Introduction

Chapter 1 is the introductory chapter and delineates the problems and perspectives of this book in relation to the debates on caste, moral–ethical agency, democratisation and the post-postcolonial transformation of Indian society. The chapter opens with an episode that suggests a move towards overcoming the postcolonial predicament of the grave disjuncture between the practice and discourse of community, duty and cooperative togetherness in the socio-cultural sphere and of competition, cheating and corruption in the politico-economic sphere. The postcolonial agenda for Indian society lies in mediating this disjuncture. In connection to this, Chapter 1 looks at the postcolonial version of the liberal–communitarian debate in India. This debate divides Indian social scientists between supporters of modern–liberal values and those of traditional–communitarian values and shows the need for a third perspective which sheds light on the creative agency of those who are trying to reconfigure a viable ethical practice and discourse that reconciles vernacular and embodied cultural values with the ideas and institutions of modernity and democracy. This chapter goes on to review the debates on caste in India that discuss whether ‘hierarchy’ or ‘domination’ is most useful value for furthering our understanding. I also bring to light the existence of a third value, ‘ontological equality’, which functions as the moral–ethical basis for enabling people to reconstitute and reinterpret existing interpersonal and inter-caste relationships.