The Caste Question - Dalits and the Politics of Modern India

1. Auflage 2009
ISBN: 978-0-520-25761-0
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 416 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 223 mm, Gewicht: 554 g

This innovative work of historical anthropology explores how India's Dalits, or ex-untouchables, transformed themselves from stigmatized subjects into citizens. Anupama Rao's account challenges standard thinking on caste as either a vestige of precolonial society or an artifact of colonial governance. Focusing on western India in the colonial and postcolonial periods, she shines a light on South Asian historiography and on ongoing caste discrimination, to show how persons without rights came to possess them and how Dalit struggles led to the transformation of such terms of colonial liberalism as rights, equality, and personhood. Extending into the present, the ethnographic analyses of The Caste Question reveal the dynamics of an Indian democracy distinguished not by overcoming caste, but by new forms of violence and new means of regulating caste.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Rao, Anupama

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Soziale Gruppen & Klassen
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Philosophische Anthropologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgments

Author's Note

Introduction

Part One. Emancipation
1. Caste Radicalism and the Making of a New Political Subject
2. The Problem of Caste Property
3. Dalits as a Political Minority

Part Two. The Paradox of Emancipation
4. Legislating Caste Atrocity
5. New Directions in Dalit Politics: Symbologies of Violence, Maharashtra, 1960–1979
6. The Sexual Politics of Caste: Violence and the Ritual-Archaic
7. Death of a Kotwal: The Violence of Recognition

Epilogue: Dalit Futures

List of Abbreviations

Notes

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Anupama Rao is Associate Professor of History at Barnard College.