Untouchable Freedom: A Social History Of A Dalit Community

by Vijay Prashad

This volume is on the Balmikis of Delhi, who work as sanitation workers and keep the city clean. They live in poverty and face sustained discrimination. In response the Balmikis fight to liberate themselves. Untouchable Freedom is the first comprehensive study of this community and traces
their struggles from the 1860s to the present, as they have moved from agricultural labor to urban work.

Genres: India, History, Nonfiction, Asia

196 pages, Paperback

First published May 11, 2000

About the author

Vijay Prashad is an Indian Marxist historian, journalist, political commentator, and editor. He is the executive director of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, editor of LeftWord Books, writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter, and a senior non-resident fellow at the Renmin University of China's Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies. Prashad is known for his criticisms of capitalism, neocolonialism, American exceptionalism, and Western imperialism, and his support for communism and the Global South.

He attended The Doon School as a child. He records that he was subjected to violent rape in his early teens while at school. He received a BA from Pomona College in 1989 as well as a PhD from the University of Chicago in 1994, writing a dissertation under the supervision of Bernard Cohn.

He was the George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and a professor of international studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, from 1996 to 2017.

He also has provided political commentary for Monthly Review and Salon. He has had three articles published in The Nation. With Tings Chak he edits the international edition of the Chinese journal Wenhua Zongheng.

He is an advisory board member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement,[26] and co-founder of the Forum of Indian Leftists (FOIL).