Modernity of Slavery: Struggles against Caste Inequality in Colonial Kerala
P. Sanal Mohan
Abstract
This book tells the story of Cherumas, Kuravas, Parayas, Pulayas, and Thanda Pulayas—the slave castes of nineteenth-century Kerala—and their tryst with Christianity. These castes comprised nearly one-sixth of the population and were ’owned’ by upper castes, princely states, and even Europeans. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when European missionaries began working among the slave castes, thousands joined the Church. Their generational experiences, struggles, and memories shaped their collective self, and deeply impacted the emergence of Dalit consciousness in Kerala. This book pres ... More
This book tells the story of Cherumas, Kuravas, Parayas, Pulayas, and Thanda Pulayas—the slave castes of nineteenth-century Kerala—and their tryst with Christianity. These castes comprised nearly one-sixth of the population and were ’owned’ by upper castes, princely states, and even Europeans. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when European missionaries began working among the slave castes, thousands joined the Church. Their generational experiences, struggles, and memories shaped their collective self, and deeply impacted the emergence of Dalit consciousness in Kerala. This book presents and analyses the imaginations and articulations of the notion(s) of equality in the context of caste slavery, missionary activity, and socio-political transition in pre-colonial and modern Kerala.
Keywords:
Dalits,
missionaries,
colonial modernity,
social transformation,
salvation,
revelation,
social memory,
ritual re-memory
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2015 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198099765 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: August 2015 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198099765.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
P. Sanal Mohan, author
Teaches at the School of Social Sciences, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, India. His areas of research interest include colonial modernity, social movements and questions of identity, Dalit movements and Christianity in India
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