Author Description

The Making of the Dalit Public in North India is a commentary on politics and political consciousness, participation, and mobilization among the Dalits of Uttar Pradesh. Based on extensive fieldwork at the village level in eastern Uttar Pradesh, it deals with Dalit social and political history in Uttar Pradesh from 1950 to the present. Badri Narayan Tiwari examines the process of politicization of Dalit communities through their internal social struggles and movements, and their emergence as a 'political public' in the State-oriented democratic political setting of contemporary India. This process is represented through stories and narratives that span the oppressed historical moments of the marginalized, documenting various social upheavels in post-independence India. The volume uses various alternative sources, alive in the oral tradition and 'collective memory' of the grassroots to explain contemporary history of Dalit mobilization in north India. The Making of the Dalit Public in North India unfolds the suppressed multiple layers of Dalit consciousness, hitherto ignored by mainstream discourse.