Centre for Historical Studies, JNU
Invites you to a Seminar On Feminine, Criminal or Manly? Imaging Dalit
Masculinities in Colonial North India
by
Dr. Charu Gupta
University of Delhi
On
Date: 4th November 2009 (Wednesday)
Time: 3:00 pm
Venue: Committee Room No. 001, SSS I, JNU
All are welcome
Abstract
This talk places Dalit masculinity at its centre as opposed to the
margins of theories of masculinity, in the process messing its current
trajectory. It explores ways in which Dalit male body was socially
imaged and constructed by colonial authorities, by upper castes and by
Dalits. It probes how images of Dalit masculinity were interpreted,
manipulated, and reinterpreted, both for social control and for
identity construction. Ways in which Dalit masculinity was constructed
or destructed by the upper castes reveals the social relations in that
particular historical time and how they were mapped onto available
bodies. In the process it also asks if there are differences in
masculinist assertions of Dalit men from those of upper caste men. The
paper moves at three inter-related levels. First, it attempts to offer
a corrective to earlier historiographic and theoretical paradigms
which focus primarily on upper caste, hegemonic Hindu masculinity, in
which Dalit men are only tangentially referred to, and that too as
negative referents. Second, it takes on a discursive approach in which
it examines Dalit masculinity through its representations within the
dominant culture and the way in which representations constitute, and
are reflective of, the power relationships between upper and lower
castes, in which Dalit men emerge as victims of institutional
casteism. The images of Dalit men were related to larger structures of
oppression, such as lack of education, a discriminatory labour market,
criminal justice system and technologies of surveillance which
resulted in the institutional decimation of Dalit males. Third it
attempts to understand assertions of Dalit masculinity by Dalits
themselves by rooting it in larger historical narratives. It tries to
read Dalit history, and the crisis of Dalit manhood through a gendered
lens. It appears that the construction of Dalit masculinity is neither
a fully cohesive one nor an entirely innocent one. The different,
varied and contrasting images of Dalit male bodies reveal that gender
identities are not fixed or immutable but rather marked by ambiguity,
contradictions, uncertainties and pluralities.
Charu Gupta is an Associate Professor of History in Delhi University.
She did her PhD from SOAS, London. She has been a Fellow at the Nehru
Memorial Museum and Library, the Social Science Research Council, New
York, the Asian Scholarship Foundation, Thailand, the Wellcome
Institute, London, and the University of Oxford. She has also been a
visiting Faculty at various universities in USA. Her publications
include the books Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims and
the Hindu Public in Colonial India and Contested Coastlines:
Fisherfolk, Nations and Borders in South Asia, and several articles on
gender, sexuality, fundamentalism and nationalism in various national
and international journals. She is currently working on 'Gendering
Dalits in North India'.
THE SEMINAR SCHEDULE FOR THIS SEMESTER IS ATTACHED
Monsoon Semester 2009.pdf
803K View Download
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