Permanent Black

BOOK LAUNCH DALIT STUDIES, edited by Ramnarayan S. Rawat and K. Satyanarayana FRIDAY, 22, JULY 2016, 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. Gulmohar Hall, 1st Floor, Indian Habitat Centre Lodi Road, New Delhi (Entry Gate #3) Appetizers & Drinks 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. Also at English and Foreign Language University (EFLU), Hyderabad, July 26 2016 in the afternoon -- time to be specified.

RG on 13 July 2016 with the new edn of his old classic. Photo courtesy Rudrangshu Mukherjee On 13 July 2016, Rudrangshu Mukherjee visited Vienna and presented Ranajit Guha with the  'first copy' of the new edition. This new edition includes two newly commissioned essays on A Rule of Property for Bengal, one each by Partha Chatterjee and Rudrangshu Mukher jee “. . . a pioneering work on the intellectual origins  of [the Permanent Settlement]”— Holden Furber  (1964) This third, attractively re-set, edition of a seminal work that has been in print since 1963 includes two new essays by Partha Chatterjee and Rudrangshu Mukherjee. Together, they position this book within Indian historiography and reveal precisely why it remains indispensable for anyone involved in thinking seriously about colonial rule and the making of modern South Asia. The infamous Permanent Settlement of Bengal in the eighteenth century was th...

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 o...