Feminine, criminal or manly?

This article places the Dalit male body at its centre, and in the process disturbs the idea of masculinity in colonial India. It argues that ways in which caste, Dalit identities and masculinity relate to each other have not been readily recognised, in spite of a growing body of work on Dalits in the colonial period. The article explores how the Dalit male body was socially constructed, or belied, by colonial authorities, by upper castes and by Dalits themselves in colonial Uttar Pradesh, both for purposes of social control and for the construction of identity. It approaches Dalit masculinity discursively, through its representations in the dominant culture, in which the imagery was related to larger structures of oppression, such as lack of education, a discriminatory labour market, criminal justice system and technologies of surveillance, which resulted in an institutional decimation of Dalit males. At the same time, the article attempts to understand assertions of Dalit masculinity by Dalits themselves, by rooting it in a wider historical narrative. It seeks a gendered interpretation of Dalit histories, and the crisis of Dalit manhood.