Caste and Emancipatory Quest

"A sobering and unique reality check of Caste discrimination of Dalits in urban India: discrimination is alive and kicking, despite modernization, rapid economic growth, and urbanization. 'Caste and Emancipatory Quest' provides unique ethnographic insights into caste-based discriminatory social lives, skewed access to education, and caste barriers to and at work in the metropolis of Delhi. Different Dalit backgrounds and patriarchy complicate matters. This is a must-read for scholars and anyone who believes caste discrimination is a thing of the past in urban India".

-Jens Lerche, Professor Emeritus, SOAS University of London

"Empirically rich and conceptually nuanced, Rama Devi's book explores the urban lives of caste in India of the 21st century. The different chapters of the book provide detailed accounts of the empirically complicated processes of identity negotiations in the emergent spatial context of a "poor" locality of India's capital city. Resisting the temptation of easy judgments and popular polemics, the book highlights the paradoxes of cosmopolitan urban life with a focus on the complex ways through which caste persists while undergoing significant changes".

-Surinder S. Jodhka, Professor of Sociology, Jawaharlal Nehru University

The book unravels the entangled relationship between ascriptive identity (caste) and space (urban) and how this interaction (re)moulds urban stratification. Urban rather represents a liminal space while offering promising opportunities to aspire and achieve upward mobility, it presents structural constraints frustrating the march of Dalits to claim desired mobility. Through descriptive and nuanced accounts of various aspects of Dalit lives in urban, it foregrounds how caste permeates everyday city life. The book debunks the mirage of urban castelessness.

Rama Devi is a sociologist whose research focuses on contemporary caste, and urban Dalit lives. She is a post-doctoral fellow at the Centre De Sciences and Humaines (CSH), Delhi. Previously, she taught social science courses at KREA University. Her research work and opinion pieces have been published in the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Sociological Bulletin, LSE Blogs, and Economic and Political Weekly.