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The poet-saint Raskhān lived in the 16th/17th century C.E. Story has it he was born as a Muslim, but later converted to Krishnaism. This conversion took place because at first he was infatuated by a young boy, but later on transformed his love to a mystical devotion to the young cowherd god Krishna. Due to this conversion his mystical poems have a particular place in the bhakti cult of Northern-India. Raskhān's songs rank among the finest of Krishna poetry in Brajbhāṣā, the language the young god Krishna is supposed to have spoken when he lived on earth. It is the language of the pilgrimage site of Brindavan in Northern-India. Raskhāns songs are on the lips of many devotees up to the present day.
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.
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It has long been contended that the Indian Constitution of 1950, a document in English created by elite consensus, has had little influence on India’s greater population. Drawing upon the previously unexplored records of the Supreme Court of India, A People’s Constitution upends this narrative and shows how the Constitution actually transformed the daily lives of citizens in profound and lasting ways. This remarkable legal process was led by individuals on the margins of society, and Rohit De looks at how drinkers, smugglers, petty vendors, butchers, and prostitutes—all despised minorities—shaped the constitutional culture. The Constitution came alive in the popular imagination so mu...
This book is a study of the changing relationship over time (1856-1994) between the Rishi, an ex-Untouchable jati of Bengal/South-West Bangladesh, and various groups of Catholic missionaries. The book's originality and importance lies in its multi-disciplinary approach which combines anthropological fieldwork, historical research, philosophical enquiry and contemporary missiological debates. Moreover, it addresses issues of great current relevance in its discussions of Orientalism, Neo-colonialism and Otherness.
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