Contemporary dalit movements in Andhra Pradesh (1985 to 2015)

There have been many studies on social movements in India during the last three decades, though compared to many other areas and the incidence of movements, their number is very small. A majority of the studies are recent, published after the mid-1960s. Most of them are by historians, sociologists, political activists or journalists. Political scientists have, by and large, ignored this area till recently. Historians have for long concentrated on political history, which is mainly the history of rulers and of the elite. British historians, in whose footsteps Indian historians, for good or for bad, followed, focused their studies on the activities of the British as the actors on the stage of history with India as a shadowy background. Social history came onto the scene very late. And for a long time, it limited its scope to the ‘history of people with the politics left out’. It has been largely confined to social policies of the government, educational and cultural history, social reform movements, the growth of the middle class, etc. Recently, social historians have produced very stimulating studies on social movements in general and peasant movements in particular. Sociology is a relatively-new discipline. Although the first generation of sociologists maintained a broader horizon, the second generation has confined its focus to the tradition-modernity paradigm1. A majority of their studies are related to kinship, caste and village society.