Caste Discussions - Bhangi

William Crooke of Bengal Civil Service tells us that the "rise of the present
Bhangi caste seems, from the names applied to the castes and its subdivisions, to date from the early period of Mohammedan rule".

Old Hindu literature mentions no bhangis of present function. In traditional Hindu rural society, he was a corn-measurer, a village policeman, a custodian of village boundaries. But scavenging came along with the Muslim and British rule. Their numbers also multiplied. According to 1901 Census, the bhangis were most numerous in the Punjab and the United Provinces which were the heartland of Muslim domination.

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3Sampatt Shetty, Vaibhav Kaley and Ritesh Singh

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Aparna Krishnan Even untouchability needs to be revisited it looks like - the devil is in the details.

44 mins · Edited · 

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Piyush Manush well i am differing .. in no mood to exonerate the caste system and it's founders !!

5 January 2015 at 19:31 · 

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Aparna Krishnan please read the details of the caste practices as documented by dharampal, and the other links i have searched out. i think the nuances need to be understood. the strengths and weaknesses.

5 January 2015 at 19:33 · 

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Nityanand Jayaraman It would have been useful to have voices other than dharampal talking about what it was like to be a shudra. Dharampal's locus standi, you will agree, is compromised as is ours.

5 January 2015 at 21:20 · 

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Aparna Krishnan the strength of dharampal is detailed statistics and accounts from archives. yes, much more such study, and by multiple players is desirable and critical. but bthis is nobody's baby. even his writings, with the level of scholarship are hardly read as much as they need to be.

5 January 2015 at 21:28 · 

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Aparna Krishnan I am simply saying that a true and detailed sense of history. because our present, and a likely future is rooted in it. dharampal gives that, with detailed references. and the picture that is conjured up, no one else has manage to give.

6 January 2015 at 18:24 · 

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