Mayawati, a schoolteacher turned politician, is India's best-known leader of Dalit, or low-caste, groups.
Ms Mayawati vies to be a national figure, perhaps even India's first dalit prime minister.
Dalit scholar Kancha Ilaiah said Prof Nandy had made "a bad statement with good intentions".
Two months later, the company found a second, smaller deposit of gas at the nearby Dalit field.
Often the farmer is from a higher caste (Brahmin), the laborers from a landless lower caste (Dalit).
Ms Mayawati, a former primary-school teacher, is known for her love of diamonds and dalit-sized garlands of banknotes.
Local elections were due, in which, as an affirmative-action measure, Shahabpur was to be reserved for a dalit pradhan.
The court in Mathura in Uttar Pradesh heard how Vijander, a Dalit boy, had eloped with his girlfriend, Roshni.
Madhopuri, however, believes the new sacred text may not attract other Dalit communities because it only contains Ravidass verses.
Many of the recent cases, including the Aligarh case and the other Uttar Pradesh case, involve lower-caste, or Dalit, victims.
Former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh state and low-caste Dalit leader Mayawati said that he should be "sent to jail".
There is even a Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Her party also polled well in at least 60 parliamentary seats outside Uttar Pradesh, making her a pan-Indian Dalit icon of sorts.
Miss Mayawati's only discernible policy has been the promotion of Dalit interests.
And more than half of dalit families in some poor parts of UP depend for their money on remittances from urban migrants.
Sarju has travelled to several of her rallies, and speaks of the dalit queen, as Ms Mayawati is sometimes called, with awe.
In the 1931 census, more than 450, 000 registered themselves as members of the new Dalit faith called Ad Dharam, or Original Religion.
Authorities in India's Maharashtra state have arrested five people over the killing of three men from the low-caste Dalit community on 1 January.
BBC: Five held for 'honour killings' of Dalit men in Maharashtra
He cites a study of ten states which found dalit children fed separately from their peers in over a third of rural schools.
They believe that Mr Hazare's deadlines to parliament are an affront to BR Ambedkar, the Dalit scholar who led the drafting of the Indian constitution.
They include three women: Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal, Jayaram Jayalalitha in Tamil Nadu and Mayawati, a Dalit (the lowest caste) who ruled UP until earlier this year.
As an example, they point to the emergence of a small but growing class of Dalit (formerly known as untouchables, the lowest in India's wretched caste hierarchy) millionaires.
Experts say the move was a response to social discrimination against low castes in Punjab, where close to 30 percent of the population is Dalit, the highest in any Indian state.
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