Dalit studies

The academic field of Dalit studies is relatively new, emerging since the 1990s in South Asia and in diasporic communities. Dalit intellectuals theorize Indian historiography and social sciences through the lenses of humiliation and dignity, pointing to the painful history of Dalit groups (formerly called untouchables) and the contemporary perpetuation of caste inequality. As part of a challenge to high-caste Hindu intelligentsia with privileged upbringings, DALIT STUDIES includes a high proportion of Dalit scholars from non-elite social and institutional backgrounds. Contributors analyze the work of Dalit activists across colonial and postcolonial periods, countering a tradition of viewing them as passive victims and objects of reform.

Dalit studies: new perspectives on Indian history and society / Ramnarayan S. Rawat and K. Satyanarayana -- The Indian Nation in its egalitarian conception / Gopal 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 -- Probing 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 / Shyam Babu -- From Zaat to Qaum: fluid contours of the Ravi Dasi identity in Punjab / Surinder S. Jodhka.