1st Edition
Interrogating Marginalities across Disciplinary Boundaries Colonial and Post-Colonial India
This volume adopts an inter-disciplinary approach to rethink the multiple dimensions of marginality – political, societal, economic, cultural, legal, spatial. It explores their new representations in colonial and postcolonial India. Departing from extant analyses of experiences of marginalization in diverse social groups, it proposes to problematize the conceptualization of marginality, focusing on its evolution through space and time. A relational position, marginality, it is argued, presupposes a confrontation with centrality or the ‘mainstream’ within a common discourse of knowledge and power. The volume emphasizes that the process of marginalization is not a ‘marginal’ phenomenon and draws attention to the historical processes which determine, establish and perpetuate the margins.
The book reflects on varied aspects of evolving marginalities – structural, cultural and psychological – in South Asia in diverse temporal, spatial or societal contexts. It examines the discourses, institutional mechanisms and economic processes within which marginalities are located. This work will be an important read for scholars and researchers of history, anthropology, subaltern studies, exclusion studies, South Asian history, post-colonial studies, political studies, Indian history, cultural studies, and history, in general.
List of Tables
About the Authors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Multiple dimensions of marginalities
Anna Bochkovskaya, Sanjukta Das Gupta and Amit Prakash
Part 1: Interpretation: Contexts and Texts
1. At the margins of the empire-making project: Masters, servants and the household in
colonial India
Svetlana Sidorova
2. Marginalizing histories, historicizing marginalization: Representations of Adivasi pasts in Jharkhand
Sanjukta Das Gupta
3. Representing ‘Slices in Time’: ‘Marginal’ scriptures in contemporary Punjab
Anna Bochkovskaya
Part 2: Representation: Discourses and Themes
4. Surviving in the margins: The politics of disowning citizens in contemporary South Asian fiction
Debjani Banerjee
5. Exploring marginalities: Male domestic workers and intimate labour in two films on colonial and postcolonial Bengal
Swapna Banerjee
Part 3: Identification: Societies and Genders
6. Victimized in the name of protection: Revisiting institutional reforms for marginalized women in shelter homes
Pallavi Beri
7. Transgressing boundaries and (re)constructing identity: The Hijra community in post-colonial Rajasthan
Leena Sharma
Part 4: (Non)recognition: Rights and Options
8. Marginalization through empowerment: The policy of reservation for Scheduled Castes in India
Padmanabh Samarendra
9. Cultural rights and minorities in India
Ghazala Jamil and Faiz Ullah
10. Intersectional marginality: Compounding structural violence against Dalit Christians in India
Mani Sudhir Selvaraj
Part 5: Exclusion: New Forms and Locations
11. Spheres of marginality in the urban space: Exploring interconnections in a global city Priyanka Nupur
12. Liberal script and new marginalities: The case of tribals in Jharkhand
Amit Prakash
Index
Biography
Anna Bochkovskaya is Associate Professor at the Department of South Asian History, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia.
Sanjukta Das Gupta is Associate Professor of Indian History at the Department of Oriental Studies, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy.
Amit Prakash is Professor of Law and Governance at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.
