Description
Book SynopsisToward a new history of caste and untouchability
Trade Review"Reconsidering Untouchability overall stands as an authoritative challenge to conventional accounts of Dalit history." —American Historical Review
"This engaging historiography of Dalit identity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in northern India is a significant contribution to understanding the situation of the "untouchables" in Indian society as a whole." —Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
"Rawat's Reconsidering Untouchability is a valuable addition to [the] recent tradition of caste interpretation... [He] elicits from the history of the Chamars of... Uttar Pradesh a historiographical and sociological position which is both viable and distinctive, identifies new departures for a history of 'untouchability' itself, and defends the position from challenges." —Ssheej Hegde, Central University Hyderabad, H-Asia, H-Net Reviews, April 2012
"Challenges and revises our understanding of the historical and contemporary role of dalits in Indian society. A pathbreaking book that rightfully restores the historical agency of and gives voice to dalits in north India." —Anand A. Yang, University of Washington
"A timely and important contribution to the study of modern India. Rawat’s excellent and revisionist piece of Dalit history successfully overturns the stereotypical image of Chamars as leather-workers. It also helps us to understand why the ex-untouchables of north India came to invest in a politics of identity that challenged both nationalists and socialists alike." —Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago
"Awarded the Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences, Ramnarayan Rawat's Reconsidering Untouchability charts a new trajectory for scholarship on Dalitis in North India." —The Journal of Asian Studies
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: Untouchable Boundaries: Chamars and the Politics of Identity and History
1. Making Chamars Criminal: The Crime of Cattle Poisoning
2. Investigating the Stereotype: Chamar Peasants and Agricultural Laborers
3. Is the Leather Industry a Chamar Enterprise? The Making of Leatherworkers
4. Struggle for Identities: Chamar Histories and Politics
5. From Chamars to Dalits: The Making of an Achhut Identity and Politics, 192756
Conclusion: Overcoming Domination: The Emergence of a New Achhut Identity
Appendix: Statistical Tables
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index
