Caste, Culture and Hegemony

This book looks at how the caste system has withstood resistance from below and survived the challenge of colonial modernity. By using empirical data from Bengal, it explores how Hindu caste society has sought to maintain its cultural hegemony and structural cohesion by frustrating reformist endeavours, by co-opting challenges by the Dalit and by marginalizing internal dissidence during the colonial period. It draws on case studies of early cultural encounters between 'high' Brahmanical tradition and the more egalitarian 'popular' religious cults of the lower castes. It also examines the Hindu 'Partition' campaign, which tended to appropriate dalit autonomous politics and made Hinduism the foundation of an emergent Indian national identity. The book will be of use to scholars and researchers of history, political science, religion, minority studies, gender studies and South Asian studies.

Sekhar Bandyopadhyay is Emeritus Professor of History at the Victoria University of Wellington, where he was previously the director of the New Zealand India Research Institute.

Introduction: Historiography of caste in Bengal Chapter 1. Caste and power: competing discourses in colonial Bengal Chapter 2. Caste and popular religion: revolt against hierarchy and its limits Chapter 3. Caste and social reform: the case of widow-remarriage Chapter 4. Caste and gender: social mobility and status of women Chapter 5. Caste and the territorial nation: Hindu nationalism, partition and the dalit Chapter 6. Hegemony, self-perception and liminality: Two dalit autobiographies