The Pariah Problem

Autorentext
Rupa Viswanath is professor of Indian religions at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies at the University of Gottingen and has held positions at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Cambridge. Her interests include national minorities and practices of minoritization, comparative secularisms, religion and empire, transnational religious movements, the relations among religions and forms of democratic practice, and political theory and the global south.

Klappentext
Once known as "Pariahs," Dalits are primarily descendants of unfree agrarian laborers. They belong to India's lowest castes, face overwhelming poverty and discrimination, and continue to be a source of public anxiety. Drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, this book follows the conception and evolution of the "Pariah problem" in public consciousness in the 1890s. It shows how high-caste landlords, state officials, and well-intentioned missionaries conceived of Dalit oppression and prevented substantive solutions to the "Pariah Problem" -- with consequences that continue to be felt today. The book begins with a description of the everyday lives of Dalit laborers in the 1890s and highlights the systematic efforts made by the state and Indian elites to protect Indian slavery from public scrutiny. Protestant missionaries were the first non-Dalits to draw attention to their plight. However, their vision of the Pariahs' suffering as a result of Hindu religious prejudice obscured the fact that the entire agrarian political-economic system depended on Pariah labor. The Indian public as well as colonial officials came to share a view compatible with missionary explanations, which meant all subsequent welfare efforts directed at Dalits focused on religious and social transformation rather than on structural reform. Methodologically, theoretically, and empirically, this book breaks new ground to demonstrate how events in the early decades of state-sponsored welfare directed at Dalits laid the groundwork for the present day, where the postcolonial state and well-meaning social and religious reformers continue to downplay Dalits' landlessness, violent suppression, and political subordination.

Inhalt
AcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsIntroduction1 Land Tenure or Labor Control? The Agrarian Mise-en-Scene2 Conceptualizing Pariah Conversion: Caste3 The Pariah--Missionary Alliance: Agrarian Contestation and the Local State4 The State and the Ceri5 Settling Land6 The Marriage of Sacred and Secular Authority: New Liberalism7 Giving the Panchama a Home: Creating a Friction Where None Exists8 Everyday Warfare: Caste9 The Depressed ClassesConclusion: The Pariah Problem's Enduring LegaciesGlossaryNotesBibliographyIndex

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