As a community, dalits are found to be at the lowest level of land ownership in Kerala. This article argues that this abysmal status of land ownership is the result of three exclusionary processes. Dalits were historically excluded from land ownership due to the caste system. Second, they were consistently excluded from the process of land reforms in a significant way. Lastly, the current trends in land market activities tend to exclude them from land ownership. This article shows how social inequality in land ownership in Kerala, known to be a progressive state, remains high. Dalits lag far behind in land ownership as compared to the upper castes reinforcing the fact that the land–caste nexus still dominates in Kerala.
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