Often identified as leatherworkers or characterized as a criminal caste, Chamars of North India have long been stigmatized as untouchables. In this pathbreaking study, 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. 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 major political successes.

Toward a new history of caste and untouchability

About the Author

Ramnarayan S. Rawat is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Delaware.

Reviews

"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

Book Information
ISBN 9780253222626
Author Ramnarayan S. Rawat
Format Paperback
Page Count 298
Imprint Indiana University Press
Publisher Indiana University Press
Weight(grams) 431g