Anyone familiar with current internal political problems in India cannot remain sanguine about the passivity of her oppressed ethnic minorities, be they defined by caste, religion, or heritage; nor can anyone be, who looks at the long history of religious conversion and reform in India, for every success along these lines in the past 2500 years has depended largely upon the promise of ethnic emancipation. A survey of case histories of low caste households and villages lead to the following conclusions. Stigmatized ethnic identity is experienced as oppression. It is a human day-by-day experience of degradation and exploitation, not simply an abstract concept. People resent that identity and that experience regardless of the rationalizations offered for it. People continually attempt to resist, escape, alleviate, or change that identity and that experience, even in the most unlikely circumstances--including the remote villages and urban slums of India. No account of ethnic stratification or stigmatized identity makes sense if it does not to these facts. How people respond to stigmatized ethnic identity depends upon their definitions of themselves, others, and the situations in which they interact. Not consensus on the legitmacy of systems of oppression but agreement on who has the power, and when and under what circumstances and with what effect it is likely to be used, enables them to continue. [This document has been reproduced from the best copy available.] (Author/JM)