Rawat R.S., Satyanarayana K. (eds.) Dalit Studies

Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2016. — 320 p. — ISBN: 978-0-8223-6132-9 ; ISBN: 978-0-8223-6113-8.Contributors: D. Shyam Babu, Laura Brueck, Sambaiah Gundimeda, Gopal Guru, Rajkumar Hans, Chinnaiah Jangam, Surinder Jodhka, P. Sanal Mohan.The contributors to this major intervention into Indian historiography trace the strategies through which Dalits have been marginalized as well as the ways Dalit intellectuals and leaders have shaped emancipatory politics in modern India. Moving beyond the anticolonialism/nationalism binary that dominates the study of India, the contributors assess the benefits of colonial modernity and place humiliation, dignity, and spatial exclusion at the center of Indian historiography. Several essays discuss the ways Dalits used the colonial courts and legislature to gain minority rights in the early twentieth century, while others highlight Dalit activism in social and religious spheres. The contributors also examine the struggle of contemporary middle-class Dalits to reconcile their caste and class, intercaste tensions among Sikhs, and the efforts by Dalit writers to challenge dominant constructions of secular and class-based citizenship while emphasizing the ongoing destructiveness of caste identity. In recovering the long history of Dalit struggles against caste violence, exclusion, and discrimination, Dalit Studies outlines a new agenda for the study of India, enabling a significant reconsideration of many of the Indian academy's core assumptions.Introduction. Dalit Studies: New Perspectives on Indian History and Society / Ramnarayan S. Rawat and K. Satyanarayana.
The Indian Nation in Its Egalitarian Conception / Gopul Guru.
Probing the Historical.
Colonial Archive versus Colonial Sociology: Writing Dalit History / Ramnarayan S. Rawat.
Social Space, Civil Society, and Dalit Agency in Twentieth-Century Kerala / P. Sanal Mohan.
Dilemmas of Dalit Agendas: Political Subjugation and Self-Emancipation in Telugu Country, 1910-50 / Chinnaiah Jangam.
Making Sense of Dalit Sikh History / Raj Kumar Hans.
Probiing the Present.
The Dalit Reconfiguration of Modernity: Citizens and Castes in the Telugu Public Sphere / K. Satyanarayana.
Questions of Representation in Dalit Critical Discourse: Premchand and Dalit Feminism / Laura Brueck.
Social Justice and the Question of Categorization of Scheduled Caste Reservations: The Dandora Debate in Andhra Pradesh / Sambaiah Gundimeda.
Caste and Class among the Dalits / D. Shyam Babu.
From Zaat to Qaum: Fluid Contours of the Ravi Dasi Indentity in Punjab / Surinder S. Jodhka.