Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; Notes on translations and area under study, with map; Part I. Introduction: 1. Low caste protest in nineteenth-century western India; Part II. Religion and Society Under Early British Rule: 2. From warrior traditions to nineteenth-century politics: structure, ideology, and identity in the Maratha-kunbi caste complex; 3. The crisis of cultural legitimacy: missionaries, reformers, and Hindu society in the mid-nineteenth century; 4. The growth of religious reform opinion in western India; Part III. Jotirao Phule and his circle: the emergence of a distinctive radical voice: 5. Student radicals in mid-nineteenth-century Maharashtra; 6. The Aryan invasions and the origins of caste society; 7. Warriors and cultivators: the reinterpretation of popular culture; 8. Maratha history as polemic: low caste ideology and political debate in late nineteenth-century Maharashtra; Part IV. The Lower Caste Community in Contemporary Society: 9. Religious emancipation and political competition; 10. Social protest and the construction of a religious ethic; 11. Traditional privileges and new skills: Phule's analysis of the nature of Brahman power; 12. The Satyashodhak Samaj in the 1870s; Part V. Ideology and the Non-Brahman Movement in the 1880s: 13. Phule's polemic in the 1880s: the ideological construction of rural life and labour; 14. The non-Brahman movement in the 1880s; 15. Epilogue: ideology and politics in nineteenth-century western India; Bibliographic note; Bibliography; Glossary; Index.

Promotional Information

Illustrates the role of ideology and religion in the struggle against British colonial power.