Individual Paper
8. Negotiating Margins: Representations, Resistances, Agencies
My paper takes the “Untouchable Issue” of the radical Hindi magazine Chānd published in May 1927 from Allahabad, British India, as a key moment when the figure of the “Achūt” or the untouchable entered the mainstream public sphere, not as a first-person subject but as an object of upper-caste discourse. Chānd published this special edition in response to Gandhi’s call for the upliftment of “outcastes” but read today, this collection reveals the anxieties and limitations of upper-caste elite Hindu reformers. The near complete absence of the “untouchable” subject herself is a glaring blind spot that draws our attention to the nature of this early discourse on caste in north India which was marked by the absence of the voice of the caste-oppressed subject. In such a scenario, the opinions represented in such forums reflect the lacunae within caste-Hindu society and their inadequate engagement with lower caste groups, and more importantly, with the nature of caste itself. By taking this 200-page text as a case study, this paper demonstrates the shortcomings in the formulation of a normative and progressive anti-caste stance by the upper-caste platform due to its inability to included representation and expression as fundamental egalitarian principles. In focusing on these limitations, I show how this moment marked the emergence of the affect of pity as a viable socio-political category of relationality which served to keep the untouchable caste-marked "other" in silent objecthood, while subjectivity and agency were claimed by the reformist upper-caste, casteless “self.”
Sanjukta Poddar
Leiden University, Netherlands