Thursday January 30, 2025 – 5pm, Foster 103
Sthira Bhattacharya, PhD Candidate, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago
This talk examines the rhetorical moves through which spokespersons from three middle-caste communities—Ahir, Kurmi, and Kalwar—navigated contemporary categories of caste and religion to posit new aspirational identities for their groups vis-à-vis upper castes, the wider Hindu collectivity, Dalits, and Muslims during the 1920s. It looks at how the terms ‘ghṛṇā’ (disgust) and ‘dharma’ (course of conduct prescribed by religion) were mobilized in Hindi-language middle-caste journals during the peak of the Hindu Mahasabha-led Shuddhi (purification) and Sangathan (organization) movements. It argues that the tensions between the various uses of these terms shed light on the contradictory self-positioning middle castes were undertaking in these years: continuing to publicly distance themselves from ritually ‘polluting’ castes deemed lower than them while claiming a privileged place within the modern ‘Hindu’ body politic that was built on public disavowals of ritual distance and untouchability.