In Civility against Caste, Suryakant Waghmore offers a refreshingly original interpretation of Dalit politics in India. Based on long-term ethnographic field research, he shows that Dalit struggles essentially revolve around creating everyday spaces of civility where Dalit dignity and citizenship can be respected. Popular democracy in India has not created a more ‘civil society’, Waghmore argues, but has allowed dominant and competing caste groups to entrench their power through force and the ballot. Against this, Dalits insist that classical norms of civility, tolerance and equality be respected. Waghmore’s compelling, sensitive and authoritative ethnographic account takes us to villages and small towns in Marathwada in central India where such struggles for dignity and a life without daily humiliation are fought every day. 

Waghmore’s study—theoretically innovative and deeply empirical—sets a new standard for how to study and interpret Dalit politics in India. This book will be required reading for anyone interested in Dalit politics and in how Indian democracy actually works.

Suryakant Waghmore’s Civility against Caste is a brilliant attempt to bring out hitherto much neglected focus on caste and civility. He makes an outstanding effort to illustrate how Dalit politics radically alters the standards of civility and civil society in India and argues that Dalit movements are aimed at producing the spaces for democratic civility. Suryakant through his theoretical move seeks to understand and evaluate Dalit politics in terms of its contribution to the reconstruction of civil society. This volume casts the study of Dalit politics entirely in a new light and no doubt makes a fresh reading on Dalit question in India.