Liberation as a Reachable Hope: Re-reading Untouchable Freedom

The Vijay we know today has a history. It begins with the serious scholarship and captivating prose that marks his first book-length monograph, which now meets us in a newer form. Untouchable Freedom: A Social History of a Dalit Community (hereafter Untouchables) is a remarkable achievement – it is a labour of love, devotion, and care for a community that Vijay undeniably loves…Despite the existence of extensive government reports and empirical studies, the colonial Census of India 1911 still reeked of an anti-Dalit agenda, throttled their agency, and turned them, for all practical purposes, into powerless citizenry.