The Gender Of Caste: Representing Dalits In Print (Global South Asia)

Features of The Gender of Caste: Representing Dalits in Print (Global South Asia)

Caste and gender are complex markers of difference that have traditionally been addressed in isolation from each other with a presumptive maleness present in most studies of Dalits untouchables and a presumptive uppercasteness in many feminist studies In this study of the representations of Dalits in the print culture of colonial north India Charu Gupta enters new territory by looking at images of Dalit women as both victims and vamps the construction of Dalit masculinities religious conversion as an alternative to entrapment in the Hindu caste system and the plight of indentured laborThe Gender of Caste uses print as a critical tool to examine the depictions of Dalits by colonizers nationalists reformers and Dalits themselves and shows how differentials of gender were critical in structuring patterns of domination and subordination