Subaltern Perspectives In Indian Context

The linguistic origin of the term Dalit is Marathi, and pre-dates the militant-intellectual Dalit Panthers movement of the 1970s. It was not in popular use till the last quarter of the 20th century, the origin of the term Dalit, although in the 1930s, it was used as Marathi-Hindi translation of the word "Depressed Classes". The changing nature of caste and Dalits has become a topic of increasing interest in India. This edited book is a collection of originally written chapters by eminent experts on the experiences of Dalits in India. It examines who constitute Dalits and engages with the mainstream subaltern perspective that treats Dalits as a political and economic category, a class phenomenon, and subsumes homogeneity of the entire Dalit population. This book argues that the socio-cultural deprivations of Dalits are their primary deprivations, characterized by heterogeneity of their experiences. It asserts that Dalits have a common urge to liberate from the oppressive and exploitative social arrangement which has been the guiding force of Dalit movement. This book has analysed this movement through three phases: the reformative, the transformative and the confrontationist. An exploration of dynamic relations between subalternity, exclusion and social change, the book will be of interest to academics in the field of sociology, political science and contemporary India.

Inspired by Antonio Gramsci’s writings on the history of subaltern classes, the authors in Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial sought to contest the elite histories of Indian nationalists by adopting the paradigm of ‘history from below’. Later on, the project shifted from its social history origins by drawing upon an eclectic group of thinkers that included Edward Said, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida. This book provides a comprehensive balance sheet of the project and its developments, including Ranajit Guha’s original subaltern studies manifesto, Partha Chatterjee, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Gayatri Spivak.

Today gender studies as an interdisciplinary academic field has gained much momentum in India. Contrary to conventional idea that a person born either as a boy or a girl must conform to his or her sex in his or her growth, dress and behaviour, modern Indian outlooks have rather started changing with the fast approaching new gender free world crowded with agender, bigender, genderfluid, genderqueer, non-binary and third gender people against conventional gender binary- male and female. Last few years, apart from schemes for women’s security and empowerment, have also seen the announcement of many welfare schemes for the health and well-being of third gender people of India and decriminalisation of homosexuality from Indian soil. With same spirit, the present anthology is an endeavour to shed some light on the glaring issues of rape, abuse, discrimination, exploitation and violence arising out of gender essentialism in Indian context. The anthology, with an aim to serving larger sections of humanity, covers twenty seven multidisciplinary articles hardly missing any aspect untouched from this field of study in Indian context.

First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book situates public theology within the genre of political theology. Drawing upon the distinct strands of political theologies identified by Daniel M. Bell, Jr., Gnana Patrick treats public theology as the form of political theology for our contemporary era and takes special care to relate these strands of political theologies to the Indian context, thereby opening up the theological horizon for Indian public theology. Further, Public Theology dwells upon certain prominent features of our contemporary global world and discerns the human need for experiencing transcendence today. Taking faith to be the catalyst for this experience of transcendence, it points to civil society as the interstice through which faith can be imparted to the contemporary world. And, it argues for the relevance of public theology for that work.

The expression Subaltern had been used by Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci in his celebrated notes on PRISON DIARY but it is interpreted in a different way in this book. The concept includes caste, color, gender and class. It is not economic category but a cultural one. It is different from Marxist interpretation of the term Proletariat. Marxist Morality is class bound: Subaltern morality is not class bound. An attempt to deconstruct the age old Egalitarian Morality, the author proposes morality of those who are besides the circle and suggests a postmodern vision to understand subaltern morality. Offering challenging insights into conception of Global justice, the author subscribes to Aristotelian contention of distributive justice where equals are treated equally and unequal are treated unequally.