What was in the rhetoric of Periyar that moved an entire people in a direction that has continuing political relevance? How does his style respond to concerns about how we may engage within contemporary political formations, especially given that his work continues to resist being co-opted by his detractors? Analysing the formal elements of a 1931 speech by Periyar, delivered at Nagapattinam, I investigate the movements in his rhetoric which repeatedly mobilises the self as a site of political action. I argue that Periyar’s presentation of the self provides a distinct avenue of political engagement that substantiates the notion of inner conflict as crucial to the development of the titular hero in the 2018 Tamil film Pariyerum Perumal. Methodologically, I draw on the work of the relational psychoanalytic thinker D.W. Winnicott; in particular, his concept of ‘playing’, which refers to the creative moment of passionate immediate engagement with the other that opens up a potent space of understanding and is vital for survival. I show how charting out the various dimensions of this moment of creative play in these two works is crucial to further our understanding of the politics of Periyar and the journey of Pariyerum Perumal.
{"title":"Pariyerum Perumal and a Periyarite Note on Political Engagement","authors":"Antony Arul Valan","doi":"10.26812/caste.v3i1.355","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v3i1.355","url":null,"abstract":"What was in the rhetoric of Periyar that moved an entire people in a direction that has continuing political relevance? How does his style respond to concerns about how we may engage within contemporary political formations, especially given that his work continues to resist being co-opted by his detractors? Analysing the formal elements of a 1931 speech by Periyar, delivered at Nagapattinam, I investigate the movements in his rhetoric which repeatedly mobilises the self as a site of political action. I argue that Periyar’s presentation of the self provides a distinct avenue of political engagement that substantiates the notion of inner conflict as crucial to the development of the titular hero in the 2018 Tamil film Pariyerum Perumal. Methodologically, I draw on the work of the relational psychoanalytic thinker D.W. Winnicott; in particular, his concept of ‘playing’, which refers to the creative moment of passionate immediate engagement with the other that opens up a potent space of understanding and is vital for survival. I show how charting out the various dimensions of this moment of creative play in these two works is crucial to further our understanding of the politics of Periyar and the journey of Pariyerum Perumal.","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44516457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dalits and the Making of Modern India","authors":"Gaurav J. Pathania","doi":"10.26812/caste.v3i1.390","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v3i1.390","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44084214","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Memory, Grief, and Agency: A Political Theological Account of Wrongs and Rites","authors":"Helen Chukka","doi":"10.26812/caste.v3i1.376","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v3i1.376","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42184973","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article discusses caste reforms, anti-caste ideas, and thoughts on nationalism amongst Ezhavas of South Malabar in the Madras Presidency. The discourses of equality, the right to the public, the process of community formation, ideology, and the mode of struggle for emancipation are examined. The question of caste, by what means the aspirations of the lower castes were addressed in the uniting project of reformed Hinduism and nationalism is addressed. By capturing disagreements, conflicts, consensus, and the politics of ‘sub-nationalities’ within the ‘national,’ the generic view of national movement as a single, homogeneous consensus project is contested. Towards the end, the article contends that Ezhavas’ assertions imply the presence of an “autonomous anti-caste movement” in the South Malabar region. This article also proposes that the dichotomy of colonialism versus nationalism, and the portrayal of South Indian politics as a sectarian competition for British patronage, limits the opportunity to comprehend localised movements and their vernacular expressions.
{"title":"Conceptions of Community, Nation and Politics: The Ezhavas of South Malabar, India and their Quest for Equality","authors":"A. K.","doi":"10.26812/caste.v3i1.357","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v3i1.357","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses caste reforms, anti-caste ideas, and thoughts on nationalism amongst Ezhavas of South Malabar in the Madras Presidency. The discourses of equality, the right to the public, the process of community formation, ideology, and the mode of struggle for emancipation are examined. The question of caste, by what means the aspirations of the lower castes were addressed in the uniting project of reformed Hinduism and nationalism is addressed. By capturing disagreements, conflicts, consensus, and the politics of ‘sub-nationalities’ within the ‘national,’ the generic view of national movement as a single, homogeneous consensus project is contested. Towards the end, the article contends that Ezhavas’ assertions imply the presence of an “autonomous anti-caste movement” in the South Malabar region. This article also proposes that the dichotomy of colonialism versus nationalism, and the portrayal of South Indian politics as a sectarian competition for British patronage, limits the opportunity to comprehend localised movements and their vernacular expressions.","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46640045","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The dominant post-constitutional Indian feminist discourse is a product of diverse movements born from different histories. These diverse feminist movements continue to inadequately provide a comprehensive and inclusive theorisation of the relationship between caste and gender. Dalit feminist movements have successfully made ‘Dalit women’ a critical part of the dominant feminist discourse and have confronted it for including a caste framework as imperative to understanding the women’s question. But the question of caste within the dominant feminist discourse has largely remained confined to reading and understanding the Dalit woman through the intersectional framework. Intersectionality is useful in providing a framework for categorising the Dalit woman and for highlighting the lacunae in understanding the intersections of caste and gender in existing discourses. Yet, when framed through the overarching lens of difference, it occludes the contingent co-construction of the Savarna woman and Dalit woman as categories, as well as the complicated relationality between these two categories. Treating intersectionality as difference, also ironically posits the Dalit women as a homogenous and essentialised category. This category is over-determined by vulnerability, exploitation, and, violence. Thus, the entire spectrum of experiences inhabited collectively by women placed under this category is erased. This article attempts to elucidate these arguments by focusing on West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. As two researchers from different locations, both disciplinary and socio-political, one a Savarna-feminist-ethnographer, the other a Dalit-feminist-legal-researcher, we then seek to understand what adopting a holistic anti-caste methodology rather than simply ‘doing intersectionality’, means while inhabiting both these locations.
{"title":"The Dominant Post-constitutional Indian Feminist Discourse: A Critique of its Intersectional Reading of Caste and Gender","authors":"Santvana Kumar, Ekata Bakshi","doi":"10.26812/caste.v3i1.364","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v3i1.364","url":null,"abstract":"The dominant post-constitutional Indian feminist discourse is a product of diverse movements born from different histories. These diverse feminist movements continue to inadequately provide a comprehensive and inclusive theorisation of the relationship between caste and gender. Dalit feminist movements have successfully made ‘Dalit women’ a critical part of the dominant feminist discourse and have confronted it for including a caste framework as imperative to understanding the women’s question. But the question of caste within the dominant feminist discourse has largely remained confined to reading and understanding the Dalit woman through the intersectional framework. Intersectionality is useful in providing a framework for categorising the Dalit woman and for highlighting the lacunae in understanding the intersections of caste and gender in existing discourses. Yet, when framed through the overarching lens of difference, it occludes the contingent co-construction of the Savarna woman and Dalit woman as categories, as well as the complicated relationality between these two categories. Treating intersectionality as difference, also ironically posits the Dalit women as a homogenous and essentialised category. This category is over-determined by vulnerability, exploitation, and, violence. Thus, the entire spectrum of experiences inhabited collectively by women placed under this category is erased. This article attempts to elucidate these arguments by focusing on West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. As two researchers from different locations, both disciplinary and socio-political, one a Savarna-feminist-ethnographer, the other a Dalit-feminist-legal-researcher, we then seek to understand what adopting a holistic anti-caste methodology rather than simply ‘doing intersectionality’, means while inhabiting both these locations.","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45421038","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Even as historical studies of the conceptualisation of the region in Tamil Nadu invariably trace it back to the early Dravidian movement, ‘region’ is seen as peripheral to Periyar’s radical anti-caste thought in existing scholarship. This flows from both a limited focus on the spatial aspects of Periyar’s thought and a narrow conceptualisation of space itself. Diverging from the dominant physicalist view of space, this article views Periyar’s politics of space as a radical attempt to subvert the cultural logic of hegemonic nationalism that sustained caste and its privileges through modernity. Outlining Periyar’s criticism of the nation as a ‘dominated space’, it explores Periyar’s conception of Dravida Nadu as an ‘appropriated space’ that attempted to further the pursuit of self-respect as a rationally conceived regional utopia. By doing so, the article tries to contextualise Periyar’s spatial thought not as secondary to his anti-caste politics but as its fullest expression.
{"title":"Periyar’s Spatial Thought: Region as Non-Brahmin Discursive Space","authors":"G. .","doi":"10.26812/caste.v3i1.358","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v3i1.358","url":null,"abstract":"Even as historical studies of the conceptualisation of the region in Tamil Nadu invariably trace it back to the early Dravidian movement, ‘region’ is seen as peripheral to Periyar’s radical anti-caste thought in existing scholarship. This flows from both a limited focus on the spatial aspects of Periyar’s thought and a narrow conceptualisation of space itself. Diverging from the dominant physicalist view of space, this article views Periyar’s politics of space as a radical attempt to subvert the cultural logic of hegemonic nationalism that sustained caste and its privileges through modernity. Outlining Periyar’s criticism of the nation as a ‘dominated space’, it explores Periyar’s conception of Dravida Nadu as an ‘appropriated space’ that attempted to further the pursuit of self-respect as a rationally conceived regional utopia. By doing so, the article tries to contextualise Periyar’s spatial thought not as secondary to his anti-caste politics but as its fullest expression.","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41792277","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Recent cases of caste-based workplace discrimination in Silicon Valley in the United States (US) have highlighted the practice of caste-based discrimination in the San Francisco (SF) Bay Area. Most documentation of caste-based discrimination in diaspora populations in the US has focused on the Indian diaspora, omitting the perspectives of Dalits from other South Asian countries. This study investigated caste-based discrimination among the Nepali diaspora living in the SF Bay Area. Twenty-seven Nepali-American Dalits in the SF Bay Area participated in qualitative research on their experiences of caste-based discrimination. Aligned with findings from studies of Dalit diaspora members in other settings, the research found that Dalits faced social exclusion, workplace prejudice, microaggressions, and housing bias in the Nepali diaspora in the SF Bay Area. To preempt or avoid discrimination, some Dalits hid their caste, and many did not feel comfortable taking action regarding caste-based discrimination because of the absence of caste as a protected category in their workplaces and in local government policies. Caste-based discrimination affected the Dalits’ mental health as well. The findings highlight the need for policy interventions for Dalits living in the SF Bay Area and facing caste-based discrimination within their diaspora communities.
{"title":"“When I tell them my caste, silence descends”: Caste-based Discrimination among the Nepali Diaspora in the San Francisco Bay Area, USA","authors":"Prem Pariyar, Bikash Gupta, R. Fonseka","doi":"10.26812/caste.v3i1.320","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v3i1.320","url":null,"abstract":"Recent cases of caste-based workplace discrimination in Silicon Valley in the United States (US) have highlighted the practice of caste-based discrimination in the San Francisco (SF) Bay Area. Most documentation of caste-based discrimination in diaspora populations in the US has focused on the Indian diaspora, omitting the perspectives of Dalits from other South Asian countries. This study investigated caste-based discrimination among the Nepali diaspora living in the SF Bay Area. Twenty-seven Nepali-American Dalits in the SF Bay Area participated in qualitative research on their experiences of caste-based discrimination. Aligned with findings from studies of Dalit diaspora members in other settings, the research found that Dalits faced social exclusion, workplace prejudice, microaggressions, and housing bias in the Nepali diaspora in the SF Bay Area. To preempt or avoid discrimination, some Dalits hid their caste, and many did not feel comfortable taking action regarding caste-based discrimination because of the absence of caste as a protected category in their workplaces and in local government policies. Caste-based discrimination affected the Dalits’ mental health as well. The findings highlight the need for policy interventions for Dalits living in the SF Bay Area and facing caste-based discrimination within their diaspora communities.","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48308900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay engages with Maadathy (dir. Leena Manimekalai, 2019) to explore how space is constructed as a marker of caste and interrogate the concomitant intersection of caste and gender in a divided community. Through the retooling of myth, Maadathy explores the horror at the heart of a patriarchal society that is invested in caste as a means of oppression, violence, and inequity. However, such a perverse agenda comes back to haunt the community, which is invested in destroying an adolescent girl without any concern for her desires and finally trying to deify her and find a way for the catharsis of their guilt. Untouchability runs as a subtext throughout Maadathy as Yosana and her family are marked, even more inhumanely and unjustly, as unseeable people, wherein the onus to be not seen falls on them. They are abused verbally and physically when they are going about their mundane chores. Nonetheless, the focus on the joyful demeanor of the pleasure-seeking Yosana through the Lacanian lens of the gaze initially enables the understanding of the yearning for subjective mastery from the other side of the village community whose men repeatedly target and try to contain her. However, Yosana’s gaze does not allow itself to be domesticated. The jouissance of Yosana, marking her singularity as the casteless adolescent girl, troubles those who want to contain and destroy her effervescence and, even after her death, continues to haunt them as they are blind to the impossibility of knowing the secret of her desire.
{"title":"Maadathy-An Unfairy Tale: Caste, Space, and Gaze","authors":"S. Eswaran","doi":"10.26812/caste.v3i1.365","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v3i1.365","url":null,"abstract":"This essay engages with Maadathy (dir. Leena Manimekalai, 2019) to explore how space is constructed as a marker of caste and interrogate the concomitant intersection of caste and gender in a divided community. Through the retooling of myth, Maadathy explores the horror at the heart of a patriarchal society that is invested in caste as a means of oppression, violence, and inequity. However, such a perverse agenda comes back to haunt the community, which is invested in destroying an adolescent girl without any concern for her desires and finally trying to deify her and find a way for the catharsis of their guilt. Untouchability runs as a subtext throughout Maadathy as Yosana and her family are marked, even more inhumanely and unjustly, as unseeable people, wherein the onus to be not seen falls on them. They are abused verbally and physically when they are going about their mundane chores. Nonetheless, the focus on the joyful demeanor of the pleasure-seeking Yosana through the Lacanian lens of the gaze initially enables the understanding of the yearning for subjective mastery from the other side of the village community whose men repeatedly target and try to contain her. However, Yosana’s gaze does not allow itself to be domesticated. The jouissance of Yosana, marking her singularity as the casteless adolescent girl, troubles those who want to contain and destroy her effervescence and, even after her death, continues to haunt them as they are blind to the impossibility of knowing the secret of her desire.","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44539015","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Barishaler Jogen Mandal is a Bengali novel by Debes Ray, published in 2010 from Kolkata, India. The book revisits the socio-political arena of Bengal during the final decade of colonial rule by construing Namasudra politician Jogendranath Mandal (1904 –1968) as the central figure. This article studies the novel as a literary appendage to anti-caste thought—as an attempt to reclaim the Dalit history of the nation and re-establish the significance of J.N. Mandal in the history of anti-caste politics. My reading of the novel reflects Bakhtinian perspective of inseparability between form and content. The novel traces evolution of J.N. Mandal’s political disposition through novelisation of history, while addressing the nation building processes in late colonial South Asia and developing conceptual understanding of Dalithood in terms of imposed powerlessness as well as wisdom and culture acquired in the intimate connection they share with the habitat through everyday struggle for survival. I argue that the author develops his locus throughout the novel by adopting J.N. Mandal’s own standpoint. With adherence to a definite sudra perspective, the text navigates history, challenging many of the discipline’s standardised interpretations. It engages with the discourse of power by strategically situating itself at the peripheral locus of the Dalit life-world, and develops the narrative of power as it would appear from that fringe. By doing so, it effectually calls for a conceptual inversion of power, re-centring it in terms of Dalit history.
{"title":"Barishaler Jogen Mandal: Construal of the Undisputed Dalit Leader of Undivided Bengal through a Twenty-first Century Bengali Novel","authors":"S. Roy","doi":"10.26812/caste.v3i1.361","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v3i1.361","url":null,"abstract":"Barishaler Jogen Mandal is a Bengali novel by Debes Ray, published in 2010 from Kolkata, India. The book revisits the socio-political arena of Bengal during the final decade of colonial rule by construing Namasudra politician Jogendranath Mandal (1904 –1968) as the central figure. This article studies the novel as a literary appendage to anti-caste thought—as an attempt to reclaim the Dalit history of the nation and re-establish the significance of J.N. Mandal in the history of anti-caste politics. My reading of the novel reflects Bakhtinian perspective of inseparability between form and content. The novel traces evolution of J.N. Mandal’s political disposition through novelisation of history, while addressing the nation building processes in late colonial South Asia and developing conceptual understanding of Dalithood in terms of imposed powerlessness as well as wisdom and culture acquired in the intimate connection they share with the habitat through everyday struggle for survival. I argue that the author develops his locus throughout the novel by adopting J.N. Mandal’s own standpoint. With adherence to a definite sudra perspective, the text navigates history, challenging many of the discipline’s standardised interpretations. It engages with the discourse of power by strategically situating itself at the peripheral locus of the Dalit life-world, and develops the narrative of power as it would appear from that fringe. By doing so, it effectually calls for a conceptual inversion of power, re-centring it in terms of Dalit history.","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49589723","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rettaimalai Srinivasan (1860–1945), a Dalit leader in colonial India, argued that there were two kinds of freedom struggles being waged in the region–one against the British and the other against caste. His autobiography, published in Tamil in 1938, is likely the first Dalit autobiography, and along with his other papers, pamphlets, and speeches comprises a potent anti-caste archive that is yet to be studied. In these texts, Srinivasan defined untouchability as a complex of social and economic practices and emphasized the role of Dalit leadership in undoing these practices. As his work indicates, the freedom struggle against caste required a re-signification of caste names and untouchability itself and an increased representation of Dalit groups within governance. By seeking to turn the name of the Pariah caste into one that could be used with pride, he continuously grappled with the question of self-representation and an appropriate vocabulary to do so. His definition of untouchability as intimately linked with agrarian labour lies at the heart of his emphasis on the importance of Dalit representatives governing and leading people from these communities towards freedom.
{"title":"Struggling for Freedom from Caste in Colonial India: The Story of Rettaimalai Srinivasan","authors":"Malarvizhi Jayanth","doi":"10.26812/caste.v3i1.352","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v3i1.352","url":null,"abstract":"Rettaimalai Srinivasan (1860–1945), a Dalit leader in colonial India, argued that there were two kinds of freedom struggles being waged in the region–one against the British and the other against caste. His autobiography, published in Tamil in 1938, is likely the first Dalit autobiography, and along with his other papers, pamphlets, and speeches comprises a potent anti-caste archive that is yet to be studied. In these texts, Srinivasan defined untouchability as a complex of social and economic practices and emphasized the role of Dalit leadership in undoing these practices. As his work indicates, the freedom struggle against caste required a re-signification of caste names and untouchability itself and an increased representation of Dalit groups within governance. By seeking to turn the name of the Pariah caste into one that could be used with pride, he continuously grappled with the question of self-representation and an appropriate vocabulary to do so. His definition of untouchability as intimately linked with agrarian labour lies at the heart of his emphasis on the importance of Dalit representatives governing and leading people from these communities towards freedom.","PeriodicalId":72535,"journal":{"name":"Caste (Waltham, Mass.)","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42177995","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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