Gender, Genealogy, and the Subject of Anti-Caste Thought

Caste subalterns in western India, from Jotirao Phule, to B. R. Ambedkar, consistently reframed the relationship between history and subject-formation by arguing for a pervasive and historic antagonism between Brahmin and non-Brahmin—and later, between Dalit and caste Hindu—as the motor of (Hindu) history. By so doing, they positioned the caste subaltern both as a suffering subject, and a revolutionary agent of historical transformation. This paper addresses caste radicals' redefinition of the caste self through the rewriting of history, and examines the critical role that discourses of gender and genealogy played in narratives of self-fashioning, and the reconstitution of caste intimacy.