About the Book
Untouchables have, for many centuries, occupied a very low place in Indian society, Even today, they are among the most subordinated and poorest people in the country. But, despite many efforts to ameliorate their condition, a considerable edifice of discrimination persists.
So far, scholarly accounts of untouchability have been few in number and limited to one aspect of the subject, or to observations in a single village or region. The present account offers a greater variety of academic perspectives and a broader range of observations on the subject than any previous publication.
Written with the needs of historians of South Asia to students of politics, economics, religion and sociology, it will have an interdisciplinary appeal too.
Contents
1. Agents of Dharma in a North Indian Village /
J. Michael Mahar2. Continuity and Change in an Ex-Untouchable Community of South India / Joan P. Mencher
3. The Marginal Laborer and the Harijan in Rural India / Walter C. Neale
4. Gandhi and Ambedkar: A Study in Leadership / Eleanor Zelliot
5. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar: Myth and Charisma / Owen Lynch
6. Scheduled Caste Budhist Organizations / Adele Fiske
7. The Satnamis: Political Involvement of a Religious Movement: Lawrence A. Babb
8. The Neo-Christians of Kerala / K.C. Alexander
9. The Neo-Christians of Kerala / K.C. Alexander
10. The Abolition of Disabilities: Untouchability and the Law: Mare Galanter
11. The Burden on the Head is Always There / Robert J. Miller & Pramodh Kale
12. The Man inside / Beatrice Miller
13. The Ex-Untouchables / Harold R. Isaacs
14. Pollution and Poverty / André Béteille
15. Conclusion / J. Michael Mahar
About the Author / Editor
J. Michael Mahar taps his experience gained in the early fifties in a North Indian community where he pursued his doctoral studies as a member of a Cornell University research team. He returned to the same village in 1968-69 for assessment of changes that had occurred during the intervening years. Mahar was on the University of Arizona faculty as professor of Oriental Studies. He is the author of India: A Critical Bibliography.
