Book on anti-caste work of #TBM, #BAMCEF, and #PVCHR written by Jeremy Rinker, Ph.D

The persistence of the problem of caste calls for innovative theories and more data for its eradication. Identity, Rights, and Awareness is a welcome contribution in this direction. The first book in the series Conflict Resolution and Peace building in Asia, it builds on the groundbreaking contribution of Johan Galtung. . . . Though a comparative study of three anti-caste movements is itself a stupendous task, Identity, Rights, and Awareness also provides readers with a detailed analysis of each movement. . . . Jeremy Rinker has conscientiously elevated #TBM, #BAMCEF, and #PVCHR organizations, as well as their intel-lectuals, members, and movements, to take their rightful place in the global academy., 

--Journal Of Buddhist Ethics

Jeremy Rinker offers a fascinating picture of the diversity of anticaste activism in contemporary India. Focusing on the varying narratives of oppression voiced by Buddhist, rights-based, and radical activists, he shows how each can enlighten and empower Dalit communities. Rinker asks probing questions about the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches and about ways of reconciling them. This is a book not only for India specialists but also for scholars of social movements and activists within those movements.

-- Clifford Bob, Duquesne University

Identity, Rights, and Awareness engages with anticaste movements and activists to unearth the complexities of social justice discourse in India. It makes narratives of historically persecuted population audible by highlighting methods employed by them to change the existing exploitative social system via establishing new organizations and identities. Above all, it opens new theoretical and methodological debates on these issues among academics world over.

 

-- Vivek Kumar, Jawaharlal Nehru University

ACADEMIC JOURNAL ARTICLEJournal of Buddhist Ethics

A Review of Identity, Rights, and Awareness: Anticaste Activism in India and the Awakening of Justice through Discursive Practices

By Ayyathurai, Gajendran

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Identity, Rights, and Awareness: Anticaste Activism in India and the Awakening of Justice through Discursive Practices. By Jeremy A. Rinker. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018, xi + 211 pp., ISBN 978-1-4985-4193-0 (Hardcover), $95.00.

The persistence of the problem of caste calls for innovative theories and more data for its eradication. Identity, Rights, and Awareness is a welcome contribution in this direction. The first book in the series Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding in Asia, it builds on the groundbreaking contribution of Johan Galtung. His pioneering views of "direct, structural, and cultural" forms of violence as an "equilateral triangle" call for a critical perspective on violence to arrive at lasting peace in any society. Jeremy Rinker relies on such recent scholarship in Peace and Conflict Studies to engage with anticaste movements. In this comparative study he examines three contemporary anticaste movements that are popular mostly in west and north India.

The first three chapters of Identity, Rights, and Awareness focus on Peace and Conflict theories and methods to investigate anticaste movements in India. Aware of the emergence of "privileging a self-identity over historical kinship identity" (11) among oppressed communities, the author analyzes three geographically and demographically diverse anticaste social movements in chapters four, five, and six. Rinker first studies Trailokya Bauddha Mahasangha Sahayak Gana (renamed Triratna Bauddha Mahasangha, hereafter TBM), which is a "Dalit Buddhist social movement active in Maharashtra" (13). Second, the author takes up the All India Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation (BAMCEF) in Nagpur (Maharashtra) for which his interest was sparked after he came in closer contact with it in the summer of 2016. Finally, he scrutinizes a "more secular human rights organization," namely, People's Vigilance Committee on Human Rights (PVCHR) in Uttar Pradesh. The common thread in Rinker's comparative analysis of these three movements is centered on who the conflict parties are, and more specifically, who the anti-caste activists are and their interests (14). The author examines the distinctness of each group. The TBM's agenda is to spread Buddhism among caste-marginalized Indians. BAMCEF differs in that it stands for the propagation of a non-Brahminical indigenous identity for Indians who have been denigrated by Brahminism as lower caste and untouchable. Finally, PVCHR promotes civil rights for caste victims in north India.

Elaborating the significance of each of these organizations, Rinker writes that as "the vanguard of turning all of India into Buddhists" the TBM activists promote Ambedkar Buddhist identity among Dalits, seeing this as the first step towards re-establishing Buddhism in postcolonial India. In contrast, the author points out that PVCHR stands for a range of civil rights in the localities it serves. Rinker notes that PVCHR was founded by "an educated upper-caste Kshatriya," Dr. Lenin Raghuvanshi, and his wife, Shruti Nagvanshi. For the author this has its own advantages. That is, "a high caste working for the low-caste rights places him [Lenin Raghuvanshi] in a socially complicated position with both elites and the less fortunate downtrodden." In fact, for Rinker PVCHR is a "neo-Dalit movement," although he does not explain what he means by neo-Dalit vis-a-vis the category Dalit (which means "oppressed" or "broken"). Even as PVCHR functions as a "neo-Dalit" organization, it has an inclusive focus by working with communities that are "Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims, and other excluded segments of the Indian population." Cultural, religious, and historical aspects and identities are not part of PVCHR's agenda, the author explains. In Rinker's analysis, the BAMCEF, in divergence to TBM and PVCHR, stands for "Phule-Ambedkarite ideology." That is, BAMCEF aims to combine the thoughts and practices of anticaste leaders from Maharashtra, those of Jotirao Phule (1827-1890) and Ambedkar (1890-1956), to spread their relevance in the all-India political transformation. …

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Identity, Rights, and Awareness

Anticaste Activism in India and the Awakening of Justice through Discursive Practices

LEXINGTON BOOKS 2019

July 14, 2020 Powell Morales

For over a decade, Jeremy Rinker, Ph.D. has interacted, observed, and studied Dalit anti-caste social movements in India. In this critical comparative approach to India’s modern anti-caste resistance, Dr. Rinker emphasizes the complex interdependence between narrative practices and social transformation in understanding the centuries old caste basis of India’s most fundamental of social conflicts. Through the comparative case study of three modern social movement organizations, this book provides a fresh lens to both better understand and potentially transform caste marginalization and oppression. Through theoretical analysis, auto-ethnographic field notes, and narrative storytelling, Dr. Rinker brings the lived experience of modern Dalits to life for a Western reader unfamiliar with the entrenched nature of India’s complex caste dynamics. The book is also written for anti-caste activists in that it endeavors to develop reflective practice insights into activists’ own sense and use of narrative agency. A timely reappraisal of Indian anti-caste movement ideological discord, this book will be of interest to both students of South Asian caste and those that want to better understand injustice narration as an important means of structural change. With sharp analysis and insight Identity, Rights, and Awareness: Anticaste Activism in India and the Awakening of Justice through Discursive Practices(Lexington Books, 2018) will be of interest to scholars of South Asian studies as well as activists working for conflict transformation and peace.