Focusing on western India in the colonial and postcolonial periods, this work shines a light on South Asian historiography and on 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.

List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments Author's Note Introduction Part One. Emancipation 1. Caste Radicalism and the Making of a New Political Subject 2. The Problem of Caste Property 3. Dalits as a Political Minority Part Two. The Paradox of Emancipation 4. Legislating Caste Atrocity 5. New Directions in Dalit Politics: Symbologies of Violence, Maharashtra, 1960--1979 6. The Sexual Politics of Caste: Violence and the Ritual-Archaic 7. Death of a Kotwal: The Violence of Recognition Epilogue: Dalit Futures List of Abbreviations Notes Index

"A powerful book on caste, a subject that has dramatic importance not only for the history of democracy in modern India, but for the general discussion on the interferences of social inequalities and cultural exclusions. The Caste Question goes beyond the usual antitheses of localism and globalism, and illustrates a decisive notion of intensive universality."—Etienne Balibar"A sustained and probing analysis of the modern history of caste in Western India, connecting issues of gender, personhood, property, and politics to facts of oppression and inequality. This is the most politically and theoretically engaged book on caste to have come out in a long time."—Dipesh Chakrabarty, author of Habitations of Modernity"A profound reflection, at once historically rich and theoretically nuanced, on the nature of political modernity itself."—John Comaroff, co-author (with Jean Comaroff) of Of Revelation and Revolution"Rao is entirely convincing in this brilliant and audacious re-evaluation of political modernity in India through the perspective of anti-caste struggles."—Mrinalini Sinha, author of Specters of Mother India: The Global Re-Structuring of an Empire