| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Vijay Prashad. Untouchable Freedom: A Social History of a Dalit Community. New York: Oxford University Press. 2000. Pp. xx, 176. $23.95.

Given issues of social justice in India, a book on the social history of an Indian Untouchable or Dalit community is welcome. Although Dalit social reforms, party politics, and politics surrounding Dalit voices are now receiving increasing attention, we still lack reliable historical and social profiles of major local Dalit communities' arduous struggles. Today, politically contentious news stories as well as polemical social commentaries and ideological criticisms often fire up protagonists of "Dalit emancipation," relegating grass-roots studies of Dalit experience to the margins. This book by Vijay Prashad specifically promises to address these neglected aspects but, alas, does not fully deliver. 1

The volume concerns the Balmikis, mainly of Delhi, and of Patiala and Jalandhar (in Punjab), and of Dehradun and Meerut (in predivided Uttar Pradesh). As a multisited historical and cultural study, the account relies on both historical and anthropological data, with emphasis on the historical. Prashad conducted fieldwork on Balmikis for over two years between 1992 and 1996, collecting "stories" and "a trove of documents held by elders." The author's distinct presentational concerns were "the necessity to be sincere as I put my findings down on paper," with influence of "a phalanx of Marxists who helped keep me honest" (p. v). . . .

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