Dalit Analysis in Caste

Formerly known as “the Untouchables,” the Dalits comprise the bottommost rung (or subordinate caste) of India’s ancient caste system. In fact, they’ve been considered and treated so lowly throughout history that they exist almost parallel to or outside of the system. The Untouchable activist Bhimrao Ambedkar offered the term “Dalit,” meaning “broken people,” as a dignity-restoring alternative to the term “Untouchable” in the 20th century, hoping to highlight his people’s arbitrary and unnecessary suffering. Historically, Dalits have been conscripted to lowly and unclean jobs and forced to publicly prostrate themselves before higher-ranking castes should their paths ever cross. While today, members of the Dalit caste are permitted to pursue higher education and work in the public sphere, the deeply entrenched protocols of caste continue to impact how Dalits interact with higher-ranked people. This is evidenced by Isabel Wilkerson’s interactions with Dalit scholars who speak of the traumatic, long-lasting side effects of being defined by caste.

Dalit Quotes in Caste

The Caste quotes below are all either spoken by Dalit or refer to Dalit. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

Caste, Race, and Social Division in the U.S. Theme Icon

Their exclusion was used to justify their exclusion. Their degraded station justified their degradation. They were consigned to the lowliest, dirtiest jobs and thus were seen as lowly and dirty, and everyone in the caste system absorbed the message of their degradation.

Related Characters: Isabel Wilkerson (speaker)

Page Number and Citation: 129

Explanation and Analysis:

When a house is being built, the single most important piece of the framework is the first wood beam hammered into place to anchor the foundation. That piece is called the mudsill, the sill plate that runs along the base of a house and bears the weight of the entire structure above it. The studs and subfloors, the ceilings and windows, the doors and roofing, all the components that make it a house, are built on top of the mudsill. In a caste system, the mudsill is the bottom caste that everything else rests upon.

Related Characters: Isabel Wilkerson (speaker)

Related Symbols: The Old House

Page Number and Citation: 131

Explanation and Analysis:

If the lower-caste person manages actually to rise above an upper-caste person, the natural human response from someone weaned on their caste's inherent superiority is to perceive a threat to their existence, a heightened sense of unease, of displacement of fear for their very survival. "If the things that I have believed are not true, then might I not be who I thought I was?" The disaffection is more than economic. The malaise is spiritual, psychological, emotional. Who are you if there is no one to be better than?

Related Characters: Isabel Wilkerson (speaker)

Page Number and Citation: 183

Explanation and Analysis:

Dalit Term Timeline in Caste

The timeline below shows where the term Dalit appears in Caste. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

...the caste system in India, and he wanted to meet members of its lowest caste—the Dalit, or Untouchables. But when the principal of a school King was visiting introduced him as... (full context)

...India, where he became the leader of the Untouchables and gave his caste the name Dalit, meaning “broken people,” to illustrate how the caste system ruined countless lives. Indians had long... (full context)

Many scholars throughout the years have written about the similarities between the Dalits and African Americans. Both groups were enslaved and confined to a system of sharecropping (or... (full context)

But the members of the Dalit caste do not, as many outside observers might like to believe, accept their position in... (full context)

...and traders) from his thighs, and the Shudra (servants) from his feet. The Untouchables (or Dalit, as they would later be called) are not even mentioned in this myth—they are beneath... (full context)

...the subordinate caste in the U.S. were banned from beaches, lakes, and pools—just like the Dalits in India and like Jewish people in Nazi Germany. In 1919, when a young Black... (full context)

...Americans comprised the subordinate caste in the U.S., they were essentially treated more like the Dalits in India: outside of the caste system entirely. Just like the Dalits, Black Americans could... (full context)

Like the Dalits in India, African Americans were conscripted to the lowliest, dirtiest jobs available—and these restrictions were... (full context)

...and past identities and displayed naked at auction blocks. And in India, members of the Dalit caste were assigned surnames connected to the menial work they performed, so that their degraded... (full context)

Dalits, Jews, and enslaved Black people were punished for any display of human emotion or any... (full context)

...the gutter rather than on the sidewalk, and there were restrictions in India on what Dalits could or could not wear. This reinforced, at every level of society, the idea that... (full context)

...caste she belonged to in the U.S., she told him that she was an “American Dalit”—but that she was living proof of caste’s arbitrary nature and artificiality. The two continued to... (full context)

...scapegoat cast: Jewish people were scapegoated for Germany’s failure in WWI, for instance, and the Dalits were scapegoated for the sins of their past lives. After the Civil War, Black people... (full context)

...of neighboring countries. But the dehumanizing pattern of caste explains why Jews, African Americans, and Dalits were all considered so lowly and irrelevant that their deaths did not matter. (full context)

...in a caste system without absorbing these messages and behaviors. Wilkerson cites the behavior of Dalit scholars she’s met who speak similarly of their fear of members of the upper caste... (full context)

...polluted. When the man, as a young boy, watched his father refuse to punish a Dalit, he was crushed when his father fled the village because of the shame he faced... (full context)

Years later, the young man could no longer see the Dalit as subservient people who belonged at the bottom of society—he began to admire them and... (full context)

Dalit Term Analysis

Dalit Quotes in Caste

Dalit Term Timeline in Caste