Dalit Studies: Book Launch

CASI-Related Event

Co-Sponsored by CASI & the Penn Department of South Asia Studies

Center for the Advanced Study of India
3600 Market Street, Suite 560 (5th floor)
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Presentation - 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.
Reception - 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.

with Co-Editor:
Ramanarayan Rawat
Associate Professor of History, University of Delaware


Penn Discussants:
Barbara D. Savage
Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought & Department Chair, Africana Studies

Michael Hanchard
Professor of Africana Studies

Ramya Sreenivasan
Associate Professor & Department Chair, South Asia Studies

Panel Chair:
Devesh Kapur
Director, CASI


Full synopsis:
Dalit Studies is based on the edited volume of papers presented at CASI's 2008 Dalit Studies Conference (co-sponsored with Center for Africana Studies, Department of South Asia Studies, and South Asia Center). The contributors to this major intervention into Indian historiography trace the strategies through which Dalits have been marginalized as well as the ways Dalit intellectuals and leaders have shaped emancipatory politics in modern India. Moving beyond the anticolonialism/nationalism binary that dominates the study of India, the contributors assess the benefits of colonial modernity and place humiliation, dignity, and spatial exclusion at the center of Indian historiography. Several essays discuss the ways Dalits used the colonial courts and legislature to gain minority rights in the early twentieth century, while others highlight Dalit activism in social and religious spheres. The contributors also examine the struggle of contemporary middle-class Dalits to reconcile their caste and class, intercaste tensions among Sikhs, and the efforts by Dalit writers to challenge dominant constructions of secular and class-based citizenship while emphasizing the ongoing destructiveness of caste identity. In recovering the long history of Dalit struggles against caste violence, exclusion, and discrimination, Dalit Studies outlines a new agenda for the study of India, enabling a significant reconsideration of many of the Indian academy's core assumptions.

Duke University Press (2016)
Editors: Ramnarayan S. Rawat, K. Satyanarayana
Contributors: D. Shyam Babu, Laura Brueck, Sambaiah Gundimeda, Gopal Guru, Rajkumar Hans, Chinnaiah Jangam, Surinder Jodhka, P.  Sanal Mohan

[Event Flyer]

The Nand & Jeet Khemka Distinguished Lecture Series is an endowed public program of the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI). Launched in the 2007-08 academic year, and made possible through the generous support of the Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation, the series brings renowned India specialists to the Penn community and serves as a critical forum for analyzing and understanding the complex economic, political, social, and cultural changes that the world’s largest democracy is experiencing, as well as the challenges that lie ahead.
The Saluja Global Fellows Program has been made possible by the generous gift from Vishal Saluja ENG’89 W’89. CASI was excited to launch the program during the 2022–23 academic year, coinciding with the Center’s 30th Anniversary. This new program enables CASI to invite eminent leaders and rising experts on contemporary India preferably from the fields of media, culture, law, and contemporary history to be in residence for one to two weeks at CASI.