How have the dominant histories of the Indian subcontinent been constructed and how do they deal with the subject of Muslims and Dalits or 'Untouchables'? Taking a subaltern approach - the view from below - Muslims, Dalits, and the Fabrications of History explores a wide range of issues across history. The essays range across: the creation of the concept of 'the Mussalman' through the work of Hindi writers and publicists in the late nineteenth century; how the re-imaginings of the Mappila peasant 'uprisings' in the early twentieth century constructed a popular image of the fanatic Mussalman; Gandhi´s attempt to rethink political relations between Hindus and Muslims; the anomalous position of Kabir within the frameworks of caste and canonicity; the history, politics, and legal aspects of the case of the Dalit murdered on the steps of a Hanuman temple; how authority, property and matriliny in Malabar helped to shape colonial law-making; the rhetoric of the bardic tradition; the nationalist imagination.
About the Author: Shail Mayaram is Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, and author of Against History, Against State: Counterperspectives from the Margins and Resisting Regimes: Myth, Memory and the Shaping of a Muslim Identity.
M.S.S. Pandian´s publications include Image Trap: M.G. Ramachandran in Films and Politics.
Ajay Skaria teaches history at the University of Minneapolis and is author of Hybrid Histories: Forests, Frontiers and Wildness in Western India.
