Politics

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The early 20th-century nationalist discourse in India held the colonial state and the middlemen (maistry) responsible for the exploitation of the migrant labourers. The issue of their miserable condition eventually merged within the nationalist movement. This paper studies the experiences and perspectives of Dalit migrants in Burma and their role in the social and political movements in that period. The paper argues that the caste oppression, enmeshed in the labour exploitation, was the defining factor in their migration overseas. Dalits who migrated to Burma primarily struggled against caste oppression in their immediate socio-economic and spatial context, a fact that was hardly acknowledged in the nationalist discourse. Hence, the Dalit migrants were critiques of the upper-caste nationalist discourse.

After 72 years of adopting universal adult franchise in its Constitution, India has remained unperturbed to the cause of voting rights of prisoners. The latest judicial decisions regarding the issue also justify disenfranchisement using the same line of thought as was used in the colonial times. India has progressed enough to now look for alternatives to the present setting so as to enable enfranchisement for Indian prisoners both in principle and practice.