (Omvedt 1995: 51). In fact, Buddhism, although a tradition strongly associated with India because of the significance of the life of Gautama Siddhartha, is a comparatively minor religion in terms of actual practice in contemporary India. By far the majority of Buddhists today are those who followed Ambedkar into conversion during or after 1956, most of them being Mahar untouchables. The act of conversion is marked by twenty-two vows, which Ambedkar and his followers took during the ceremony in 1956. Below we have reproduced a selection of these vows:
…
19. I renounce Hinduism, which is harmful for humanity and impedes the advancement and development of humanity because it is based on inequality, and adopt Buddhism as my religion.
(Jai Bhim Network n.d.)
We have, of course, purposefully selected these vows from the full list of twenty-two, and I am sure you will have noticed the prominent insistence on a separation from facets of Hindu tradition. Vow five, for example, explicitly denies that Buddha is an avatara, a descent form of Vishnu, which most Vaishnava Hindus claim to be the case. You will see also in vow six the rejection of key rituals (both shraddha and pind-dan refer to rituals associated with death). Also prominent, in vows nine and ten, is a focus on universal equality. What has become known as Mahar or Ambedkarite Buddhism is largely defined by its rejection of what are perceived as the inequalities of Hinduism, and an affirmation of equality which draws on the republican ideals that Ambedkar held dear. It is, then, a religion that developed both out of perceived inequalities and on the basis of developing ideas about the rights of man. These two issues formed the basis of emerging low-caste consciousness in nineteenth- and twentieth-century India.
The Religion Twist: Caste and the Fashioning of Modern Hinduism
The case of Ambedkarite Buddhism is a particularly stark example of the way in which perceptions of caste, and relations between castes, have had a deep impact on the development of modern religious identities in South Asia. In some ways contemporary Islam and especially Christianity have also been influenced by a similar kind of social critique. We saw in Chapter 2 how Dalit theology, for example, has helped to shape the profile of contemporary Indian Christianity. This theology is rooted in the experience of suffering amongst the lowest castes, many of whom converted to Christianity explicitly as part of an attempt to escape discrimination and social stigma. As we saw in Chapter 7A, however, the shift across religious boundaries does not necessarily mean an ‘escape’ from such stigma. Caste identities and relations clearly work across these boundaries. Indeed, one might argue that the emphasis of movements such as Ambedkarite Buddhism and Dalit theology is all about emphasizing rather than escaping from specific caste identities.
The underlying reason why there was, in a sense, no escape from caste identity by taking such a course should again be clear from Chapter 7A. Caste, as it is conceptualized in the dynamic between varna, jati and casta, is intimately bound up with everyday social and political relations, which simply cannot be constrained by the concept of religion. At the same time, we cannot avoid the modern positioning of caste as an institution particularly linked with Hinduism. We have seen that social activists such as Phule and Ambedkar related caste discrimination to what the former called the ‘vile religion of winners and losers’. Partly, these views responded to the Orientalist identification of caste as fundamentally related to Hinduism, projecting these two as ‘twin’ features of Indian society (Inden 1986: 402). In addition, they were part of a debate that had emerged over the course of the nineteenth century amongst middle-class Indians (also influenced by Orientalist thinking) about how to conceptualize Hinduism as a modern religion. We saw some elements of this debate in the work of Rammohun Roy in the 1820s. As the century progressed, a succession of mostly high-caste, middle-class elites contributed, developing a range of ideas about the parameters of the Hindu religion.
The issue of caste, and the position of low castes, was a central feature of these debates. A good example is provided by the activities of the Arya Samaj. In Chapter 3 we discussed the approach to the Vedas developed by the founder of the Arya Samaj, Dayananda Saraswati. As part of his advocacy for Vedic culture, Dayananda was extremely critical of contemporary caste practices, especially what he saw as the venal practices of contemporary brahmins (Jones 1976: 40). Rather than using this, like Phule, as a base from which to condemn Hinduism outright, however, Dayananda argued for what he perceived as the restoration of Vedic varnas, which he claimed had been a system based on individual merit, rather than birth.5 This approach was one of the reasons for the popularity of the Arya Samaj in Punjab, where many middle ranking castes (rather than brahmins) had taken advantage of colonial education opportunities and formed the rump of the burgeoning middle class. The Samaj’s meritocratic approach to religious authority was naturally attractive to this socially mobile elite.
As the Samaj developed towards the end of the nineteenth century, some of the more radical elements within its Punjabi branches attempted to take the vision of meritocratic varna to its logical conclusion by ‘reclaiming’ low castes, effecting a change of status through a mixture of education and ritual purification (shuddhi). This move was opposed resolutely by many caste Hindus. In particular, a self-styled ‘orthodox’ opposition to the Samaj, known as the Sanatana Dharma movement, was vocal and sometimes physical in its attempts to prevent such processes of reclamation (Zavos 1999: 69–70).
In the elaboration of these positions, we can see the playing out of a kind of reforming versus orthodox model of debate, focused around the issue of low-caste groups. How far could such groups be considered a part of Hinduism? If they were a part of Hinduism, how could their lowly position be justified? These questions were persistently significant in press and pamphlet debates between representatives of self-styled reforming and orthodox organizations, reinforcing the link between the status of low castes and general concerns about the form of Hinduism in the modern world. Phule’s rasping critique, resonant in the same kind of public spaces, provided significant momentum to this trend.
In the early twentieth century, the work of Dr Ambedkar and others ensured that these issues remained prominent features of political debates about the nature of both the Hindu and the Indian community. Leaders such as M.K. Gandhi were deeply engaged by the problem of untouchability. Indeed, Gandhi regarded the abolition of untouchability as a prerequisite to true liberation. At the same time, his approach was quite different from that of Ambedkar, In particular, whereas Ambedkar saw caste oppression as inexorably linked to the form of Hinduism (hence his conversion), Gandhi was convinced that it could be eradicated, and that Hinduism as a religion would be enhanced as a result.6 Many other Hindu activists have sought similar ways to ameliorate the position of low castes, and the difference between these and the more assertive, militant approach taken by some low-caste groups themselves continues to demonstrate a faultline that runs through modern conceptions of Hinduism.
Conclusion
Untouchability still exists and bids fair to last as long as Hinduism will last.
This quotation, attributed to Dr Ambedkar, is featured on the website of an organization based in the United States called the Dalit Freedom Network (Dalit Freedom Network n.d.). The term ‘dalit’ is one that we came across in Chapter 2. It means ‘oppressed’ or ‘broken’ in Marathi, and was, according to some authors, first used to refer to low castes by Jotirao Phule (Mendelsohn and Vicziany 1998: 4). In more recent years it has been used as a self-signifier by untouchable groups and individuals, generally indicating the adoption of an assertive politics of social justice, inspired by the work of Ambedkar. As the quotation demonstrates, Dalit consciousness continues to be defined against the idea of Hinduism.
In the nineteenth century and after, this positioning contributed pointedly to debates in print and other public fora about Hindu practices and ideas. In this sense, caste and in particular the activism of Phule, Ambedkar and others became a critical feature of the dynamics that have shaped modern Hinduism.
Questions for Further Discussion and Research
Further Reading
Ciotti, M (2010) Retro-Modern India. Forging the Low-Caste Self, London: Routledge.
Anthropological account focused on contemporary low-caste consciousness in Uttar Pradesh.
O’Hanlon, R. (1985) Caste, Conflict and Ideology: Mahatma Jotirao Phule and Low-caste Protest in Nineteenth Century Western India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
The most comprehensive account of Phule’s life and work, including many excerpts from his writings.
Omvedt, G. (1995), Dalit Visions, Delhi: Orient Longman.
A short account of the emergence of low-caste politics in the modern period, with an interesting introduction on the relationship between low-caste identity and Hinduism, and chapters on both Phule and Ambedkar.
Zavos, J. (2000) Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Chapters 2 and 3 explore the development of debates about Hinduism in the late nineteenth century, including sections on the Arya Samaj and Sanatana Dharma Sabha.
Zelliot, E. (1996) From Untouchable to Dalit: Essays on the Ambedkar Movement, New Delhi: Manohar.
Authoritative source on Dalit movements. Includes an essay comparing Ambedkar with Gandhi.