Untouchable Freedom: A Social History of a Dalit Community (review)

Untouchable Freedom: A Social History of a Dalit Community. By Vijay Prashad (New York, Oxford University Press, 2000) 176 pp. $23.95

This book details the recent history of the sanitation workers of Delhi, India's capital city. In urban India, the jobs of removing and disposing human waste from dry and pit latrines, as well as collecting garbage and sweeping the streets and other public areas, are assigned to (indeed, effectively reserved for) members of so-called "untouchable" castes at the bottom of the Hindu social hierarchy. In Delhi, these "sweepers" are drawn almost exclusively from a caste that in the 1930s took the name of Balmiki, after the legendary author of the famous Hindu epic, the Ramayana.

Prashad begins by posing the question of why the Balmikis have been such active and prominent participants in recent violent incidents directed against members of minority groups, especially Muslims and Sikhs. Why do they willingly act in service of the middle-class, upper-caste leaders of the militant Hindu chauvinist movement that is committed to the defense of the very order that consigns the Balmikis and other "untouchables" to a degraded and stigmatized status? The answer lies in events of the past century and a half that saw the Balmikis transformed by the agents of the British colonial state from a largely rural community of landless agricultural laborers into a specialized cadre of municipal sanitation workers who forged political alliances with those who controlled their conditions of work. In the process, the Balmikis became increasingly "Hinduized" in their religious orientation and identity formation. Prashad uses this history as a basis for addressing larger questions about powerless groups at the bottom of a hierarchical social order who assume ideological positions and engage in activities that are counter to their own interests.

The book traces, more or less chronologically, the development of Delhi's municipal sanitation system and details the Balmiki's crucial role in its operation. Prashad contends that refuse removal was not this caste's "traditional" occupation. It was one imposed by the British, who sought to recruit a dependable labor force for the necessary task of keeping the city—especially those localities that they themselves occupied—in a reasonably hygienic condition. The Balmiki sweepers eventually became virtually bonded laborers, prevented from leaving their jobs or striking for better wages and working conditions by government regulations that defined their duties as essential public services. Any potential for technological improvements in modes of refuse disposal was forestalled by the ready availability of Balmiki men, eager to take up the primitive hand tools of broom, metal scoop, and head basket in return for a steady, albeit meager, wage. Prashad uses both conventional historical sources (principally official British documents from the colonial period and from post-Independence India) and material from oral interviews with living members of the Balmiki community. He refers extensively to the secondary literature on India by early British colonial officials, anthropologists, political scientists, and others and illustrates many points with local folklore: stories, proverbs, and sayings.

The book is original, and it addresses many important issues. It is, however, marred by its overly polemical tone and the author's frequent failure to provide sufficient and appropriate documentary evidence for his assertions. It is, furthermore, not easy to read. Its organization is confusing, and Prashad's tendency to mention things in passing without providing adequate background information or explanation does not bode well for those unfamiliar with the details of recent Indian history. Especially jarring is Prashad's ahistorical employment of the term dalit (meaning "oppressed") to refer to the precursors of the Balmikis and other "untouchable" groups, even when he is writing about the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, long before this term had been coined and adopted as the preferred self-designation by certain "untouchable" activists. Furthermore, it is surprising that he hardly refers to the abundant recent literature on dalit movements elsewhere in...