Hinduism and politics; Dalits; Hinduism and culture; Postcolonialism; Religion and politics; Ethnology; South Asians
摘要
In its Constitution, postcolonial India acknowledges the caste-based practice of "untouchability" as a social and historical wrong, and seeks to redress the effects of this wrong through compensatory discrimination. Dalits are recognized by the state as having suffered the effects of untouchability, and thus as eligible for statutory protections and remedial measures, on the condition that they profess no religion "different from the Hindu religion" (a condition later expanded to include Sikhism and Buddhism as well). The present work charts the career of the idea underlying this condition of recognition - the idea that the "untouchable," insofar as she has not converted to Islam, Christianity, or another "world religion," must be Hindu - and its consequences, from the late nineteenth century to the present. Historically and ethnographically grounded in the community life of the sanitation labor castes - those Dalits castes that perform the vast majority of South Asia's sanitation work - in the north Indian city of Lucknow, the study tracks the idea from its ruptive colonial beginnings to its propagation by Hindu nationalists, induction into mainstream nationalism and installation in the edifice of postcolonial law. This is also an account of the everyday effects of postcolonial India's regime of recognition in the present: what it confers, what it transforms, what hides in its shadows.
目次
Part 1 Chapter I. Introduction: The Politics of Pahchān 1
Part 2 Chapter III. Autonomy and Alterity: the Cult of Lal Beg in Colonial India, c. 1880-1920 81 Chapter IV. Making “Untouchables” Hindu: Congress, the Arya Samaj, and the Harijan Sevak Sangh, 1917-1950 122 Chapter V. Hinduization and its Discontents: Lucknow, 1947-2011 184
Part 3 Chapter VI. Valmiki on Parade 242 Chapter VII. At the Shrine of Lal Beg 266 Conclusion: Deceiving Power 288 References 296
