The Making of the Dalit Public in North India: Uttar Pradesh, 1950 - Present - Rilegato

This book 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 UP from 1950 to the present. The author examines the process of politicisation 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 book unfolds the suppressed multiple layers of Dalit consciousness, hitherto ignored by mainstream discourse.
This book will be of interest to scholars and students of Indian politics, sociology, Dalit Studies, media studies, and cultural studies. It would also be useful for those studying state politics, especially Uttar Pradesh, and marginalization.