Reconsidering Untouchability: Chamars and Dalit History in North India. (Contemporary Indian Studies.)

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) This engaging historiography of Dalit identity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in northern India is a significant contribution to understanding the situation of the "untouchables" in Indian society as a whole. The author reconstructs the historical role of the Chamars - often identified as leather workers, characterized as a criminal caste and stigmatized as "untouchables". [...]they have not been given due attention in recent Indian history.