Caste, Conflict and Ideology: Mahatma Jotirao Phule and Low Caste Protest in Nineteenth-Century Western India

by Rosalind O'Hanlon

• ISBN13: 9780521523080
• ISBN10: 0521523087
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-08-22
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The nineteenth century saw the beginning of a violent and controversial movement of protest amongst western India's low and untouchable castes, aimed at the effects of their lowly position within the Hindu caste hierarchy. The leaders of this movement were convinced that religious hierarchies had combined with the effects of British colonial rule to produce inequality and injustice in many fields, from religion to politics and education. This study concentrates on the first leader of this movement, Mahatma Jotirao Phule. It shows him as its first ideologist, working out a unique brand of radical humanism. It analyses his contribution to one of the most important and neglected social developments in western India in this period - the formation of a new regional identity. This process of identity formation is studied against the background of the earlier history of caste relations in this area of India, and contributes important evidence about the relationship between ritual status and political power.The movement itself provides a fascinating example of early Third World radicalism, illustrating the role of ideology and religion in the struggle against British colonial power.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Notes on translations and area under study, with map

Part I. Introduction: 1. Low caste protest in nineteenth-century western India

Part II. Religion and Society Under Early British Rule: 2. From warrior traditions to nineteenth-century politics: structure, ideology, and identity in the Maratha-kunbi caste complex

3. The crisis of cultural legitimacy: missionaries, reformers, and Hindu society in the mid-nineteenth century

4. The growth of religious reform opinion in western India

Part III. Jotirao Phule and his circle: the emergence of a distinctive radical voice: 5. Student radicals in mid-nineteenth-century Maharashtra

6. The Aryan invasions and the origins of caste society

7. Warriors and cultivators: the reinterpretation of popular culture

8. Maratha history as polemic: low caste ideology and political debate in late nineteenth-century Maharashtra

Part IV. The Lower Caste Community in Contemporary Society: 9. Religious emancipation and political competition

10. Social protest and the construction of a religious ethic

11. Traditional privileges and new skills: Phule's analysis of the nature of Brahman power

12. The Satyashodhak Samaj in the 1870s

Part V. Ideology and the Non-Brahman Movement in the 1880s: 13. Phule's polemic in the 1880s: the ideological construction of rural life and labour

14. The non-Brahman movement in the 1880s

15. Epilogue: ideology and politics in nineteenth-century western India

Bibliographic note

Bibliography

Glossary

Index.