Kozhikode: A few sections of dalits have succeeded in developing and moving ahead politically, socially and economically but the weaker castes are largely illiterate and have no community leaders who can assert their identities, said Prof Badri Narayan, noted social historian of Jawaharalal Nehru University, New Delhi.
He was delivering a lecture on ‘Documenting invisibilities: Democracy and dalit politics in North India’ at Calicut University on Wednesday.
"Invisible dalits are produced as a result of the deepening of democracy. However, as one layer after another becomes empowered, a new layer of marginality in the form of invisible dalits is produced in society," he opined.
"Though the dalits as a whole, who were historically highly marginalised by the upper castes, have become politically empowered after the emergence of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in the eighties and nineties, there are several smaller dalit castes which have continued to remain scattered and marginalised.
These dalit castes, which we call invisible dalits, are still languishing on the fringes of the dalit community and have not yet obtained political representation or a position to assert for political space," he added.
The lecture was organised as part of the frontier lecture series by the history department. Calicut University Vice-Chancellor Dr K. Mohammed Basheer inaugurated the lecture. History department head Dr O.P. Sivadasan was present among others.
