Challenging Untouchability : Dalit Initiative and Experience from Karnataka/edited by Simon R. Charsley and G.K. Karanth. 322 p., $27. ISBN 81-7036-721-2. [Cultural Subordination and the Dalit Challenge, Volume 1].
Contents: Preface. 1. Dalits and state action: the 'SCs'/Simon R. Charsley and G.K. Karanth. 2. Caste, cultural resources and social mobility/Simon R. Charsley. 3. Escaping domination: Rajapura's untouchables/G.K. Karanth. 4. Privilege and conformity: the Madars of Nuliyur/K.G. Gayathri Devi. 5. Female enterprise and male employment: Thigala Holeyas of Akkahalli/K.G. Gayathri Devi. 6. Checks to integration: AKs of Mahepura/Neil Armstrong. 7. Caste metamorphosis: the Korachas of Dharmapura/E.N. Ashok Kumar. 8. Increasing autonomy: the Harijans of Rateyur/Simon R. Charsley. 9. Upward mobility of class formation? Samagars of Jenubhavi/E.N. Ashok Kumar. 10. Beyond untouchability? Local experience and society-wide implications/G.K. Karanth and Simon R. Charsley. Glossary. Bibliography. Index.
"Fifty years after Indian independence and at the end of a momentous century, a puzzling combination of unyielding deprivation and successful self-assertion characterises that large section of the population known as Dalits (the erstwhile 'Untouchables'). Despite growing awareness and considerable political organisation among them, the Dalits still commonly lack the resources to provide an adequate material life for themselves or even secure a better future for their children through education. This volume, the first in a new series, constitutes an important effort to understand the paradoxical situation of the Dalits and to capture the realities at the grassroots.
"The contributors describe the status of rural untouchable cases and study their efforts to challenge the daily humiliations they face. They reveal the vitality of Dalit movements and the contribution they are making to reshaping Indian society. By focusing, within a theoretical and comparative framework, on a series of contrasting communities drawn from different regions of Karnataka, the volume provides a vivid and nuanced account of a section of the Indian population which is too often ignored when it is not grossly misrepresented and misunderstood.
"Among the aspects discussed are the initiatives of Dalits to break out of the limitations imposed by ancient traditions; the strategies devised by them and the cultural resources they draw upon; and both the successes and failures of these initiatives. The contributors delineate a range of distinctive local realities and provide explanations for their specificities in terms of local social formations and the impact of larger processes of socioeconomic change.
"Depicting the process of fundamental changes and the challenges of social mobility at the village level, this pioneering volume will be essential reading for those involved in Dalit studies, sociology, anthropology, political science, development studies and cultural studies. It will also be of value to NGOs, administrators and political and human rights organisations."
[Simon R. Charsley is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, University of Glasgow.
G.K. Karanth is Professor and Head, Sociology Unit, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore.]
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