Paper Details

Name: Chandip Kaur
Country: India

Year: 2014
Volume: Volume-1, Issue-1 (January-June)
Page Number: 9-11

Society is characterized by huge diversity such as class, race, age, gender, sexual orientation, religion, culture and language. No doubt, the root of oppression is ingrained in this diversity especially people’s reaction towards this diversity yet the dominant social group never accepts the fact that the various stages of authority and subjugation survive beneath their way of systematizing society, particularly the minority groups that are inseparable part of society. According to Oxford Dictionary oppression means, “Prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or exercise of authority or the state of being subject to oppressive treatment”.
Oppression is one of the various types of injustices in the world. It harasses people on the basis of their race, religion, ethnicity, gender and social status. It means to make others less human, to dehumanize them and above all to keep them down in every possible way. The powerful people oppress less powerful people in brutal and inequitable ways. It gives rise to injustice in all walks of life for the oppressed class. It confines the subjugated group in such a way that it seems as if all roads are blocked for them. Paulo Frier in Pedagogy of the oppressed says, "Dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed" (ch-1). It is clear that oppression is not an outcome of one factor. Most importantly it has many faces as it operates on many levels like individual, institutional and cultural level.