tailieunhanh - Encyclopedia of World Cultures Volume III - South Asia - K

Bách khoa toàn thư nền nông nghiệp thế giới - Vùng Nam Á - Vần K | 1 ỉ 6 fatav_ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- the Changing Status of a Depressed Caste. . dissertation Cornell University. Lynch Owen M. 1969 . The Politics of Untouchability Social Mobility and Social Change in a City of India. New York Columbia University Press. Lynch Owen M. 1981 . Rioting as Rational Action An Interpretation of the April 1978 Riots in Agra. Economic and Political Weekly 16 1951-1956. OWEN M. LYNCH Kalasha ETHNONYM Kalash Kafir The Kalasha are a tribe of about 4 000 found in the Outrai District in North-West Frontier Province on the western edge of Pakistan. They are unique among the tribes of the Hindu Kush in one respect to this day they have resisted conversion to Islam. Pakistan is 98 percent Muslim. Instead they practice a form of Hinduism. The Kalasha economy is based on agriculture which is mainly women s work and transhumant animal husbandry which takes the men and their flocks to the lower pastures for winter and then to high mountain pastures in summer. The people grow maize wheat and millets on small irrigated fields. Goats are not only the main animal herded they are also sacred they are considered the gift of the gods which men must protect against the pollution of females and demonic possession. Women have relative social freedom as compared with the Muslim women of Pakistan and there is certainly no purdah. There are many cases of marriage by elopement involving already-married women. Much feuding and negotiation have to take place to resolve disputes over women. During the 1950s several Kalasha villages were forcibly converted to Islam on grounds of the supposed immorality of the women. Since then other forms of antagonism have grown up between Kalasha and the surrounding Muslims. Recently the situation has somewhat improved through the building of schools in some valleys which Kalasha children can attend. In the late 1970s some roads were also built into