Full Description
The history of untouchability remains a subject yet to be fully explored, scrutinized and reconstructed, and not without tremendous effort. In unraveling the elements of this complex socio-historical fabric, several questions and circumstances are salient. To begin with, what is the origin of the social discrimination that continues to be perpetrated upon certain social groups? What has been the relationship between social discrimination and the concept of pollution or sin? These problems have special relevance to the emergence of socially discriminated groups in ancient India like Ca]n]dala. What, then, is the difference between social discrimination in ancient India and untouchability in medieval India? The formative process of untouchability is still clouded in this regard with the darkness or obscurity history. The focal point of this process might be assumed to be the post-Gupta period, but only a more minute investigation will lead to its confirmation. Then again, what is the reality of social discrimination against the depressed castes in medieval India? Its historical change and areal diversity poses a perplexing issue.
Contents
Preface vii
Contributors ix
I: UNTOUCHABILITY IN HISTORY
I Introduction: Social Discrimination in Ancient India and its Transition to the Medieval Period GEN'ICHI YAMAZAKI 3
2 The Untouchables in Tamil Inscriptions and other Historical Sources in Tamil Nadu NOBORU KARASHIMA 21 3 The Chamars of South-eastern Rajasthan A.D. 1650-1800 MASANORI SATO 31
4 Ati gridra Castes in the Medieval Deccan HIROYUKI KOTANI 55
II: THE DEPRESSED CASTES UNDER BRITISH COLONIAL RULE
5 Introduction: Legal Status of the Depressed Castes under British Colonial Rule HIROYUKI KOTANI 79
6 The Untouchables and Economic Change in a Dry Village in South India TSUKASA MIZUSHIMA 85
7 Conflict and Controversy over the Mahar Vatan in the Nineteenth-Twentieth Century Bombay Presidency HIROYUKI KOTANI 105
III: LIBERATION MOVEMENTS OF THE DEPRESSED CASTES
8 Introduction: Circumstances Surrounding and Problems Underlying Liberation Movements of the Depressed Castes MA SAO NAITO 133
9 Some Aspects of the Tiyyas""Caste' Movement with Special Reference to British Malabar TOSHIE AWAYA 139
10 Anti-Untouchability Ideologies and Movements in Maharashtra from the Late Nineteenth Century to the 1930s MASAO NAITO 169
11 Pushed towards the Partition: Jogendranath Mandal and the Constrained Namasudra Movement MASAYUKI USUDA 221
12 Untouchable or Scheduled Castes? A Gram Panchayat Election in West Bengal in 1993 MASAHIKO TOGAWA 275
