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ISSN 2063-5346
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INTO THE MIND OF THE OPPRESSOR IN THE INDIAN CASTE SYSTEM: A PSYCHOLOGICAL PERCEPTION

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S. Someshwari 1* , Aahana Saha2
» doi: 10.48047/ecb/2023.12.si5a.0263

Abstract

Caste is a socio-psychological phenomenon which is existing now for more than 3000 years. Even though when the discrimination based on caste is banned, affirmative actions are taken in order to eliminate the unlawful acts, prevention of atrocities acts are put forward for the marginalised people, the ideology of caste still prevails in the minds of Indian people. Everyday there are news flooding into the media about the physical and sexual assaults against the marginalised people. Yet, the psychological effect of the caste system on an individual is an area of study that is explored rarely. In particular the psychology of the oppressor domain is yet to be explored. There is no clear framework to fully explain the psychology of the oppressor in the Indian context of the caste system. From the already existing research done in this domain, a holistic idea of how an individual become caste oppressor is discussed. Starting from learning, the observational learning and operant learning theories and applied to understand the initial stage, that an individual undergoes is discussed, further through social identity theory, how the individual forms their self-concept with group norms is elaborated. Additionally, the way the caste system inculcates the delusional ideas against the oppressed caste is explained and finally by dehumanising the individuals from the oppressed caste the violent discriminatory acts are perpetuated by the oppressed caste without the sense of guilt and conscience. This paper was just an attempt to frame a theoretical view of the oppressor mind with the already existing theories, but many research should be done and studied extensively, hence this paper also calls for the further research in the field.

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