3 Review(s)

Manoj Mitta has written a superb and unsparing account of how the inherent violence of caste has been both perpetuated in new forms and challenged over the last two centuries. Drawing extensively on archival sources. Mitta weaves into one compelling narrative many crucial events during this period, highlighting not only well-known events but also relatively unknown aspects of these events, as well as many that are as yet unstudied or understudied even by scholars the use of stocks for disprivileged castes, the Caste Disabilities Removal Act of 1850, the passing of the first-ever law against untouchability in 1926 at the initiative of R. Veerian, Ambedkar's crucial but little known role in a 1929 bill that sought to throw temples open to Dalits, the dilution of the 1955 Untouchability Offences Act despite Ambedkar's and Raman Velayudhan's warnings. In the process, he also rescues from obscurity many pivotal but now forgotten moments and actors. What makes Mitta's book all the more topical is that he often traces the unfolding of these events into our present. And while the book is addressed to a general audience, scholars too will find it an extraordinarily generative read, one that opens up new avenues for further exploration. As a narrative of the events that have made caste what it is today, this book is indispensable; there is simply no equivalent to it.