9 every piece of literature. However, each one has its properties to give and it is part
of the task of the critic and reader of literature to find th e approach or approaches that will best lead to an appreciation of a particular work of literature.
In conducting the analysis, the writer decided to use socio -cultural approach. According to Wellek and Warren in Theory of Literature, literature
represents life; and life is, in large measure, a social reality, even though the natural world and the inner or subjective world of the individual have also been
objects of literary imitation 94. Furthermore, Wellek and Warren said that much of the most common a pproach to the relations of literature and society is the study
of works of literature as social documents, as assumed pictures of social reality 102.
2. Discrimination
According to Human Arrangements: An Introduction to Sociology, discrimination refers to unequal treatment of people based on stereotyped beliefs
about them 362. Furthermore according to Deborah A. Prentice and Dale T. Miller in Cultural Divides: Understanding and Overcoming Group Conflict ,
perhaps the most troubling for social identity perspective on status and power is the research suggesting that the two constructs have very distinctive effects.
Although both group power and group status have been shown to enhance various manifestations of in-group favouritism, they appear to do so in different ways.
Two results from the research provide evidence for this contention.
10 First, although increased status may in fact lead to improve in -group
favouritism, it appears that power is what makes discrimination possible in the first place. Second, it appears that status and power affect different group -relevant
variables: status differential explains most of the variance in in -group identification and intergroup perceptions, while power differential explains most
of the variance in actual discriminat ion. Thus, while consideration of the status differential in the social identity tradition may help to explain certain patterns of
beliefs about groups, a complete understanding of the actual oppressive behaviour is underlying group-based systems of hierar chy also requires us to more
thoroughly examine the role of power in intergroup relations 111. Ravi Nair, who heads the South Asian Human Rights Documentation
Centre in New Delhi, calls Indias caste system racist. Nair is also a veteran of human rights activist,
Quite clearly, caste is a form of racist behaviour, because, like racism, this is an issue dominance by one group against another, argues Mr. Nair.
Secondly, if I was born into a Dalit community - irrespective of whatever vertical mobility that I had because of my class background - I would still
not be able to change my caste hierarchy in the social pecking order, and because of that, it definitely is racist behaviour in the terms of how one
community has dominance over another.
B. Review on Socio-Cultural Background 1. Caste System in India
