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Foundations of Anti-Caste Consciousness: Pandit Iyothee Thass, Tamil Buddhism, And The Marginalized In South India
Author Ayyathurai, Gajendran (著)
Date2011.01
Pages239
PublisherColumbia University
Publisher Url https://www.columbia.edu/
LocationNew York, NY, US [紐約, 紐約州, 美國]
Content type博碩士論文=Thesis and Dissertation
Language英文=English
Degreedoctor
InstitutionColumbia University
DepartmentAnthropology
AdvisorNicholas B Dirks
Publication year2011
AbstractThis dissertation is about an anti-caste movement among Dalits (the oppressed as untouchable) in South India, the Parayar. Since the late 19th century, members of this caste, and a few others from Tamil-speaking areas, have been choosing to convert to Buddhism based on conscience and conviction. This phenomenon of religious conversion-social transformation is this study's focus. By combining archival research of Parayar's writings among Tamil Buddhists, as these Parayar, settled in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, are called, I have attempted to understand this movement ethno-historically. In pre-colonial times, though the sub-continent's societies were hierarchical, the hierarchies were fluid and varied: i.e., the high-low or self-other dichotomies were neither fixed nor based on a single principle. The most significant effect of the encounter of British Colonialism and India was to precipitate an unprecedented master-dichotomy of singular and absolute form of self and other, as colonizer and the colonized. This had three consequences. (a) India was itself seen as singular and served as the Self to the colonial Other in an absolute dichotomy; (b) the role of essentializing the Indian Self was assumed by the brahmin; (c) this in turn resulted in an internal dichotomy between the brahmin-essential self and the non-brahmin-non-essential other. The means chosen to fix this dichotomy was to nominate the non-essential other's paradigmatic representation, the Dalit. I intend to read against the grain of the binary logic that was inaugurated at the moment of the colonial encounter by means of Tamil Buddhists' oppositional, reconstructional, and representationaldiscursive practices.
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.7916/D8MS3SHX
Hits249
Created date2023.03.20
Modified date2023.03.20



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