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Leather was an important commodity for the British empire in terms of industrial production and scientific innovation. From the mid nineteenth century in India, the British sought to convert leatherwork into a scientific industry. Leather, however, also has a life in caste. The profound stench inherent to the process of leather tanning marks leather workers as polluted. Examining archival material and contemporary ethnography from Uttar Pradesh, this paper examines how the scientific colonial intervention in leatherwork was made complicated due to the sensorial politics of caste. The leather chemist, trained to impart scientific knowledge to leather workers, often failed to negotiate the caste-based sensorial nature of leatherwork, thereby allowing caste to limit the reach of modern science in the industry. Understanding this interaction between colonial science and leatherwork has important consequences for our understanding of the politics of caste and scientific knowledge in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

May 2015 witnessed the Dangawas massacre in Rajasthan's Nagaur district, one of the most brutal caste atrocities in recent Indian history, which resulted in the death of five Dalits of the Meghwal caste at the hands of a Jat mob. Across Rajasthan, the violence of Dangawas, which marked the culmination of a decades-long land conflict, has become synonymous with the continuing reality of caste-based violence and the law that is meant to address it: The 1989 SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act. However, Meghwal survivors in Dangawas often articulate scepticism about the ability of law to provide them with a true sense of restitution. Emphasising a desire for social space (jagah), which they map onto the land at the root of the bloodshed, Dangawas' Meghwal survivors are caught in a post-traumatic moment marked by fear of further suffering. The memory of inconceivable violence, which has left them alienated in a divided village, has not only made renewed attempts of assertion, and demands for radical justice temporarily inconceivable, but has also led Dangawas' survivors to ask questions about their own agency and the meaning of sociality in an environment where members of a dominant caste still see themselves as guarantors of economic and social belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What place does the caste system have in modern India with its globally integrating market economy? The most influential anthropological approaches to caste have tended to emphasize caste as India's traditional religious and ritual order, or (treating such order as a product of the colonial encounter) as shaped politically, especially today by the dynamics of caste-based electoral politics. Less attention has been paid to caste effects in the economy. This article argues that the scholarly framing of caste mirrors a public-policy 'enclosure' of caste in the non-modern realm of religion and 'caste politics', while aligning modernity to the caste-erasing market economy. Village-level fieldwork in South India finds a parallel public narrative of caste either as ritual rank eroded by market relations or as identity politics deflected from everyday economic life. But, locally and nationally, the effects of caste are found to be pervasive in labour markets and the business economy. In the age of the market, caste is a resource, sometimes in the form of a network, its opportunity-hoarding advantages discriminating against others. Dalits are not discriminated by caste as a set of relations separate from economy, but by the very economic and market processes through which they often seek liberation. The caste processes, enclosures, and evasions in post-liberalization India suggest the need to rethink the modernity of caste beyond orientalist and post-colonial frameworks, and consider the presuppositions that shape understanding of an institution, the nature and experience of which are determined by the inequalities and subject positions it produces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1884, Charles Webb, a European employee of a steam transportation company in Assam, sexually assaulted and killed Sukurmani, a woman who had left Bengal with her family to work on a tea plantation. The district magistrate dismissed most of the charges against Webb, assessing only a modest fine for wrongful confinement, and, though the case was appealed and brought to the attention of the viceroy, ultimately this verdict was upheld. The Webb case, as it became known in the Indian press, galvanized public opinion in India, as discussion of the case overlapped with discussion of the controversial Ilbert Bill of the previous year. This article traces the Webb case as it made its way through the courts and newspapers, arguing that a close study of this case reveals the ways that hierarchies of race, class, caste, and gender were constructed and were manifest in daily life. This article further argues that the treatment of the Webb case by the courts and later by the vernacular press indicates that sexual violence was a central element in nineteenth-century contests over colonial rule in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction outlines some of the key historiographical debates concerning caste, 'tribe' and criminality, and their relationship to the modern state, in South Asia. Although these social categories have long, complex and often inter-related histories rooted in indigenous and precolonial ideas and institutions, they emerged most forcefully as categories of governance in the legal-political system of the colonial and postcolonial states. These categories remained highly unstable, however. There was a clear disjuncture between forms of 'colonial' knowledge which structured legal categorization and everyday negotiations and contestations of the same. Using the example of India's so-called 'criminal tribes' - the 200 or so communities declared as criminals 'by birth' under the Criminal Tribes Act (1871) during the colonial regime - we consider broader debates over the governing of 'colonial' categories, and subaltern agency and resistance in their making, as a way of interrogating the complex relationship between the 'margins' and the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary India, the arena of identity politics and 'reservations' is highly contentious, with groups clamouring for official recognition within the categories of Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe or Other Backward Class. This article sheds new light on the wider processes of inclusion and exclusion among these categories by delineating the contested position of the so-called 'criminal tribes' within this framework. Until the 1920s, these criminalized communities were generally positioned as a separate group alongside 'untouchable' and 'tribal' communities, each of which was considered to have faced particular forms of disadvantage which demanded certain protections and 'uplift'. Between the 1920s and 1950s, however, this distinct status was withdrawn amid debates over the boundaries, purpose and indeed responsibilities of representation within the evolving framework of group rights. While there was continued recognition of their distinct status in debates over definitions of disadvantage (in terms of a shared history of criminalization), this did not translate into official recognition as a separate category of disadvantaged citizen after independence, thereby complicating these communities' ability to access the preferential policies inaugurated by the independent constitution in 1950. The article challenges the idea that these political categories are innate or fixed, and simultaneously historicizes the demands of the denotified (ex-'criminal') and nomadic tribe movement, which today campaigns for a separate constitutional classification within the 'reservations' regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the post-1857 context of an earlier plural Dravidian social and political landscape, this article highlights the efforts of Vanniyars during the period 1900–35 in Tamil Nadu to articulate their claims for social and political mobility. Such efforts entailed the process of creating and forming a Vanniyar self-identification within the context of complex forces operating at the larger and emerging national and regional levels at that time. Presenting these Vanniyar enunciations, the article argues against a tendency in scholarship to see pluralisation as a recent phenomenon associated with the post-1980s Tamil politics. It also places the developments in South India within the larger picture of Indians learning to become responsible citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is the second part of the understanding of caste in the Indian mode of production and the 'alternative revolution' that critical and revolutionary Marxism offers the non-Western world. Here one turns to Marx's original idea of the 'Asiatic mode of production', whereby we are able to ground the caste question within this mode. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based mainly on printed sources in Tamil, as well as interviews with Dalit activists, this article seeks to map current divergent attitudes of Dalits towards folklore and especially towards the drum. While most activists argue for the rejection of drumming as a symbol of oppression and untouchability, some try to use it as a means of mobilisation. Others speak in favour of the resignification of the instrument and its protection and preservation as a part of their cultural legacy, which they consider to be different from the mainstream. The article also sets out to correlate these attitudes with the ideology of the eradication of caste and points to the ensuing dilemmas connected with emphasising caste-based identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes Phoolan Devi's life in literature and politics, both of which place her at the intersection of caste and gender. It reads the literary representations of the sexualized violence that Phoolan Devi suffered in the context of the adjudicating discourses of the Indian Penal Code and Hindu law. Both of these discourses construct the raped woman as an originally pure woman whose modesty has been violated; literature, however, provides an alternate frame of value by repurposing myths such as the myth of the baghi, or folk revolutionary, that enable a dismissal of the constructions of secular and sacred law. This essay also analyzes Phoolan Devi's political life with the Samajwadi Party in which she invoked the myth of Eklavya, the undermined male low-caste hero. In her political life, Phoolan Devi sidestepped gender concerns and aligned herself with the right wing Hindutva movement, which implicitly endorsed the conservative gender politics that the literary representations of her story discount. This author concludes that while Phoolan Devi appears to be a gendered combatant in the arena of social injustice, her quest for political success profoundly compromises that agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nineteenth-century melas (fairs) were evanescent public spaces that facilitated anonymity and unplanned encounters between castes, classes, men and women. By recognizing caste-passing in various mela clusters, historians gain insights into a range of subaltern debates about caste. Caste-passing involved lower caste adoption of the accouterments of upper castes and threatened social hierarchy. Opaque to police, associational life within fairs signified a society undergoing transformation. The figure of the Pardhan blacksmith embodied the unknowable fair-going crowd. Hailing from an adivasi (indigenous) community in the Central Provinces of India, these blacksmiths attracted police notice. Pardhan blacksmiths deployed their skills towards manufacturing imitation gold; at the fair they passed off as members of upper castes. For the police, Pardhan caste-passing within fairs threatened to unravel taxonomies of tribe and caste, region and religion. It was at the fair that hounded and persecuted Pardhan blacksmiths found some respite from the theft of their lands and labour. Through an analysis of caste-passing, a social history emerges of nineteenth-century fairs in colonial India that foregrounds experiences of those fairgoers who were members of 'criminal tribes' persecuted by colonial police, and the plebeian multitude that mingled in melas and participated in anti-caste debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Down into the last decades of the twentieth century, Bihar remained India's poorest state and one under the domination of its landowning upper castes – a well-nigh hopeless case for development in the view of most outside observers. But in the 1990s, a fresh leader gained a new dignity for the Backward castes, even as the state's poverty and corruption continued unabated. And then in the mid-2000s, another Backward leader was able to combine this societal uplift with a remarkable level of economic development. This article in two parts endeavours to make a case that Nepal, long suffering under conditions similar to those hobbling Bihar until recently, might follow a similar two-stage path of dignity and then development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Anthropological studies of Indian villages conducted in the 1950s and 1960s form a valuable archive of rural life soon after India's independence. We compare sections of that archive with recent fieldwork in the same villages in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Odisha. If we trust the ethnography of the 1950s, domestic and caste spheres were the locations of village incivility. It is noteworthy that there is no reference in the early work to the Partition of the subcontinent that had occurred just a few years before. Neither is there mention of discrimination or violence carried out in the name of religion in these locations. New fieldwork reveals a different story about the rise of wholesale religious incivility in the public sphere. Caste has not vanished, but inter-caste relations have taken on new forms. We suggest that the intersection of affirmative action policies, political parties, and the systematic penetration of Hindu nationalist organizations has been crucial in the remaking of rural India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on relations between caste ideology, organization of space, and sense perception. The author talks about his ethnographic and archival research in the cities of Lucknow and Benares in Uttar Pradesh, India on Dalit religious history. It also cites reference of the book "Joothan: A Dalit's Life" by Omprakash Valmiki.

In the late seventeenth century Mughal India, Guru Gobind Singh and his Sikh army became politically and militarily opposed to the policies of Emperor Aurangzeb in the Punjab country. The Sikhs were not unique in this regard as across Aurangzeb’s Empire credible insurgencies began undermining Mughal authority. While an earlier historiography of this era reasoned that such revolts were caused by Aurangzeb’s abandonment of secularism for Islamic fundamentalism, contemporary research has provided a more nuanced analysis by exploring the history and ideas of the rebels. In this article, I explore how the Sikh community engaged in a dialogue on Kshatriyahood which was both specific to the Punjab country and similar to dialogues found across Mughal India. In addition, my article explores the social history of caste in medieval and early modern Punjab and the contested identities of Kshatriyahood and Brahminhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue of Contemporary South Asia seeks to capture the diversity and situatedness of the caste experience and deepen our understanding of caste dynamics and lives in the twenty-first century. In this Introduction, we highlight the continuing salience of caste, offer an overview of theoretical understandings of caste and foreground the importance of analysing caste in the present as a dynamic form of human relations, rather than a remnant of tradition. Following on from this, we highlight the increasingly global spread of caste and reflect on what happens to caste-based social relations when they traverse continents. In conclusion, we introduce the papers that make up this special issue. Taken together, they speak to changes in attitudes towards caste, but also the persistence of caste-based identities and dynamics in India and Britain. Even though the papers presented in this special issue work with the assumption of caste being a reality in and among the Indians, caste-like status hierarchies have existed in most, if not all, societies, and they continue to persist and intersect with other forms of differences/inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the research exploring democratisation of rural society has focused on changes occurring in the formal political process of elections. In contrast, this article examines the extent of democratisation and the decline of caste in rural society by investigating morality and interactions in diverse political spaces of a village in south India. Our findings suggest that although caste hierarchy and the ideology of patronage have lost their legitimacy in regulating interactions in the course of formal political processes such as elections and institutions of local administration, they continue to command the moral allegiance of village society in the domain of everyday social and political interactions. The study concludes that although there are significant discontinuities in the use of caste power in rural India, caste dominance continues to persist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Millions of people in India are born with scars that will last a lifetime. These are scars of social rather than physical blemish and they reduce the capacity of such persons to function in life, free of prejudice and untainted by stigma. The source of these wounds is the practice of 'untouchability', meaning that any physical contact with them is avoided because they are considered 'unclean'. This article studies the nature of households in India that admit to 'practising untouchability' - in the sense of avoiding contact with persons they regard as unclean - and contrasts such households with those that claim to be not 'practising untouchability'. Such a contrast is possible because the data used, which are from the Indian Human Development Survey, associate with each household a wealth of economic, social and demographic data. Consequently, it is possible to estimate the likelihood of a household practising untouchability, conditional upon the values pertaining to it of a number of relevant factors. These include its social group, its main source of income, the highest educational level of its members, its urban or rural location and its region of residence. The central finding of the analysis is that the practice of untouchability is determined more by the region in which a household is located than by the caste to which it belongs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

David Washbrook's influential early work on South India set the terms for much subsequent debate about caste, with its exploration of the key role of the colonial state in shaping caste ideologies and institutions. Over subsequent decades, historians and anthropologists have come increasingly to emphasise the 'colonial construction' of caste and its enduring legacies in post-colonial India. Yet there were also significant continuities linking the forms of colonial caste with much earlier regional histories of conflict and debate, whose legacies can be traced into the late colonial period. In particular, the juxtaposition between Brahman and non-Brahman itself was anticipated in a tradition of conservative social commentary that emerged in the Deccan Sultanate state of Ahmadnagar, and came to circulate widely through Banaras and western India during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This tradition of commentary acquired new salience during the nineteenth century. It entered the colonial archive as an authoritative source of knowledge, and also provoked early 'non-Brahman' intellectuals into a fresh engagement with its conservative social vision. In their attempts to rebut this vision, these intellectuals displayed a detailed knowledge of its social history and a deep familiarity with the judicial decisions through which it had been upheld in earlier centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A biography of Santram BA, a veteran Hindi writer and a radical caste social reformer from India, is presented. He was born in 1887 in Punjab, India and founded the Jat-Pat Torak Mandal (JPTM), an organization to break the caste system, in 1922. Topics discussed include Santram BA's autobiography titled "Mere Jeevan ke Anubhav" which translates to "Experiences of My Life".

Dalit women in colonial Western India shaped and were in turn transformed by the "interlocking technologies" of education, caste, community, gender, sexuality, and family. Two radical men--Jotirao Phide and Dr. B. R. Ambedkar--and Dalit women engaged with the "woman question," produced arguments for the empowerment of women, and emphasized their indispensable role in the political organization of the community. In so doing, Phule, Ambedkar, and Dalit women reimagined the "generative" power of gender and the political realm and practiced "feminist technologies," which sought to not only restructure women's roles and establish an egalitarian relationship between women and men, but also explicate how political projects of constructing the nation and community were entangled with Dalit's sense of self, rights, self-respect, affect, anxiety, desire, and everyday life. Yet there were complications because these male-centered efforts were also contradictory and ambiguous. On the whole, these historically contingent discourses nevertheless enabled Dalit women's individual and collective agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rising cultural consciousness among Dalits in Punjab underpins recent endeavours to construct a distinct identity and cultural heritage. The article examines how this renovation of identity and culture, centred on claiming and gaining social esteem and self-respect, is visibly expressed in heritage construction, with important support through transnational diasporic connections. This article shows specifically how monetary and ideational inputs for construction of two Ad Dharmi jathera shrines have created an impressive monumental heritage that promotes and reflects rising cultural confidence among the Dalits in Punjab and generates enthusiasm in the whole community. This provides them assurances of a more respectable life, both at home and abroad, yet also introduces new divisions and diversities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the politics of lower castes and their struggles for social equality and political representation cannot be effectively subsumed under a homogenous non-Brahmin category. Contesting the argument that the mobilisation of the lower castes/non-Brahmins in southern India was organised around the ideology of Dravidianism, this research examines what is today called Dalit activism in the Telugu country, related to the ideology of Adi-Dravida/Adi-Hindu. It also identifies discrimination of Dalits as well as between Dalits, in times before Gandhi and Ambedkar appeared on the scene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the life of the noted Chindu Yakshagana performer, Yellamma, this article presents the lived experience of caste through the lens of India’s Dalits, as narrated by the Chindus, a dependent caste of Madigas of Telangana. This provides a glimpse into the inner world of caste-based relationships through analysis of a satellite caste system that remains inaccessible to the dominant Hindu Brahmanical world and most scholarship on caste. Satellite castes function as preservers of social memory and act as cultural archives, enacting caste histories and origin myths, while critiquing and inverting dominant perceptions and weaving positive stories. The article argues that there may well be much more to this performative protest than merely social subversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on sexual violence against men in India in the colonial period. Topics discussed include history of sexual violence, caste system in India and colonialism. Other topics which includes American slavery, sexual violence against Native American women and African American women are also discussed.

In the colonial anthropology of India developed in connection with the decennial censuses in the late nineteenth century, caste and religion were major topics of enquiry, although caste was particularly important. Official anthropologists, mostly members of the Indian Civil Service, reified castes and religious communities as separate 'things' to be counted and classified. In the 1911 and later censuses, less attention was paid to caste, but three officials - E. A. Gait, E. A. H. Blunt and L. S. S. O'Malley - made significant progress in understanding the caste system by recognising and partly overcoming the problems of reification. In this period, however, there was less progress in understanding popular religion. The Morley-Minto reforms established separate Muslim electorates in 1909; communal representation was extended in 1921 by the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms and again by the 1935 Government of India Act, which also introduced reservations for the Untouchable Scheduled Castes. Gait and Blunt were involved in the Montagu-Chelmsford debates, and Blunt in those preceding the 1935 Act. In the twentieth century, the imperial government's most serious problems were the nationalist movement, mainly supported by the middle class, and religious communalism. But there were no ethnographic data on the middle class, while the data on popular religion showed that Hindus and Muslims generally did not belong to separate communities; anthropological enquiry also failed to identify the Untouchable castes satisfactorily. Thus, official anthropology became increasingly irrelevant to policy making and could no longer strengthen the colonial state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims at providing a historical survey of the Punjab province during the British Raj. Apart from discussing the geographical importance, social-economic conditions of the province, it also gives a bird's eye view of the political consciousness of the Punjab landed elite and basic information of various ruling dynasties and their impact on history and the politics of the Punjab, which welcomed all other civilizations and cultures that had a considerable influence upon its economic, social and political landscape. Along with focusing on pin pointing socio-economic, political complexities of the British Punjab and the political status of various communities including the Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, it summarizes various reforms which were introduced by the British in the province to improve the condition of the people of the Punjab. The canal colonies, "Land Alienation Act" and their impacts on the Punjab population have been brought to light. The evolutionary political consciousness of the Punjab's landed aristocracy which contributed in war efforts during the World War-I and their loyalties with the British Raj because of various families of the Punjab landed elite were awarded and rewarded by it for their loyalties and services have been highlighted. It also sums up the Punjabi tribal chiefs' collaborative relationship with the British, which was a unique two-way process, rather than, as it is often elaborated, a top-down one way relationship for the economic amelioration of the Punjab. It covers the political and constitutional developments in the British Punjab particularly in the early 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The anthropology of caste was a pivotal part of colonial knowledge in British India in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Denzil Ibbetson and Herbert Risley, then the two leading official anthropologists, both made major contributions to the study of caste, which this article discusses. Ibbetson and Risley assumed high office in the imperial government in 1902 and played important roles in policy making during the partition of Bengal (1903–5) and the Morley-Minto legislative councils reforms (1906–9); Ibbetson was also influential in deciding Punjab land policy in the 1890s. Contemporary policy documents, which this article examines, show that the two men's anthropological knowledge had limited influence on their deliberations. Moreover, caste was irrelevant to their thinking about agrarian policy, the promotion of Muslim interests, and the urban, educated middle class, whose growing nationalism was challenging British rule. No ethnographic information was collected about this class, because the scope of anthropology was restricted to ‘traditional’ rural society. At the turn of the twentieth century, colonial anthropological knowledge, especially about caste, had little value for the imperial government confronting Indian nationalism, and was less critical in constituting the Indian colonial state than it previously had been. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed the fragmentation and transfer of Muslim-owned estates in the United Provinces to Hindus of non-agrarian castes. This was followed by increasing usage of the waqf by Muslim landowners. This study looks at land-holding patterns in the United Provinces and use a comparative analysis of Hindu and Islamic inheritance laws to explain why land was transferred during the second half of the nineteenth century from Muslims to Hindus. It posits that the implementation of Islamic inheritance laws in the mid-nineteenth century led to increased fragmentation of Muslim-owned estates. The study also suggests that waqf became popular among Muslim landowners because it fulfilled two crucial functions that the Hindu joint family had fulfilled for Hindu landowners: First, it prevented estate fragmentation by circumventing the implementation of Islamic inheritance laws. Second, the waqf shielded assets of landowners by increasing costs of creditors seeking to recover their loans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study provides an analysis of the legacy of Lal Ded, Kashmiri mystic and poetess, in the broad context of historical and social changes in medieval, XIV-century Kashmir. It was a significant period of time in the history of Kashmir, marked by shifts in power, social ferment, the beginning of gradual decline of Hinduism in Kashmir Valley to the advantage of Islam, transformation of Kashmiri society and its identity. Lal Ded is a unique phenomenon. This saint-poetess, who strongly rebelled against caste system, social and religious discrimination in medieval Kashmir, has been subsequently cherished as a saint and spiritual leader by Kashmiri Hindu and Muslim communities alike. Over the last six centuries, she has become a symbol of indigenous culture of Kashmir with its traditions of inter-faith and crosscultural connections and influences. The paper is particularly focused on her contribution to enriching mystic, spiritual traditions and cultural heritage of Kashmir and her profound impact on shaping Kashmiri society. The article approaches the topic in four major parts. The first part provides quick glance into Lal Ded's life in the early stage, the reasons for abandoning her family, starting the life of sage wanderer, and her influence on shaping the mindset of common people. The second part analyses historical background of the XIV century Kashmir with its ongoing political and social turmoil which had direct impact on Lal Ded's life and thought. The third part provides an insight to her thought and poetry in the context of social relations in Kashmir and the widely understood idea of syncretism in Kashmir. The fourth part looks at Lalla's influence on Rishi order with its founder Nund Rishi (Sheikh Nur-ud-Din), who is considered to be another important pillar of Kashmiri identity. To what extent has Lal Ded contributed to the propagation of Islam among Kashmiri followers of the Rishis? The conclusion summarizes the role and importance of Lal Ded's legacy in terms of relations between different religious communities with reference to contemporary Kashmir. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some Hindus are killing animals in larger numbers, more regularly, and in more spectacular fashions than they have ever done before. In contradiction of the ethnographic record asserting the diminishing significance of ritual killing since the nineteenth century, sacrifices to tutelary deities that had long been abandoned are being reactivated or enacted for the first time. However, such a counter-intuitive surge in the popularity of sacrifices is occurring at a time when the very deities to whom they are dedicated are apparently losing their potency. This seeming paradox, this article proposes, is an implication of both the entrenchment of electoral democracy and the material transformations accompanying economic liberalization in rural Tamil Nadu. In an electoral democracy, the political significance of tutelary deities—and consequently their charisma—has diminished. Their productive valence however, as exemplified in ritual sacrifices, has become ever more resonant in India's post-liberalization milieu, with its heightened sense of opportunity but also competitiveness and uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper challenges the broad consensus in current historiography that holds the Indian stereotype of criminal tribe to be a myth of colonial making. Drawing on a selection of precolonial descriptions of robber castes—ancient legal texts and folktales; Jain, Buddhist and Brahmanic narratives; Mughal sources; and Early Modern European travel accounts—I show that the idea of castes of congenital robbers was not a British import, but instead a label of much older vintage on the subcontinent. Enjoying pride of place in the postcolonial critics' pageant of “colonial stereotypes,” the case of criminal tribes is representative and it bears on broader questions about colonial knowledge and its relation to power. The study contributes to the literature that challenges the still widespread tendency to view colonial social categories, and indeed the bulk of colonial knowledge, as the imaginative residue of imperial politics. I argue that while colonial uses of the idea of a criminal tribe comprises a lurid history of violence against communities branded as born criminals in British law, the stereotype itself has indigenous roots. The case is representative and it bears on larger problems of method and analysis in “post-Orientalist” historiography. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

References to caste are common in religious texts from the classical period in South Asian history and even before. In the colonial era, caste was understood by the British as a defining characteristic of social life, and in independent India it has taken on new salience in the political mobilization especially of lower caste communities. Clearly, caste is an institution that must be reckoned with by students who seek to understand religion in India. This article will introduce some of the basics about caste, proceeding more or less in reverse chronological order from the more recent times backwards, with a section at the end on theories about caste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the founding myth of the Indian village of Puttaparthi in Andhra Pradesh through its use of complex narrative tropes and symbolisms, with additional discussion of its connection to the guru Sathya Sai Baba. Topics addressed include an overview of the various interpretations of the termite mounds, snakes and cows within the narrative, the village's associations with different Hindu castes, and the use of the myth by the guru Sathya Sai Baba.

This paper describes the introduction and development of intelligence testing in British India. Between 1919 and 1940 experimenters such as C. Herbert Rice, Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, and Venkatrao Vithal Kamat imported a number of intelligence tests, adapting them to suit a variety of South Asian languages and contexts. Charting South Asian psychometry's gradual move from American missionary efforts toward the state, this paper argues that political reforms in the 1920s and 1930s affected how psychometry was 'indigenized' in South Asia. Describing how approaches to race and caste shifted across instruments and over time, this paper charts the gradual recession, within South Asian psychometry, of a 'race' theory of caste. Describing some of the ways in which this 'late colonial' period affected the postcolonial landscape, the paper concludes by suggesting potential lines for further inquiry into the later career of intelligence testing in India and Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes issue with recent accounts of the evolution of Gandhian ideas that have stressed his importance as a global theorist of principled nonviolence. It suggests that throughout his life Gandhi's writings display a preoccupation with ideas of martial courage and fearlessness; his stance might best be defined as one of nonviolent “martiality” rather than nonviolence per se. His overriding goal was not to proselytize for global “ahimsa” (nonviolence) but to shape the Indian people into a nonviolent army that could wrest freedom from the colonizers. It explains this concern for both nonviolence and martial attitudes by arguing that Gandhi's thought has to be reassessed and placed within several important contexts: the widespread global popularity of militarism before 1914; an influential intellectual critique of Western “materialist” values; Asian nationalist efforts to develop “indigenous” forms of mobilizational politics in their struggles against imperialism; and Indian thinking about caste (varna), which was central to Gandhi's thought and has generally been neglected in the literature. These contexts help us to understand Gandhi's complex and sometimes contradictory thinking on the issue of violence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the interaction between a religious leader, the Aga Khan, and a cluster of castes, the Khojas, in Colonial India. While scholars have usually investigated the Bombay judicial sources, claiming that the Aga Khan Case of 1866 put an end to dissent among the Khojas who rejected his authority, the Karachi judicial sources provide a new perspective on the issues. It will be argued that the so called dissenters were fighting for the autonomy of the Khojas as a caste that they were able to keep in turning to Isna ‘Ashari. Therefore, this paper deals with how the British colonials attempted to control the people of India through the courts, but also how Indian actors used the courts for reaching their goals. Furthermore, the religious discourse through which the claims were expressed was but a shell concealing economic pursuits as well as issues of social rank. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Marriage is universal for women in India, but the marriage rate for men varies across regions, where the region is a proxy for shared cultural norms. A preference for sons results in a biased sex ratio towards men and creates a shortage of brides in the marriage market. Using the Indian census of 1931, the article finds that son preference was a regional phenomenon and led to a low marriage rate for men. Using caste-level information, the article finds no evidence that men from the upper castes enjoyed an advantage in the marriage market as the theoretical literature predicts. The regional differences in gender bias and marriage market outcomes have persisted over the twentieth century and indicate the persistence of cultural values. The long-run changes show that the marriage squeeze has reduced the surplus of men in all regions; however, the regional differences in son preference and marriage outcomes were still the same in 2001. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that despite some efforts by early missionaries, Christians in India have continued to practise various forms of caste prejudice. The multi-dimensional understanding of caste made this issue heavily contested, dividing the Christian communities into two major components of marginal Christians, later known as Dalit Christians, and elite Christians constituting largely Nadars and Vellalas in South India. Despite considerable missionary misgivings about caste identities and resultant discriminations, traditional differentiation carried on and took new forms. This article traces these debates and shows the challenges of opposing caste-based discriminations that continue today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent epigraphic discoveries shed new light on merchant groups in early medieval Bengal, a region whose history in the period from the mid-sixth to the thirteenth centuries is shrouded in obscurity. The present article attempts to provide a better delineation of this history with additional information from new inscriptions, and presents a transcription, translation and discussion of the Rajbhita stone inscription which records the activity of an association of merchants called vaṇiggrāma. The history of merchant groups in early medieval Bengal can be delineated as a process of the ruralization of urban elites in its early phase, and of the organization of merchants located in rural space towards specialized groups comparable to jātis in its later phase. The new inscriptions enable us not only to fill gaps with new information, but also give us perspectives from which we can go beyond unilineal simplicity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the idea of early modernity in India from the 16th to the 18th century, which contradicts the notion that modernity was introduced to the state during British colonial rule. The author explains that India contributed to a global community during the early modern period, which included developing trade networks throughout the Indian Ocean region. She discusses the social changes that were implicated during this time, explores the role of scribal specialists known as Brahmans, and examines the ethnic identities and religious cultures of India's peasants.

The article discusses the development of a sewer system in Ahmedabad, India, noting the relationship of sanitation to class and caste status. The use of the Bhangi untouchable caste to collect fecal matter as well as as employees in the city's sanitation department is noted. Other topics include the relation of sewers to the notions of progress and civilization, political aspects of the technological modification of Ahmedabad's sewage system, and the notion of disciplined bodies in relation to Bhangis.

This paper offers a gendered perspective to British domination in India through the British Indian Army—which in many ways was central to their entire structure of economic and political domination in India. Locating its understanding drawn from the political economy of south-east Punjab, it argues that the designated martial castes and military recruitment structurally and ideologically identified with and privileged those trends of existing masculinities in this region which suited their power structure and empire building. It was a constellation of marital caste status, land ownership, dominant caste syndrome and good bodily physique or physical strength that ideologically came to connect and configure dominant masculinity in colonial Punjab. An Army profession fully supported it. During the two world wars it emerged as the militarized masculinity, amply supported by legal and administrative measures introduced or apparently adopted in deference to certain popular cultural practices. The associated economic and political privileges turned ‘loyalty’ into an inherent and special ingredient of ‘masculinity’ which the nationalists had to confront and deal with till such times that it came to be firmly linked with nationalism and patriotism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Bridegroom price is extracting a heavy toll on the poor in rural Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, India. Poor households are becoming indebted and losing assets to pay the increasing amounts demanded by grooms at the time of their daughters’ weddings. Bridegroom price is a relatively recent phenomenon in the area, first practiced amongst scheduled and backward caste groups less than two decades ago. This article draws upon practice theory and cultural neo-institutionalism to offer an alternative explanation for the emergence and persistence of bridegroom price as a time, space and socially specific institution. Using empirical material from in-depth qualitative interviews in two villages in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh in 2010, it suggests that bridegroom price emerged as a result of shifts in the subjectivities of low-caste men, and in particular the evaluation of the self in relation to the social whole. The article seeks to contribute to existing explanations for bridegroom price and dowry, while also arguing that theoretically informed approaches are necessary in order to develop effective measures to combat these institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The development of dalit literature and history plays a vital part in the effort of dalit communities to (re)gain recognition in Indian society. Victims of multiform discrimination in the name of caste, dalits have used these areas of self-knowledge to assert themselves culturally and socially. Indian society and mainstream intellectuals continue, however, to deny the value and legitimacy of dalit historical and literary productions. There is a tendency to believe that dalits should be kept out of the mainstream and effectively silenced. Therefore, testifying through writings or oral narratives still requires courage and determination. It certainly seems to be a demanding ordeal for those paving the way for dalit expression. This article, based on oral history fieldwork conducted among dalit (Cakkiliyar) communities in Tamil Nadu, as well as on written testimonies, highlights factors preventing dalits from exercising freedom of speech and also discusses some reasons why dalits do decide to speak. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article tries to investigate as to what were the notions of economic theory informing the working of the state and society in medieval India in order to identify and explain the social contradictions manifested in Indian history. As a preliminary step in the direction of such an investigation, it aims at identifying the notions, popular, religious, as also those underlying rules framed by the sultans for regulating the economy in medieval India. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article tries to show how the study of the Indian state in the recent decades by focusing on the understanding of processes has led to a nuanced reading of the sources in their entirety, and coherent long-term view of early India, which at times disturbs some of our cherished notions of the past. These studies enrich our understanding insofar as they unravel the regional trajectories of socio-political transformations and locate them in the wider context of their trans-regional linkages. They straddle a wide range of issues ranging from vana–kṣetra and tribe–caste continuum, through hierarchisation of society and evolving structures of legitimation to expanding resource bases and questions of identity formation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article looks at the relationship between Hindu religious identity, masculinity, violence, and caste in colonial north India. Particular focus is given to the shuddhi and sangathan religious movements in the United Provinces (UP). According to the author, gender and especially masculinity became an important motif in these movements. It is suggested that they sought to strengthen supremacies of caste, religion, and gender and support both community identity and militant nationalism. Details related to the relationship between Muslims and Hindus in the UP are presented. Topics discussed include the role of Hindu women in the shuddhi and sangathan movements, abduction, and the Hindu revivalist and reformist movement Arya Samaj.

Maharaja Krishnachandra, the intermediary zamindar in eighteenth century Nadia, was famous for his liberal patronage to the Brahmins. He was a strict enforcer of caste codes in his domain. He built temples and organised many costly religious rites. However, such show off of liberality and lavish expenses for the religious rites coincided with a financial crisis of the zamindari. This article tries to show that the efforts of Krishnachandra, though appearing irrational or even suicidal from the economic viewpoint, were necessary for the maintenance of social control. It also helped him to retain his position of power among the rival big Hindu zamindars. This article tries to show that politics, not economic considerations, was the driving force in a political economy of crisis. The process engulfed the big zamindars in pre-colonial Bengal. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]