OUTCASTE BOMBAY: CITY MAKING AND THE POLITICS

What Is The History Of Caste In A City? Indian Modernizers Assumed That The Various Processes Of Modernity, Including Industrial Capitalism, Would Attenuate Caste And Create The Possibility Of New Social Relationships, Including Class Solidarity. Instead, Capitalism Relied On Caste To Recruit And Discipline Labor, And The Colonial And Postcolonial Governments Deployed It For Housing, City Planning, And Provisions For Social Welfare. On Its Part, Caste Adapted To Housing, Urban Planning, And Even Land Tenures. Even The Purported Antitheses Of CapitalismMarxism And CommunismCould Not Annihilate Caste. As A Result, Caste Became Robust Even As It Was Shrouded Beneath The Veneer Of Modern Urban Life. Outcaste Bombay Examines The Interplay Of Caste And Class In TwentiethCentury Bombay. It Studies Processes That Are TransnationalCapitalism, Marxism, Urban Planning, LiteratureAnd The Ways In Which They Became Relevant To Life In The City. It Focuses On Urban OutcastesDalits Primarily, And Also The Urban PoorTo Trace Their Interaction With CityMaking And Urban Politics, Their Sense Of Self And Community, And The Cultural Life They Fashioned In Bombay. This Interdisciplinary Book Draws On Rare English And MarathiLanguage SourcesIncluding Novels, Poems, And ManifestoesAnd Contributes To Debates In The Fields Of South Asian History, Global Marxism, Social Anthropology, Urban Studies, Labor Studies, Dalit Studies, And Literature.