1st Edition

Gandhi and the Caste Question in Colonial India

By Shashi Bhushan Upadhyay Copyright 2025
325 Pages
by Routledge

325 Pages
by Routledge

325 Pages
by Routledge

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... Read more

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.

Biography

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.