The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India

Shailaja Paik's book offers the first social and intellectual history of Dalit performance of Tamasha, highlighting how it represented the desire and disgust of the patriarchal society and was shaped through conflicts over caste, gender, sexuality, and culture. Dalit performers, activists, and leaders negotiated the violence and stigma in Tamasha to claim manuski (human dignity) and transform themselves from ashlil (vulgar) to assli (authentic) and manus (human beings). Paik examines the ordinary and everydayness in Dalit lives, demonstrating how the choices communities make about culture speak to larger questions about inclusion, inequality, and structures of violence of caste within Indian society.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 422 pages
Publication date: 25 October 2022
Publisher: Stanford University Press

This book presents the first social and intellectual history of Dalit performance of Tamasha, a popular form of public, secular, traveling theater in Maharashtra, and highlights the role of Dalit Tamasha women in the modernization of twentieth-century India. Drawing on ethnographies, films, and previously untapped archival materials, Shailaja Paik explores how Tamasha was produced and shaped through conflicts over caste, gender, sexuality, and culture. Dalit performers, activists, and leaders navigated the violence and stigma associated with Tamasha as they sought to reclaim their sense of human dignity and transform themselves from the vulgar to the authentic and human. By challenging the Ambedkar-centered historiography and movement-focused approach of Dalit studies, Paik examines the ordinary and everydayness of Dalit lives. Ultimately, she demonstrates how the choices communities make about culture have profound implications for issues of inclusion, inequality, and caste-based violence in Indian society, and offers new perspectives on the transformative potential of Dalit politics and the global history of gender, sexuality, and the human.

Weight: 644g
Dimension: 152 x 227 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781503634084