Gandhi and the Caste Question in Colonial India

by Shashi Bhushan Upadhyay

Overview

This book comprehensively surveys and critically analyses Gandhi’s ideas on caste and untouchability. It emphasizes the fact that Gandhi was a considerable thinker who had seminal ideas on the caste question. As an intellectual history, this book is not just a study of his ideas but also of what he practised. It narrates his lifelong struggle against untouchability since his South African days and focuses on his distinctive understanding of the caste question which differed sharply from that of his contemporaries both on the right and the left.

The book also critically analyses and questions the attribution of strategy to Gandhi with regard to both the nationalist and anti-untouchability movements. The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of history, caste and discrimination studies, and South Asian studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781041005506
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/06/2025
Pages:	325
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Shashi Bhushan Upadhyay is Professor of History at IGNOU. His research interests are mainly in the fields of intellectual history, historiography, labour history, literary history and nationalist movement. His publications include Historiography in the Modern World: Western and Indian Perspectives (2016), Existence, Identity and Mobilization: The Cotton Millworkers of Bombay, 1890-1919 (2004), two co-edited volumes, Dalit Assertion in Society, Literature and History (2010) and School Education, Pluralism and Marginality: Comparative Perspectives (2012), and about 25 articles and book chapters on labour, Dalits, Premchand, and Gandhi.

Table of Contents

Introduction Part I: Caste and Varna 1. Intractable Caste and Benign Varna 2. No Caste and Reconstructed Varna Part II: Confronting Untouchability 3. Chronological Narrative- I 4. Chronological Narrative- II 5. Thematic Narratives: I 6. Thematic Narratives: II Part III: Understanding Gandhi 7. Did Gandhi have a Strategy?. Gandhi and the Caste Question: By Way of Conclusion.