Emotions are a fundamental aspect of humans and human life. And in con flict situations, emotions are a part of the issue/s that conflict parties have to resolve because emotions impact conflict, and conflict in turn, affects emotions. Discrimination is conflict because it negatively impacts an individual, or an entire group of people, preventing them from reaching their goals. Discrimination can be directed at, or can impact, the individual, but it is because it targets them for membership to a group rather than their own merit. Discrim-
ination can therefore be individual, institutional, or structural, but it almost always has its root in structure. Racial discrimination, as referred to in this essay, is more of the structural variety in which systems and processes disadvantage, marginalize, and deny opportunities to certain groups of people. Experiences of discrimination are plagued with most of the basic emotions—anger, fear, sadness, anxiety, despair—and are intertwined with cognitive and structural issues. Using the caste discrimination in India as a case study, this essay examines the role that emotions and, in particular, the emotion of anger, play in how the lower castes, but especially the “untouchable” caste groups,deal with conflict.