Interrogating Marginalities across Disciplinary Boundaries: Colonial and Post-Colonial India

This volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach to rethink the multiple dimensions of marginality – political, societal, economic, cultural, legal and spatial. It explores their new representations in colonial and post-colonial India. Departing from extant analyses of experiences of marginalization in diverse social groups, it proposes to problematize the conceptualization of marginality, focusing on its evolution through space and time. A relational position, marginality, it is argued, presupposes a confrontation with centrality or the ‘mainstream’ within a common discourse of knowledge and power. The volume emphasizes that the process of marginalization is not a ‘marginal’ phenomenon and draws attention to the historical processes which determine, establish and perpetuate the margins.

The book reflects on varied aspects of evolving marginalities – structural, cultural and psychological – in South Asia in diverse temporal, spatial or societal contexts. It examines the discourses, institutional mechanisms and economic processes within which marginalities are located. This work will be an important read for scholars and researchers of history, anthropology, subaltern studies, exclusion studies, South Asian history, post-colonial studies, political studies, Indian history, cultural studies and history, in general.

Anna Bochkovskaya is Associate Professor in the Department of South Asian History, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia.

Sanjukta Das Gupta is Associate Professor of Indian History in the Department of Oriental Studies, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy.

Amit Prakash is Professor of Law and Governance at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.