The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India

My paper will focus on select themes from my book The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India (Stanford University Press, 2022). The book offers the first social and intellectual history of the Dalit (“Untouchable”) performance of Tamasha—a popular form of public, secular, traveling theatre in Maharashtra, Western India—and places Dalit Tamasha women who represented the desire and disgust of the patriarchal society at the heart of modernization in twentieth century India. Drawing on ethnographies, films, and untapped archival materials, I illuminate how Tamasha was produced and shaped through conflict over caste, gender, sexuality, and culture. Dalit performers, activists, and leaders negotiated the violence and stigma in Tamasha as they struggled to claim manuski (human dignity), and transform themselves from ashlil (vulgar) to assli (authentic) and manus (human beings). Building on and departing from the Ambedkar-centered historiography and movement-focused approach of Dalit studies, I examine the ordinary and everdayness in Dalit lives. Ultimately, I demonstrate how the choices that communities make about culture speak to much larger questions about inclusion, inequality, and structures of violence of caste within Indian society, and opens up new approaches for the transformative potential of Dalit politics and the global history of gender, sexuality, and the human.