A History of Prejudice
Race, Caste, and Difference in India and the United States

This book compares the historical struggles of two geographically disparate populations - Indian Dalits and African Americans - to examine prejudice in two leading democracies.

Gyanendra Pandey (Author)

9781107609389, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 25 March 2013

255 pages, 9 b/w illus.
22.6 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm, 0.35 kg

'… this book has much to offer comparative historians. Pandey's strength is his unpacking of the ways memoir and historiography shape an ongoing discourse about both the nature of the two movements for equality and their engagement with larger political cultures. For Americanists, the Dalit material will be fresh and provocative, and the author's discussion of the limitations of struggle aimed at liberal inclusion in both places should prompt useful questions about the consequent elision of other forms of oppression.' Rick Halpern, Journal of American History

This is a book about prejudice and democracy, and the prejudice of democracy. In comparing the historical struggles of two geographically disparate populations - Indian Dalits (once known as Untouchables) and African Americans - Gyanendra Pandey, the leading subaltern historian, examines the multiple dimensions of prejudice in two of the world's leading democracies. The juxtaposition of two very different locations and histories, and within each of them of varying public and private narratives of struggle, allows for an uncommon analysis of the limits of citizenship in modern societies and states. Pandey, with his characteristic delicacy, probes the histories of his protagonists to uncover a shadowy world where intolerance and discrimination are part of both public and private lives. This unusual and sobering book is revelatory in its exploration of the contradictory history of promise and denial that is common to the official narratives of nations such as India and the United States and the ideologies of many opposition movements.

1. Introduction
2. Prejudice as difference
3. Dalit conversion: the assertion of sameness
4. Double V: the everyday of race relations
5. An African-American autobiography: re-locating difference
6. Dalit memoirs: re-scripting the body
7. The persistence of prejudice.

Subject Areas: Sociology [JHB], Religion & politics [HRAM2], History of the Americas [HBJK], Asian history [HBJF]