But plenty of evidence is offered to justify the critique, based on personal experience, both in India and abroad. The book puts the Dalits under a relentless magnifying glass and describes a picture that is not always pretty – especially in the case of some of those who have been upwardly mobile both professionally and economically. It is one thing to critique the book as lacking sufficient structure it is another, however, to say that the conclusions and arguments the book offers are not well-founded. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 appear to have raised the most hackles among the Dalit readers for their critical remarks on the community. The book begins with an Introduction with recollections of his childhood in a very disadvantaged home, but with a most affectionate grandmother, and gives an overview of the forthcoming six chapters: Being a Dalit, Neo-Dalit Uprising, The Many Shades of Dalits, The Dalit Middle Class, Dalit Capitalism, Brahmins against Brahminism. I hadn’t read the book then and said as much. When the book first came out, I got a message from one well known academic asking me to write to Penguin and critique their lack of editorial control over the text. And since I also write in the same field, I must confess that the critique levelled against the book – that it lacks a structure and not always successfully rambles between personal memoir and critical analysis – is merited to a great extent. Having had two or three opportunities to discuss a number of issues with Yengde in the recent past, I conclude that he is quite a grounded and organic intellectual. I may add that the same holds for the reviewer. I read the book with an open mind, very conscious that any self-reflexive project, as Suraj has attempted, carries the risk of being misunderstood, even maligned and criticized severely, as much as being appreciated and applauded. Positive responses came from a wide spectrum: The Wire’s review hailed it as setting a new agenda for the Dalits in India and Roundtable India, an online platform for mostly young Dalit–Bahujan Ambedkarite scholars, also carried a negative response by five research scholars from the Jawaharlal Nehru University to an excerpt carried in The Hindu as well as an article in “defense” of the book and its author. Though some of the more prominent Dalit voices have been very critical of the contents as well as the form, others have written in favor of it. Suraj Yengde’s latest book, Caste Matters, has received a very mixed response.
0 kommentar(er)
