Race, Caste, Class, and Subalternity

Excerpt of Review

Two books edited by Distinguished Professor of History Gyanendra Pandey, at Emory University, provide an intriguing impetus to renew the examination of the comparative experiences of blacks and Dalits. Indeed, Pandey’s books should prompt scholars to extend and deepen the analysis of the comparative experiences of denigrated peoples across the globe. The publication of the two volumes—Subaltern Citizens and Their Histories: Investigations from India and the USA and Subalternity and Difference: Investigations from the North and South—coincided with the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of the first issue of the journal Subaltern Studies. Pandey, one of the founders of the Subaltern Studies group that originally developed the journal, has been a central figure in the intellectual movement that informs the articles in the two volumes, the subaltern studies movement that arose out of postcolonial scholarship…