"A timely and important contribution to the study of modern India....[Rawat] 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
"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
Often identified as leatherworkers or characterized as a criminal caste, Chamars of North India have long been stigmatized as untouchables. Ramnarayan S. Rawat shows that in fact the majority of Chamars have always been agriculturalists, and their association with the ritually impure occupation of leatherworking has largely been constructed through Hindu, colonial, and postcolonial representations of untouchability. Rawat undertakes a comprehensive reconsideration of the history, identity, and politics of this important Dalit group, pointing the way toward a new history of untouchability itself. Using Dalit vernacular literature, local-level archival sources, and interviews in Dalit neighborhoods, He reveals a previously unrecognized Dalit movement which has flourished in North India from the earliest decades of the 20th century and which has recently achieved majorpolitical successes.
