tailieunhanh - Historical compensation: The eye of the beholders

This article presents the subalterns' perspectives on government’s scholarship program in Badbhanjyang-1, Basundol, and Kathmandu. The information was analyzed and discussed using Spivak's (1988) subaltern theory to understand Dalit as special ability group and Bourdieu's cultural capital (1986) to know their different cultural assets at least in the field of education. This study showed that scholarship program was useful to educate and encourage the Dalit children to enroll in school. However, parents had to cover the additional expenses like exam fees, stationeries, and reference books. This additional financial burden to the parents had forced them to send their children for labor work rather than sending them to school. According to them, the scholarship program has not addressed the caste based social hierarchies rather it enforced them to feel themselves as inferior being ‘Dalit’ because it was given on the basis of the caste, as historical compensation to educate them. | HISTORICAL COMPENSATION THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDERS Reemaya Nepali Tara Datta Bhatta ABSTRACT This article presents the subalterns perspectives on government s scholarship program in Badbhanjyang-1 Basundol and Kathmandu. The information was analyzed and discussed using Spivak s 1988 subaltern theory to understand Dalit as special ability group and Bourdieu s cultural capital 1986 to know their different cultural assets at least in the field of education. This study showed that scholarship program was useful to educate and encourage the Dalit children to enroll in school. However parents had to cover the additional expenses like exam fees stationeries and reference books. This additional financial burden to the parents had forced them to send their children for labor work rather than sending them to school. According to them the scholarship program has not addressed the caste based social hierarchies rather it enforced them to feel themselves as inferior being Dalit because it was given on the basis of the caste as historical compensation to educate them. INTRODUCTION Nepal is a multi-cast multi-lingual multi socio-cultural and geographically diverse country inhabited by various caste ethnic group. Along with these diversities there are structural inequalities in sociocultural economical and educational arena based on the caste ethnicity and gender. In the case of Dalit the society is stratified and discriminatory due to the practice of caste hierarchy. Dalit untouchables is a community at the bottom of caste hierarchy. Practice of Caste Based Discrimination CBD like un-touchability has compelled them to live in a hostile environment subject to deprivation of all kinds like social political economic and educational disparities NNDSWO 2006 . Dalit refers to oppressed who are socially oppressed maltreated giving epithet untouchable economically exploited politically excluded academically disadvantage or sunk in the swamp broken people considered unclean put at the .