Dalit Studies - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0822361132 ISBN 13: 9780822361138

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2016

Synopsis

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. 
Contributors: D. Shyam Babu, Laura Brueck, Sambaiah Gundimeda, Gopal Guru, Rajkumar Hans, Chinnaiah Jangam, Surinder Jodhka, P. Sanal Mohan, Ramnarayan Rawat, K. Satyanarayana

About this title

Review:

"Dalit Studies raises and tries to answer imperative questions and also demonstrates areas open to further research. It therefore provides an interesting read for specialists and nonspecialists alike." Author: Amal Shahid Source: LSE Review of Books

“The authors are aware that they represent the transition in the field of Dalit studies where Dalits initially were mere objects of study, but now with research contributions such as the present volume, they are also the subjects who are contributing to the study of Dalit lives.... The editors have done a commendable job in bringing together the diverse strands of scholarship for a Western audience.”

Author: Shradda Kumbhojkar Source: H-Asia, H-Net Reviews

From the Author:

Ramnarayan S. Rawat is Associate Professor of History at the University of Delaware and the author of Reconsidering Untouchability: Chamars and Dalit History in North India.  K. Satyanarayana is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at EFL University, Hyderabad, and the coeditor of two collections of Dalit writing from South India: From those Stubs, Steel Nibs Are Sprouting and No Alphabet in Sight. 

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0822361132
• ISBN 13: 9780822361138
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320
• Editor: Rawat Ramnarayan S., Satyanarayana K.