Invisibilisation of Dalit scholars

A PERSON READING CASTE AND PARTITION IN BENGAL: THE STORY OF DALIT REFUGEES, 1946-1961 WOULD THINK THAT DALITS HAVE NEVER DONE A CASTE ANALYSIS OF PARTITION, WHICH IS ABSOLUTELY UNTRUE

- AKSHAT JAIN

IN A staggering display of literary gymnastics, Sekhar Bandyopadhyay and Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhury have managed to write a book ostensibly to address the "discursive absence of the caste question and the Dalit from the long history of Partition in Bengal", using virtually no theoretical contribution from Dalit intellectuals. This is not to say that the book does not quote Dalits. It does have interviews, speeches, newspaper articles, stories and references to empirical studies conducted by them.

The authors talk about the history of the anti-caste struggle in British India without so much as mentioning G Aloysius, a scholar-in-residence at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, whose 1997 book Nationalism Without a Nation in India is of direct relevance to the subject matter of this book, in that it painstakingly delineates, among other things, how partition was a compact between upper caste Hindus and Muslims against the interests of the lower castes in both religions. BR Ambedkar is used only as a historical figure, as a politician made speeches and conducted movements, and not once as an academic or intellectual. To say that Ambedkar sought to politicise the structural violence of untouchability, they have quoted and referenced Anupama Rao, a professor of history at Barnard College, Columbia University. They did not even design to quote Ambedkar's academic work directly.