The Untouchables: Subordination, Poverty and the State in Modern India

by Oliver Mendelsohn , Marika Vicziany

• ISBN13: 9780521553629
• ISBN10: 0521553628
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-05-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

In a sensitive and compelling account of the lives of those at the very bottom of Indian society, Oliver Mendelsohn and Marika Vicziany explore the construction of the Untouchables as a social and political category, the historical background which led to such a definition, and their position in India today. The authors argue that, despite efforts to ameliorate their condition on the part of the state, a considerable edifice of discrimination persists on the basis of a tradition of ritual subordination. Even now, therefore, it still makes sense to categorise these people as 'Untouchables'. The book promises to make a major contribution to the social and economic debates on poverty, while its wide-ranging perspectives will ensure an interdisciplinary readership from historians of South Asia, to students of politics, economics, religion and sociology.

Table of Contents

List of tables	x	(1)
Glossary	xi	(6)
Preface	xvii
1 Who are the Untouchables?	1	(43)
2 The question of the `Harijan atrocity'	44	(33)
3 Religion, politics and the Untouchables from the nineteenth century to 1956	77	(41)
4 Public policy I: adverse discrimination and compensatory discrimination	118	(29)
5 Public policy II: the anti-poverty programs	147	(29)
6 The new Untouchable proletariat: a case study of the Faridabad stone quarries	176	(27)
7 Untouchable politics and Untouchable politicians since 1956	203	(35)
8 The question of reservation: the lives and careers of some Scheduled Caste MPs and MLAs	238	(20)
9 Subordination, poverty and the state in modern India	258	(14)
Bibliography	272	(12)
Index	284