The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India

Awarded the MacArthur Genius Grant 2024
Winner of the Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy book prize
The most distinguished work of scholarship on South Asia: American Historical Association
Tamasha is a secular, traveling, public theatre practiced predominantly by Dalits for centuries. The artform spread like a wildfire in the entertainment market in colonial Maharashtra. Its mixture of humor, sexuality, and bombast offered a forbidding combination of the commercial and the lowbrow. Central to these performances were the Dalit Tamasha women who represented both the desire and disgust of a patriarchal society.
The Vulgarity of Caste offers the first social and intellectual history of Tamasha. Drawing on untapped archival materials, ethnographies, popular writings and films, Shailaja Paik uncovers how Dalit performers, activists, and leaders negotiated the violence, brutality, exploitation and stigma in Tamasha. She puts these women at the center, as they reclaim manuski (human dignity) and transform themselves from ashlil (vulgar) to assli (authentic) and manus (human).