ABSTRACT
This chapter revisits earlier ethnographic writing and anthropological assumption – as well as draws upon more recent historical scholarship – in order to reconsider thorny questions of Dalit “religions.” It explores the issues: the nature of power in the caste order when viewed both from Dalit perspectives and from the Dalit position; the historical construction of caste under colonial dominance and imperial rule; the terms not only of the Dalit’s absolute exclusion from but their unequal inclusion in the social order; and Dalit responses to hierarchy and authority, which look further than their endeavors exclusively within institutionalized power relations turning on state and governance.
