Renunciation and Untouchability in India: The Notional and the Empirical in the Caste Order
ISBN: 9780429317651
Platform/Publisher: Taylor & Francis / CRC Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited



This volume develops a historically informed phenomenology of caste and untouchability. It explores the idea of 'Brahmin' and the practice of untouchability by offering a scholarly reading of ancient and medieval texts. By going beyond the notions of purity and pollution, it presents a new framework of understanding relationships between social groups and social categories.

An important intervention in the study of caste and untouchability, this book will be an essential read for the scholars and researchers of political studies, political philosophy, cultural studies, Dalit studies, Indology, sociology, social anthropology and Ambedkar studies.


Srinivasa Ramanujam is a Tamil writer and translator. He has translated and published the collected essays of D.R. Nagaraj, as well as plays of Sundar Sarukkai, and essays by Ashis Nandy, M.S.S. Pandian, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and Gopal Guru. He is the author of Tharkolaigalai Kondaduvom and Sanyasamum Theendamayum. He was formerly a theatre activist and has directed plays of Bertolt Brecht, Kingsley Bass (Jr.), and Siegfried Lenz.

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