Politics of Symbols and Changing Religious Practices: Counter-Hegemonic Assertion of Dalit Migrants in Mumbai

Increasing globalisation, urbanisation, industrialisation and technological development have resulted in diversity of migration patterns, which in turn have led to heterogeneity among people, languages and cultures in any given area. Culture comprises people’s thought, patterns of behaviour, lifestyle, values, beliefs, language and food habits. Hofstede (2001) has classified culture into four categories: symbol, rituals, values and heroes (p. 9-10). Whereas E.B. Taylor has conceived of culture as a complex whole, which includes knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law and customs acquired by members of a society (cited in Junghare 2015, 406). It is obvious that with the movement of people, various languages, belief systems, rituals and symbols spread throughout the world. In the era of globalisation, migrants retain their culture at the destination, which helps cities to develop the phenomenon of cultural pluralism (N.K. Bose 1968, cited in Singh 2015, 180). Studies have claimed that migrants belonging to a particular region, with shared cultural practices, knowledge, language, ideology, religion and caste, form a group and tend to live together in a neighbourhood of a city (Singh 1992, 180). It is seen that migration has disseminated cultural practices of different social groups, which travel from source to destination and vice versa. One result has also been an emerging cultural consciousness among migrants.