We contextualise Cotterill, Sidanius, Bhardwaj, and Kumar’s (2014) paper within a broader literature on caste and collective mobilisation. Cotterill and colleagues’ paper represents a fresh and timely attempt to make sense of the persistence of caste from the perspective of Social Dominance Theory. Cotterill and colleagues, however, do not examine caste differences in the endorsement of karma, and take behavioural asymmetry among lower castes for granted. Cotterill and colleagues also adhere to a Varna model of the caste system that arguably is simplistic and benefits the upper castes of Indian society. We caution that emphasising behavioural asymmetry and endorsing the Varna model might further stigmatise lower castes, especially Dalits, and feed into a conformity bias already predominant in caste-related psychological research. We argue that the conceptualisation and operationalisation of Right-Wing Authoritarianism, Social Dominance Orientation and legitimising myths in the Indian context needs to take into account the particular meaning and functions of these constructs in specific intergroup contexts, and for identity positions salient within these contexts. We contend that any examination aimed at better understanding the nature of social hierarchy and oppression within the caste system and Indian society in general remains inconclusive without including a focus on the construction and contestation of social categories and social identities.
Guided by a self-categorisation and social-identity framework of identity entrepreneurship (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001), and social representations theory of history (Liu & Hilton, 2005), this paper examines how the Hindu nationalist movement of India defines Hindu nationhood by embedding it in an essentialising historical narrative. The heart of the paper consists of a thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) of the ideological manifestos of the Hindu nationalist movement in India, "Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?" (1928) and "We, or Our Nationhood Defined" (1939), written by two of its founding leaders -Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, respectively. The texts constitute authoritative attempts to define Hindu nationhood that continue to guide the Hindu nationalist movement today. The derived themes and sub-themes indicate that the definition of Hindu nationhood largely was embedded in a narrative about its historical origins and trajectory, but also its future. More specifically, a 'golden age' was invoked to define the origins of Hindu nationhood, whereas a dark age in its historical trajectory was invoked to identify peoples considered to be enemies of Hindu nationhood, and thereby to legitimise their exclusion. Through its selective account of past events and its efforts to utilise this as a cohesive mobilising factor, the emergence and rise of the Hindu nationalist movement elucidate lessons that further our understanding of the rise of right-wing movements around the world today.Keywords: India, Hindu nationalism, Indian independence, Hindu-Muslim relations, entrepreneurs of identity, social identity theory, self-categorisation theory, social representations theory Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 2017, Vol. 5(2), 477-511, doi:10.5964/jspp.v5i2.736 Received: 2016-11-01. Accepted: 2017-09-08. Published (VoR): 2017 Handling Editor: Johanna Ray Vollhardt, Department of Psychology, Clark University, Worcester, MA, USA *Corresponding author at: School of Psychology, Keele University, Keele, Staffordshire, ST5 5BG, United Kingdom. E-mail: s.s.khan@keele.ac.uk This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Modernist theories of nationalism (e.g., Anderson, 1983;Gellner, 1983;Hobsbawm, 1990) posit that nationhood is a socially constructed phenomenon inextricably associated with the formation of nation states and pursuit of economic and political ends. According to Anderson, nations are imagined in that the citizens of even the smallest of countries never will meet, know, or even hear of all their fellow citizens. Yet they will be bound and act together on the basis of commonly shared understandings of what it means to belong to a nation. As such, they function as discursive frames that are drawn upon 'to make sense of the world' (see Nesbitt-Larking & Kin...
Psychology limits the scope of raising questions important in the caste context. While psychology focuses on why and how people feel humiliated, the question in the caste context is why and how people do not feel humiliated despite incessant and gratuitous attacks on their dignity and self-worth. This article argues that psychology needs to adopt a critical orientation to address the experience of caste-based humiliation. The anticaste perspective of B. R. Ambedkar provides a critical orientation and psychological insights to build a meaningful psychology of caste-based humiliation. Ambedkar rejected individualist, essentialized notions of human self and emphasized the dimension of intergroup emotions to understand caste relations. I develop this argument by analyzing the experience, impact, and resistance to caste-based humiliation among Dalits. I describe caste-based humiliation in extreme (caste atrocities) and less extreme (caste microaggressions) forms and show that the experience of caste-based humiliation is pervasive, direct, but also vicarious. I then examine the psychological impact of caste-based humiliation on the health, social vitality, and appraisal process among Dalits. I show that a caste-ridden context makes it difficult to interpret humiliation and affects Dalit life narratives through retrospective feelings of humiliation. Finally, I consider the issue of resistance to humiliation and show that mere appraisal of humiliation could also be a form of resistance. The article concludes with an emphasis on exploring the scope of psychological resistance to caste-based humiliation through individual and collective acts of meaning that interpret and transform a humiliating existence.
The intractable group conflicts, mass killings, and genocides around the world attest to the role of humiliation as a negative force causing violence and destruction. Based on the analysis of the speeches of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the most important leader of Dalits (ex‐untouchables) in India, it is suggested that leaders possess the capacity for creative use of humiliation. The creative use of humiliation is made possible by the innovation in constructing social identities involved in humiliation. Creative leadership can be an important catalyst that can transform humiliation into a positive force for social change.
This chapter examines the role of humiliation in experiences of collective victimization. Humiliation is conceptualized as a self-conscious emotion that is distinct from shame, anger, and embarrassment. Humiliation is experienced when dehumanizing and devaluing treatment occurs that is appraised as illegitimate. The chapter discusses the paradox in the literature on humiliation, whereby both action (e.g., cycles of violence) and suppression of action (e.g., demobilization of resistance) have been observed as an outcome of humiliation. Drawing on research on the experience of Dalits in the Hindu caste system, a conceptualization of humiliation is presented that is relational, victim centered, and focused on agency and power relations. Humiliation is conceptualized as a claim, which involves both the appraisal of certain acts of victimization as humiliating, and the political act of communicating resentment to the perpetrator. Overall, humiliation can be used to mobilize or demobilize resistance to oppression.
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