Paper short abstract:

The hegemonization of the Dalit self is reflected through multiple processes and the focus of this paper is on caste hegemony which contains an entire universe, imposing ‘otherness’ through the mechanism of space, symbol, language, institutions, identities, socio-economic, political and cultural practices.

Paper long abstract:

The embodied semiotics of the Thoti symbolizes the manifestation of a caste society. The Thoti belongs to a particular family from the caste of untouchables who through his persona reproduces the everyday sites of caste exclusion. His stick with a rattle at one end makes his caste identity visual and audible. He acts as a bridge between the caste society and the untouchable community. A descendant of the Thoti family, it has been the researcher's constant endeavour to battle entrenched prejudices both apparent and invisible. The analysis is based on actual experiences which are verbalized, visualized and made audible, the embodied framing of a sequence of actual events. The narrative begins from the researcher's birth place to the nation's capital. The endeavour is to put forward the ethnography of ideas that looks into the politics in and of culture as part of a social conspiracy of the caste ridden undemocratic social order. Interestingly, caste based exclusion is an evolutionary process keeping pace with modernity.