Viramma is an agricultural worker and midwife in Karani, a village near Pondicherry in southeast India. Viramma is a member of the caste called Untouchable. Of her 12 children, only three survive. Viramma's story--told over the course of 10 years--is a vivid portrayal of a proud and expressive woman living at the margins of society. 12 photos.

'In this English translation, Moon's story is usefully framed by apparatus necessary to bring its message to even those taking their first look at South Asian culture...The result is an easy to digest short-course on what it means to be a Dalit, in the words of one notable Dalit.'-Journal of Asian Studies

This is the first Indian edition of this remarkable book, which created a great impact in France and was subsequently translated into English and Italian. The Indian edition carries a fresh Afterword by Jean-Luc and Josiane Racine.

Omprakash Valmiki describes his life as an untouchable, or Dalit, in the newly independent India of the 1950s. "Joothan" refers to scraps of food left on a plate, destined for the garbage or animals. India's untouchables have been forced to accept and eat joothan for centuries, and the word encapsulates the pain, humiliation, and poverty of a community forced to live at the bottom of India's social pyramid. Although untouchability was abolished in 1949, Dalits continued to face discrimination, economic deprivation, violence, and ridicule. Valmiki shares his heroic struggle to survive a preordained life of perpetual physical and mental persecution and his transformation into a speaking subject under the influence of the great Dalit political leader, B. R. Ambedkar. A document of the long-silenced and long-denied sufferings of the Dalits, Joothan is a major contribution to the archives of Dalit history and a manifesto for the revolutionary transformation of society and human consciousness.

While many studies suggest that Indian Untouchables do not entirely share the hierarchical values characteristic of the caste system, Michael Moffatt argues that the most striking feature of the lowest castes is their pervasive cultural consensus with those higher in the system. Though rural Untouchables question their particular position in the system, they seldom question the system as a whole, and they maintain among themselves a set of hierarchical conceptions and institutions virtually identical to those of the dominant social order. Based on fourteen months of fieldwork with Untouchable castes in two villages in Tamil Nadu, south India, Professor Moffatt's analysis specifies ways in which the Untouchables are both excluded and included by the higher castes. Ethnographically, he pursues his structural analysis in two related domains: Untouchable social structure, and Untouchable religious belief and practice. The author finds that in those aspects of their lives where Untouchables are excluded from larger village life, they replicate in their own community nearly every institution, role, and ranked relation from which they have been excluded. Where the Untouchables are included by the higher castes, they complete the hierarchical whole by accepting their low position and playing their assigned roles. Thus the most oppressed members of Indian society are often among the truest believers in the system. Originally published in 1979. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Now updated: An “eminently readable, highly engaging” anthology about the lives of ordinary citizens in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka (Margaret Mills, Ohio State University). For the second edition of this popular textbook, readings have been updated and new essays added. The result is a timely collection that explores key themes in understanding the region, including gender, caste, class, religion, globalization, economic liberalization, nationalism, and emerging modernities. New readings focus attention on the experiences of the middle classes, migrant workers, and IT professionals, and on media, consumerism, and youth culture. Clear and engaging writing makes this text particularly valuable for general and student readers, while the range of new and classic scholarship provides a useful resource for specialists.

In Flesh and Fish Blood Subramanian Shankar breaks new ground in postcolonial studies by exploring the rich potential of vernacular literary expressions. Shankar pushes beyond the postcolonial Anglophone canon and works with Indian literature and film in English, Tamil, and Hindi to present one of the first extended explorations of representations of caste, including a critical consideration of Tamil Dalit (so-called untouchable) literature. Shankar shows how these vernacular materials are often unexpectedly politically progressive and feminist, and provides insight on these oft-overlooked—but nonetheless sophisticated—South Asian cultural spaces. With its calls for renewed attention to translation issues and comparative methods in uncovering disregarded aspects of postcolonial societies, and provocative remarks on humanism and cosmopolitanism, Flesh and Fish Blood opens up new horizons of theoretical possibility for postcolonial studies and cultural analysis.