CELEBRATING THE BATTLE OF KOREGAON: CONTESTED HISTORIES AND THE (DE)COLONIAL DALIT SUBJECT THE SOAS JOURNAL OF POSTGRADUATE RESEARCH Author: Jonathan Galton Department/Centre: Department of Anthropology and Sociology Publication: The SOAS Journal of Postgraduate Research, Volume 11 (2017-18), Pages 63-84 Decolonisation in Praxis ISSN: 2517-6226 Stable URL: http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/26312/ Key words: Dalit – Koregaon – Ambedkar – Mahar – alternative history – Aryan invasion Licence: Published under the Creative Commons Attribution Non- Commercial (CC-BY-NC) 4.0 International Licence J. Galton / The SOAS Journal of Postgraduate Research, Volume 11 (2017-18), Pages 63-84 CELEBRATING THE BATTLE OF KOREGAON: CONTESTED HISTORIES AND THE (DE)COLONIAL DALIT SUBJECT Jonathan Galton
[email protected] Department of Anthropology and Sociology ABSTRACT Colonialism, and hence decolonisation, is usually associated with European expansion overseas. This paper is premised on the possibility of an internal colonisation within India, a country famously colonised by Britain. My argument is rooted in ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Mumbai among a community of Mahars, a Dalit (formerly “untouchable”) caste that converted to Buddhism en masse in 1956. As a cornerstone of its self-respect, this community embraces an “alternative history” in which its members cast themselves as the original inhabitants of an ancient Buddhist India, subjugated through the imposition of caste Hinduism by Aryan invaders from an unclearly-defined West. Another strand of this history is the 1818 Battle of Koregaon, in which a Mahar battalion, fighting on behalf of the British, defeated the forces of the local high-caste Hindu rulers. Through an annual commemoration, Dalits frame these rulers as oppressors, while portraying the British as liberators.