Question

Name some of the castes that were deemed untouchable in Andhra Pradesh.

Answer 1

Answer:

Since the mid-1980s, the advanced and prosperous region of coastal Andhra has witnessed unprecedented mobilization on the socio-cultural identity of caste by students, youths, employees and agricultural laborers belonging to the two major Scheduled Mala and Madiga castes. Although not new, mobilization along caste lines, especially by underprivileged sections, can be seen as the beginning of a new phase in the social and political history of the State. While in the earlier period such mobilization was limited and largely confined to the electoral sphere, the 1980s marked a new beginning in terms of politico-ideological discourse, organisational specificity and spatial spread. It is important to ask why, contrary to the modernist scholarly prediction, the developed Green .

Revolution areas have seen caste mobilization and conflict, despite polarization along class lines. Is the coming to power of the TDP and the escalation of caste conflicts merely coincidental or are they substantially related? In this section we examine the dominant modernist perspective on caste to show why it is inadequate to understand the continual relevance of caste not only in electoral politics but also quite significantly in the people’s everyday lives. Locating the riots on dalits within the context of the political economy of change, we examine the significance of the shift in the regime in AP (that is, the emergence of the TDP). We also analyse the nature and patterns of the anti-dalit riots by taking up three cases for detailed study, to understand how they led to the emergence and expansion of the Dalit Maha Sabha (DMS).