Permanent Black

Anupama Rao The Caste Question Dalits and the Politics of Modern India This innovative work of historical anthropology explores how India's Dalits, or ex-untouchables, transformed themselves from stigmatized subjects into citizens. Anupama Rao’s account challenges standard thinking on caste as either a vestige of precolonial society or an artifact of colonial governance. Focusing on western India in the colonial and postcolonial periods, she shines a light on South Asian historiography and on ongoing caste discrimination, to show how persons without rights came to possess them and how Dalit struggles led to the transformation of such terms of colonial liberalism as rights, equality, and personhood. Extending into the present, the ethnographic analyses of The Caste Question reveal the dynamics of an Indian democracy distinguished not by overcoming caste, but by new forms of violence and new means of regulating caste. “Anupama Rao has written a powerful book on caste, a ...

Sunset view of Trishul (extreme left) and Nanda Devi (extreme right) from the Permanent Black office, Ranikhet Thought-provoking signboard at golf course, Ranikhet THIS BLOGSPOT HAS BEEN AROUND FOR ABOUT TWO YEARS, and Permanent Black for TEN. Over these years we've published 300+ books, hardbacks and paperbacks combined. The list speaks for itself, its high quality is internationally recognized. Permanent Black was recently chosen by the University of California Press at Berkeley, Chicago University Press, and Columbia University Press, to be the South Asia copublisher of their collective new series titled 'South Asia Across Disciplines' (General Editors: Sheldon Pollock, Dipesh Chakrabarty, and Sanjay Subrahmany am)