Caste Within Caste: Ritual Hierarchies, Space, and Discrimination Among Dalits

This chapter discusses the village profile and the socio-demographic profile of the research participants. It also investigates intra-Dalit discrimination, focusing on how spatial arrangements and generational experiences shape social boundaries within Dalits. It examines everyday interactions, spatial segregation, and inter-generational mobility among Dalit subcastes. Findings reveal that caste hierarchies are visible in the spatial segregation of settlement patterns, access to water, and infrastructure, resulting from their historical displacement and the remembered habitus. While inter-generational narratives highlight declining overt untouchability and improved access to education, housing, and cultural freedom, symbolic violence and everyday discrimination persist in local governance spaces, access to public services, and their mobility. The chapter argues that Dalit identity is neither homogenous nor static but is continuously negotiated and stratified within subcaste structures. The study uses an eclectic set of theories and frameworks to challenge monolithic narratives of Dalit marginalisation. It employs Bourdieu’s habitus and symbolic violence, and Lefebvre’s spatial theory, demonstrating that socio-cultural exclusion within Dalits is historically contingent, spatially embedded, and generationally evolving.