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Life as a Dalit
Views from the Bottom on Caste in India
First Edition
Edited by:
- Subhadra Mitra Channa - Scholar-in-Residence, University of South Carolina, USA
- Joan P. Mencher - Chair, The Second Chance Foundation
November 2013 | 492 pages | SAGE India
Life as a Dalit looks at caste society from the point of view of the Dalits, focusing on their worldview, emotions, and critical appraisal of their own position and of the higher groups. It is a volume based on the critical perspectives provided by scholars who have turned around the more acclaimed and accepted theories of caste society privileging the Brahmanical and textual interpretations of caste. It shows that those at the bottom have their own interpretations and follow a rationality that is tutored by their own life conditions and not what is fed to them from the top.
These views from the bottom are indicative of the way in which the oppressed live their lives, make critical judgments, and also stage protests, both symbolic and based on real violence against the oppressive system. The focus is more experiential and based on ground-level data-based chapters. It foregrounds the fact that history is created from the bottom of society as well as from the top and those at the bottom are their own agents and well aware of their subject positions.
These views from the bottom are indicative of the way in which the oppressed live their lives, make critical judgments, and also stage protests, both symbolic and based on real violence against the oppressive system. The focus is more experiential and based on ground-level data-based chapters. It foregrounds the fact that history is created from the bottom of society as well as from the top and those at the bottom are their own agents and well aware of their subject positions.
Subhadra Mitra Channa
I: THEORIZING MARGINALITY
Joan P Mencher
Nandu Ram
Joan P Mencher
Subhadra Mitra Channa
Joan P Mencher
Shyamlal
A Ramaiah
II: DOING FIELDWORK AMONG THE DALITS
Joan P Mencher
Subhadra Mitra Channa
III: RELIGION AND GENDER
Karin Kapadia
James Massey
G Aloysius
P Sanal Mohan
Ruth Manorama
Subhadra Mitra Channa
Bama
Kalpana Kannabiran, Vasanth Kannabiran
IV: FIGHTING THE SYSTEM: DALIT RESPONSES TO OPRESSION
Vasant Moon
J J Pallath
Badri Narayan
Saurabh Dube
G K Karanth
Walter Fernandes
Joan P Mencher
[The book] tries to take a look at caste from the bottom, rather than from the top...the recovery of the lost voices of the dalits is possibly the most important agenda behind the volume.