chapter fourteen

Aesthetic of Touch and

the Skin: An Essay in
Contemporary Indian
Political Phenomenology*
gopal guru

Specific social and historical contexts of experience tend to produce specific structures
of meaning that could, mutually, be quite contradictory. Because logical relations
gravitate toward context-neutral universality, and contradiction is a logical relation,
at the methodological level, contradiction in meaning becomes a universal cognitive
structure. But the meanings themselves remain as wedded to the context as the time-
and-place-sensitive experiences. It is in this context that one could possibly argue
that the task of political phenomenology is to analyze the contradictory structures of
meaning that we find in our conscious experience of not just seeing or not seeing or
smelling but also doing, touching, grabbing, refusing to touch, viewing, and thinking
as fit or unfit for handling. Thus, in the Indian context, the social aesthetic of the
touchable castes seeks to bracket within its logic the object of consciousness that
surrounds the life of reality specific to these castes. A kşatriya or vaiśya or kāyastha
attaches a set of meanings to desiring, hating, or not caring to touch an object or a
person. It is in terms of these meanings that a member of such a “touchable” caste
usually “imagines” what it is like to live as an untouchable. Because of this crucial
role that imagination plays, mediating between the tactile and haptic sensation and
the understanding of the meaning of the skin that the political phenomenology turns
here into a politics of aesthetics, though perhaps not in Ranciere’s sense.1 Thus, for
these castes, leather and the leather ball takes form as an object of consciousness,
which in turn surrounds the cricket ground. The consumerist life that is built
up around this object of consciousness becomes real for these castes. Thus, the
community of cricket lovers becomes a social reality. This bracketing of an object
of consciousness within its surroundings is done with the specific intent of focusing
on the sense or the meaning through which the object is experienced. Thus, the
touchable in India develops a particular meaning around leather in different forms
(from rawhide to sophisticated leather ball) and then seeks to construct a meaning
298 Gopal Guru

around the object in order to gain a distinct experience from the latter. A leather
jacket or a cricket ball, therefore, becomes an object of the touchable’s aesthetic
experience. This experience is acquired in isolation without developing any thinking
about the experience of the subject (leather worker) that is responsible for producing
the object of experience at the first instance. In fact, the touchable does not have the
cognitive need to think about the experience of the subject separately, as he/she does
not differentiate between the object of experience (rawhide) and the subject (leather
worker) that treats rawhide so as to transform it into a beautiful leather ball. For all
practical purposes, the touchable transfigures rawhide onto the leather worker thus
making the later an ontological part of rawhide.
The focus of this essay is twofold. First, it will try to understand the intentionality
of the touchable that seems to be behind the discursive dissolution of leather into
worker and worker into leather. Second, it will try to explore the tension between
ethics and aesthetics and possibly suggest the need for the higher forms of aesthetic
sensibilities that will address the ethical underpinning of the former. It is at the
primary level of the leather production that the touchable sees the worker not in his
authentic form but in the form of leather. The persisting perception mediated by the
ideology of purity–pollution motivates the upper caste to reduce the leather worker
to the raw leather. Thus, the idea of ritual pollution reinforced by its physical quality
becomes an essence that sustains this dissolution. It is also necessary to explain further
the content of this essence. This essence involves asymmetry in social relations, which
are built up around the two contradictory flows of moral attitudes. One attitude flows
from the bottom up showing an ascending sense of reverence for the touchables. The
other attitude, which is generally associated with the upper castes, has a top-down
flow thus suggesting the descending sense of respect for the lower castes.
Although the moral grammar of the flow is contradictory, however, the logic of
the flow is one-dimensional to the extent that the power of regulating the flow is
concentrated into the hands of the touchables. Thus, the social consciousness of
being socially superior to the lower castes, therefore, has a structure that involves
several properties such as perception, imagination, judgment, emotion, evaluation,
and volition. The upper caste perception, which constitutes this structure, suggests
that Dalits (untouchables) are no different from the repulsive object. They are
perceived as part of the obnoxious dirt.2 Similarly, in the aesthetic judgment of
the touchables, Dalits acquire a moral status and are consequently treated as less
than a human being or even a wretched animal. In the emotional assessment of the
touchables, a leather worker is an object of repulsion. And finally, in the evaluation
of the upper caste, the Dalits are a moral menace and hence are to be avoided both
in terms of time and space. We shall try to explain the location of this element in the
aesthetic consciousness of the touchable as well as the counter aesthetic as developed
by the untouchables who are ontologically at the receiving end of these elements (as
mentioned above).
Following from the above phenomenological frame, it is possible to argue that
the essence of a leather worker is not his poverty but his foul smell or his being a
moral menace. Taking a cue from Kant it could be argued that the phenomenological
frame that traps the Dalit into the structures of repulsive meaning ultimately
Aesthetic of Touch and THE Skin 299

renders the Dalit or a leather worker morally impenetrable to the extent that he
comes to be composed of these properties, which seem to fill the entire body of
untouchable with their repulsive force.3 Thus, untouchability not only forms the
essence of the untouchable’s existence but it constantly remains with the leather
worker. Untouchability as an essence thus overdetermines the leather worker’s social
existence the same way blackness determines the existence of the American black.
At this level, one finds the object of experience that is the cricket ball or the other
leather goods to be the source of upper caste aesthetic and not the subject that produces
the ball at the first instance. In the upper caste aesthetic judgment the Dalits do not
grow in the eyes of the former. It is only the object-like ball abstracted from the raw
hide and toil of the leather worker that forms the basis of the aesthetic judgment.
In fact, the quality of upper caste judgment is negative in as much as it involves the
vicarious pleasure that the former derive through the intensification of this sense
of repulsion. For example, in early twentieth-century Uttar Pradesh, Achutananad,
a Dalit hero belonging to the Chamar caste is converted into “Jutananad” (leather
shoe) by the upper-caste politicians who belonged to the nationalist party during
the freedom struggle.4 The intention involving negative description essentially seeks
to reduce the Dalit to the objective level where the distinction between the human
being and the leather shoe is made to disappear.
However, the conception of the aesthetic of the upper castes undergoes a radical
shift. In this transformed perception, as we shall see in the following pages, the
upper castes are prepared to elevate the dead skin or leather to the highest level of
aesthetic appreciation while they are found to be completely reluctant to extend
their association with the live skin of the leather worker. To put it differently, it is the
sophisticated form of the leather that forms a fascinating object of aesthetic attraction
while the leather worker is treated as the source of repulsion. It as an object rather
than a subject provides the base for the upper-caste aesthetic judgment. The upper
caste begins to appreciate and enjoy the experience of the object that is the cricket
ball or other fancy-looking leather goods. This affirmative change in the aesthetic
sense of the upper castes is associated with the changing form of leather, which gets
transformed from the rawhide to ultimately becoming finished leather. As we will
argue in the following few lines, that leather in its sophisticated form becomes the
source of aesthetic pleasure for the upper castes in India. In the world of cricket, raw
hide transformed into a cricket ball with a “tricky” seam thus, provides the ground
for the urbanized upper-caste cricket lovers to develop aesthetic sense.
However, the cricket ball does not produce this aesthetic appreciation on its
own. In fact, a cricket player has to mix his/her skill with the ball and only then
the ball becomes a source of aesthetic value. And of course the material value that
gets produced through mixing becomes the private property of these particular
cricket players. In contemporary times, the role of TV becomes absolutely crucial,
not only to intensify the degree of enjoyment, but also to create an unprecedented
visual impact on the aesthetic sensibility of the spectators both inside and outside
the stadium. Along with the skill of a cricketer, the conception of space constitutes
an important background condition without which it is impossible to produce the
aesthetic value of leather. Thus, a cricket ball is set to heighten the excitement the
300 Gopal Guru

more it is set to conquer the larger physical space. Thus, a ball being hit for one-two-
three runs or beyond the boundary line or over the boundary rope for a six, or even
outside the stadium, definitely add to the enjoyment of the spectators.
However, there is a “Dionysian” principle that is involved in the life of a cricket
ball on the ground. The ball in the test match is a bore, for example. Similarly, in the
contemporary time, the cricket ball does not excite even over one day cricket. Here
as well a cricket ball does produce a certain degree of boredom. Hence the need for
the shortest version of cricket that is, 20×20 cricket as the medium to satisfy the
heightened sense of enjoyment. By the same logic a ball not yielding any runs would
be quite frustrating. However, the varying degree of excitement that is produced
by a player through the ball is only temporary and immediate. In fact, the cricket
ball arouses in the spectators the need for an ever increasing degree of excitement.
A cricket lover expects the player to hit the ball to the longest distance possible.
Hence, there is no end to an exciting experience. Thus, aesthetic experience comes
to us not in kind but in degree. The Dionysian principle also produces a paradox in
the very aesthetic conception of the touchable.

i. paradox in the aesthetic conception

Similarly, the aesthetic experience, which necessarily comes in the form of evaluation
and judgment, comes in stages involved in the production of the leather ball. Thus, in
the initial stage of its production, the leather ball does not invoke the aesthetic pleasure
particularly among those for whom the raw hide is the source of ritual pollution.
Secondly, at this level, the leather is still in raw form and hence it as a physical
substance carries foul smell with it. But the metaphysics of untouchability converts the
materiality of smell into spiritual substance. To put it more clearly, in the upper-caste
perception the foul smell continues to bracket the leather into its predatory logic even
if the leather worker has walked out of its condition of production. The logic of smell
thus produces a paradox where the leather ball as an attraction for the upper caste
cannot exist without their repulsion from the leather worker. Thus, at the initial level,
raw hide becomes the constant source of continuous and concentrated expression
of repulsion filling the body of the leather worker. The upper caste perceives the
body of a leather worker as a cesspool that is completely stuffed with a deep cause
for repulsion. At the latter stage of leather production, the leather transformed into
a leather ball becomes an object of attraction for the cricket players and lovers alike.
This shift in the touchable’s perception is the result of the market mechanism. The
market and money seek to fragment this continuous and concentrated sense, first
into the degree of expression, and secondly by assigning a differential value to this
expression. However, it is the object of expression—superfine leather rather than the
subjugated worker that is isolated for aesthetic treatment. This aesthetic of leather
thus, suggests that the cricket ball as a substance is present in the subject that is the
leather worker and yet it is not a part of the subject. The aesthetic judgment of an
upper caste achieves this separation. The upper-caste aesthetic consciousness that gets
articulated through judgment changes the properties of leather, however, without
Aesthetic of Touch and THE Skin 301

changing the upper-caste perception of the leather worker’s identity. The power of
judgment assigns independence to the aesthetic experience of the upper castes, which
do not connect this experience to its truth—the leather worker. Moreover, the upper
caste aesthetic produces its own validity. On a most charitable note, it could be argued
that the cricket ball also becomes the source of fulfillment for the pure if not the
material ambitions of a cricketer. For spiritual gains, to become a legendary batsman
or bowler, a particular cricketer makes leather so intimate to his body that he does not
mind licking the leather ball. (We always see the upper-caste bowlers using their salvia
for shining the leather ball.) In some sense leather as skin achieves its liberation only in
its dead form and not in its live form. Put differently, the same cricketer may not touch
the skin of a leather worker who has contributed immensely in the production of this
ball. The personal ambition together with the material force of the market achieves a
limited destruction of the physical distance between the leather as a ritual substance
and corporeal human touch. Remember, leather—as the carrier of the ideology of
purity-pollution—has been regulating the human touch among the Indians. In fact, the
cricketer assigns not only material value by touching and licking the leather but some
of them go to the extent of summoning god’s power into the cricket ball. Look at Lasit
Malinga’s bowling action, for example.5
Although the touchable’s perception of leather has progressed in a positive
direction, where leather no longer remains as an object of repulsion; but at the same
time, the leather workers do not figure in the aesthetic imagination of either the
cricketer or the cricket lovers at large. This act of exclusion happens because the
cricketers or the larger public do not find any unity between aesthetic/conceptual
space and the unchanging place—tanneries—where the leather worker is located.
The spectators are on the ground and not in the tanneries where the raw hide is
treated or in the leather factory where the leather receives further superfine touch
and attractive shape and design.
We often see in cricket commentary an aesthetic elevation of the skill that the
batsman demonstrates in the cricketing shots. However, extraordinary as the
shot may be, one cannot forget the fact that the roots of this superlative language
are in the “ordinary” labor power of the leather worker. To put it differently, an
extraordinary talent, for example, in Sachin Tendulkar, the legendary figure in the
world of cricket, has its roots in the ordinary labor of the leather worker. This
attraction in Sachin’s cricketing talent and beauty thus has roots in the “repulsion”
of the leather worker. But we do not come across the talented and extraordinary
cricketers recognizing the value of the ordinary. Forgetting about the ordinary may
not be intentional but it is certainly structurally inbuilt into the labor process that
tends to highlight one kind of labor and overshadows another kind. Hitting a ball
for a sixer is a concrete expression of skilled labor, which is treated by the electronic
media as a pure abstraction as it does not inform us about the ontological grounds
on which the life of a cricket ball rests. Were this expression analytic, perhaps it
would connect the viewer or knower to the process of production and focus the
TV camera on those workers who are involved in the leather production. Taking
cue from Bologh, we feel encouraged to argue that the abstract provides aesthetic
experience to many while the analytic would help at least some of us to unfold the
pain of the worker.6
302 Gopal Guru

At another level abstract labor also constitutes an irony. The relation of a leather
worker to a leather ball is also that of alienation—a kind of abstraction. To put it
differently, the labor of the leather worker is independent of the immediate use-
value of its product (the leather ball). It is only in the rare cases that one finds the
son of a leather worker concretely enjoying the fruits of exchange value of the labor.
In Mumbai cricket, the second son of leather worker could become the leading all-
rounder during the 1930s.7 Generally speaking, the only value that leather worker
has for his labor is money. The leather ball increases both the material and moral
value of a cricketer, as they are sought after by the media, and the corporate world,
which makes the world of cricket glamorous. In such a world of glamor, the leather
worker’s labor would be treated only as an infinitesimal part of the final product—
the cricket ball. To put it differently, in the upper-caste perception, the labor of a
leather worker in the entire process becomes extremely small and meaningless. The
labor of a leather worker is meaningless except as an exchange value that the former
has for money.

ii. the metaphysics of skin and touch

The ideological (purity–pollution) mediation of dead skin (flayed skin) has
some bearing on the upper-caste perception of meaninglessness. In this sense of
meaninglessness, the live skin of the leather workers is treated as defiling and
disgusting, while the dead skin in the form of leather ball, as mentioned above,
becomes intimate to the upper-caste body. The ideology of purity–pollution
generates an uneasy tension between dead and live skin. The leather workers in
India treating the flayed skin of dead cattle also become a stigmatized object, whose
skin therefore becomes untouchable for the upper caste. Leather workers’ skin,
which undergoes an ideological construction, assumes self-limiting boundaries
that are no more open for intersubjective touch. To put the point differently, it is
the ideology of untouchability that provides a definitional ground for corporeal
touch. Conversely, lack of concrete experience of corporeal touch in effect acts
as the proof for untoucability. In a caste-ridden society such as that of India,
if the Dalits decide not to touch the twice-born person, this inversed form of
untouchability would lead to a moral chaos threatening the social relevance of the
socially dominant castes. They need to pollute the top of the twice-born in order
to make the latter socially relevant. The leather workers are not only treated as
a moral menace for the upper caste, but, at the corporeal level, they also become
an object of disgust for the entire society. Different kinds of chemicals that are
used in the tanneries and leather factories have a devastating effect on the skin of
tannery workers’ body. These chemicals, which very often lead to deformation of
tannery workers’ skin, ultimately reduce the worker to the socially degraded status
of a leprosy patient. The leather workers with deformed skin in a certain sense
cannot brandish it as a cultural asset. In both the ritual as well as material sense
the leather worker is ontologically at the receiving end of the negative description
as the wretched as well as the physical leper.
Aesthetic of Touch and THE Skin 303

At the phenomenological level, vicarious pleasure of the upper castes feeds itself
on the perception of the Dalit as a menace that gets combined into a moral as well
as physical menace. A leather worker becomes a complete source of condescension.
The phenomenological frame set around the Dalit by the upper caste, creates almost
a wither-down impact thus diminishing the moral content of a Dalit-self struggling
to acquire equal worth that is so necessary to retain their morally integrated
personality. Arguably, this morally devastating impact does not encourage the Dalit
even to cognitively develop the skin-ego, even as the source of subversive snobbery.8
Snobbery as a subversive practice by a Dalit is set to perform a historical function
of disturbing the settled sense of the white-skin ego that is normally associated with
the top of the twice-born. Subversive snobbery would necessarily create a negative
consciousness among those who think that their skin is the source of hegemonic
power over others.
In this context, it is necessary to make it clear that I am not dealing here with
skin as a sensorium of background conditions for the ultimate sexual pleasure.9 On
the contrary, I would treat skin as the substance with sociocultural value. Neither
am I interested in the color of the skin as is the case in the United States, although I
cannot deny the argument that it is the color that overdetermines the social existence
of the black in America. In this particular chapter I would like to take the discussion
of skin beyond the psychological/clinical understanding of skin.10 Hence, I would
like to argue that skin carrying stigma on its surface, performs the social function of
destroying even the possibility of singularly directed corporeal touch. For normative
reasons one would prefer the mutual touch, which as a civilizational category loses its
moral force and becomes disempowered in terms of sustaining reciprocal interaction.
Ideological construction of corporeal touch effectively prohibits the human being
from touching the live skin that forms the surface of corporeal body. Skin, as the
barbed-wire, thus produces mutual reification of touch. That is to say that both
the untouchables and the touchables do not find it urgent to take an initiative in
producing mutual warm touch. In such reification, at the ethical level, the skin of
both the upper caste and the lower caste becomes like the shrinking pumpkin that
loses its skin due to excessive sun stroke. The vitality of skin, therefore, is dependent
on the ethics of touch. Ethics of touch, certainly belongs to the same logical class as
the ethics of face, an important insight provided by Levinas.11 It would not be out
of place to argue here that the ethic of skin belongs to the same logical class as the
ethics of face in Levinas’s philosophy.
At another level, Dalit skin is analogous to the skin as a physical substance with a
porous surface that emits foul smells through sweat, for example. At the ethical level
the upper caste also treats Dalit skin as a porous surface emitting almost incessantly
the foul smell of untouchability.12 An untouchable, irrespective of the physical state
of his/her body, is constantly being made aware of his or her body as the source of
repugnance and the object of stigmatism. For the upper caste, a Dalit becomes a
source of moral panic. Thus, a totally sanitized body of an untouchable is treated
as an object producing foul smell. How does an untouchable get the consciousness
that his/her body is an object of repulsion? Dalits get the consciousness of their body
as an object of repulsion through moral microwaves that communicate this sense of
304 Gopal Guru

repulsion to the untouchable. The upper castes do not need a verbal speech act to
communicate this sense of repulsion to the untouchables. In fact, the very physical
presence of the upper caste becomes a sufficient condition to send appropriate signals
to the untouchable that he/she is the “walking carcass.” Thus, a Dalit perception,
which operates through his sensitive skin, receives the signals about airborne casteism
that is associated with the upper-caste person who communicates it without uttering
it. This airborne casteism or the sense of repulsion touches a Dalit’s skin and informs
him about his being a repulsive object. However, it is not all kinds of skin that are
capable of receiving this airborne casteism. In fact, it is socially and morally sensitive
skin that makes the untouchable aware about the airborne casteism. Casteism in the
air bites the untouchable the same way the chilly wind during the harsh winter does.
For the Dalit a harsh winter is always around the corner. The untouchable’s biting
sense is dependent on the moral sensitivity of the skin. Here skin is morally sensitive
and alive, not just physically sensitive and alive. The skin of an untouchable—or
for that matter any sentient being—in order to remain sensitive, has to be porous
if it wants to remain open for the reception of the airborne casteism. If the skin is
seamless, then it is not at all capable of capturing the airborne casteism. To put it
differently, if a person is thick-skinned, then this person will not be sensitive to the
casteist message that is communicated to him/her. The morally dead skin does not
make one sensitive to the airborne casteism. One needs to shed off the seamless skin
in order to acquire agency. Ambedkar’s conversion to neo-Buddhism was a symbolic
act of shedding the seamless skin. Hinduism, in a symbolic sense, was a seamless skin
that Dalits donned for a very long time on their ears and also their eyes. Buddhism
made Dalit skin as sensitive as the skin of the snake. Just to conclude this section, let
me state that leather or skin as an improvised form, that is, leather ball, seeks to aid a
skilled cricketer to induce superior aesthetic taste to his skilled labor. However, this
talented cricketer is oblivious of the fact that his capacity to produce an elegant shot
is dependent on the condition of the production of this ball. It is in this sense that
the aesthetic life of the cricketer and cricket lover is unreflective. It is also without
any moral responsibility. It may be talented but may not be sufficiently intelligent to
access the aesthetic life that is also available to those who deal with the production of
the ball. Let us look at the aesthetic of skin and touch in Section III of this chapter.

iii. resignifying the skin

and dalit aesthetic
As mentioned in the above section, the leather worker is at the receiving end of the
stigma that is attached to his skin through the ideology of purity and pollution. Similarly,
he is also the victim of the physical deformation of his body and the skin. Lack of
safety at the workplace is the main cause that leads to the physical infirmities of the
leather workers. Leather workers do not have any protection against the different kinds
of chemicals that are used for the leather production, and which deform the skin. As
mentioned in the first section, these adverse working conditions do not prompt the
cricketer or the cricket lovers to acknowledge the labor of the leather worker even at the
Aesthetic of Touch and THE Skin 305

level of aesthetics. The self-obsessed cricket player, commentator, or the general cricket
lovers do blame the leather worker in case the leather ball is losing its shape and seam
too fast. It resembles the following Marathi saying: Shelicha Katal gele jivani ani Patil
mhanto dafal watal zali (The goat has lost its live skin but the head of the village says
it has become placid). It only shows limits of upper-caste sensitivity toward the plight
of the leather worker. In this context it would be quite important to know whether the
leather worker develops any aesthetic sense to cope with the adversarial conditions.
It would further be interesting to know: In how many ways does the Dalit choose to
perceive leather? To put it yet differently, how many kinds of social meanings can be
produced around the leather object?
Within the Dalit discourse on aesthetics, one would find the language expressing
Dalit reality at crossroads. There are, for example, literary writers from among the
Dalits, who do not seem to be proposing the elevated language for the expression
of Dalit social reality. For example, a Dalit poet from Andhra Pradesh has offered
rather a dispelling critique of an aesthetic mode of expression. This rejection of an
aesthetic mode is evident from the following observation made by this particular
Dalit writer. He says, for example, “I am speaking to the truth about a pain haunting
us, for thousands of years. I do not wear a mask, any longer, to cobbler’s lament and
words; no language barriers now. Today, I dump aesthetic on the dung heap; I chuck
my present frame into the abyss; I stomp under my feet the rhythm and melody of
my old poetic lines; I chase away the fine sound of poetry; I now speak just as I am;
as Madiga, a cobbler; a slipper stitching slugger, a carcass collector; a grave digger;
a scavenger; these are me.”13 This poem by a Dalit poet hides no anger against the
aesthetic mode of expression. He in a way suggests an affirmation of the ordinary
language over the aesthetically elevated representation of Dalit life. This poet seems
to belong to the younger generation of Dalits. But there are some Dalit writers who
belong to older generations, but who hold a very inspiring view that radically differs
from the one held by the younger generation of Dalits.
Annabhau Sathe, a leading Dalit writer of the early 1950s and 1960s, considers
aesthetic language as an important medium through which Dalits could express
their social reality much more effectively. The social context in India, as he argues
in his work, has produced a reality that is hydra-headed in that articulating such
reality in an immediate, unmediated language would turn the social face of the Dalit
completely grotesque.14 Sathe further suggests that in a caste-ridden society such as
ours, the Dalit requires a new aesthetic so as to make beautiful what is considered
grotesque. At the subjective level, as Sathe earnestly suggests, Dalits require aesthetic
much more urgently so as to retain their human face. To put it differently, Sathe
suggests an aesthetic modification of Dalit reality. Sathe thus suggests that the Dalit
can acquire aesthetic sense through creative imagination rather than raw empirical
language. Approaching reality with naked languages thus unaided by aesthetics
would be less inspiring and hence Sathe avoids the use of what he calls a “batbatit”
language or grotesque language. Sathe suggests aesthetic language as the substitute
for the batbatit language. However, Sathe also cautions us and says that creative
imagination has to be used with immense care. Too much use of imagination might
lead a person to drift away from reality, which is the inspirational source of the
306 Gopal Guru

aesthetic, Sathe observes. Batbatit language, just to take Sathe’s aesthetic concern
forward, may lead to an un-self-conscious display of reality.15 To put the point
differently, aesthetic expression would help create the possibility of a self-conscious
form of life, which would eventually overcome the “batbatiti” expression of Dalit
reality. In fact, the Dalit poet who was interested in putting the aesthetic language
on the dung heap cannot avoid resorting to the aesthetic mode of expression of
his subjectivity. His aesthetic seems to be politically active against upper-caste
domination.
The Dalit poet referenced above, who has a social background of treating leather
at different levels of its production however, has chosen—perhaps unwittingly—to
deploy aesthetics as the resource to score a point against the upper castes who seek
to denigrate Dalits. He asks a series of questions to his upper-caste adversaries: “Did
your grandfather stitch the slippers?; Did your father beat the drum; Did you even
know the smell of leather?” Then the Dalit poet invites this upper caste to visit the
Madigawada once:
You will learn the difference between your street and our locality; you will grasp
the heart beat of drumbeat. We now are asking for our rights; our leather straps
afire; cobbling knives sharp and shouting anvils are roaring and the leather belted
bell of oxen.16
It takes no effort for anyone to detect the aesthetic that is deeply mired into a
fascinating language. The language suggests the possibility of a new emancipatory
music emanating from the melodious leather belted bell and also from the drum
that produces its own enchanting melody. This language, which involves a subversive
aesthetic, however, contradicts with poet’s earlier position that seeks to put the
aesthetic on the dung heap. How does one understand this contradiction, which at
one level seeks to suppress the need for aesthetics as a medium of Dalit expression
and at another level also takes recourse to the aesthetic in order to sharpen the Dalit
moral critique of the upper caste? One can perhaps understand this inconsistent Dalit
life, which is the result of a self-contradictory movement; a subjectivity that is divided
into opposing moments that are constitutive of the Dalit poets’ life. This contradiction
can be resolved only through the resignification of an object (in the present case, one
of skin or leather). Leather gets resignified by the power of the Dalit aesthetic that its
subject—that is the leather worker—generates with the intention of interrogating the
larger structure of discrimination. Thus, the aesthetic of leather provides Dalits with
a communicative channel to unite the object and subject in a very meaningful way.
There is a unity of purpose in the language of the aesthetic of leather.
The Dalit seems to be using aesthetics at a higher level of contestation. The
substance of skin offers the Dalit the site for this contestation. Before we focus
on skin as the site of contestation, it is necessary to offer some clarification. In the
Indian context, color as an extended property of skin does not become an object
of contestation as it becomes in the Western context. In the Indian context, the
color of the skin does not become an asset or a liability as it becomes in the Western
context. Unlike the West, particularly the United States, the color of the skin,
generally speaking, does not acquire that political charge. In fact in Indian context
Aesthetic of Touch and THE Skin 307

color acquires a confusing character. A large number of people who are from the
upper caste do have black skin and many Dalits do possess a fair skin. However, the
dark skin of a person from touchable caste that otherwise is considered a liability is
converted into an asset through adding ritual value to skin as the corporeal property
sitting on the body. The skin acquires value and privilege through the mediation of
ritual touch. To put it differently, it is not an ordinary or natural touch that assigns
additional value to the skin in the Indian context. Thus, the dark skin acquires
an enormous ritual importance in the moral economy of touch. Conversely, the
fair skin of the untouchable is grafted with certain markers that are inscribed onto
the untouchable body though not with the intention of adding to the aesthetic
value of the Dalit body. But the Dalit body gets grafted with markers that act as
a radio collar that is used to keep track of the wild animal. Markers on Dalit skin
are needed because it helps in detecting the Dalit body in the color-blind situation
or in the confusing situation. Dalit skin with derogatory meaning grafted onto it
is thus deployed to wither down the normative essence (self-esteem) of the Dalit
personality. Thus, the skin is used as a standard to limit the reciprocity of touch both
in terms of time and space. The skin of a Dalit thus becomes a “signboard” that is
then used by the upper caste to avoid the moral menace, that is the untouchable.
In this context an act of resignification thus involves elevation of the grotesque;
repulsive and wretched to its universal beauty. Dalit intellectuals adopt an aesthetic
language not only to restore universal value to their morally condemned existence
but also to invite those who have acquired moral/cultural power to deliver negative
judgment on others. The source of a Dalit aesthetic therefore is a touchstone that
not only beautifies their own reality, but also the reality of those who seek to malign
this life with negative description at the first instance. Let us see in the following
section how the resignification plays out in the social imaginary of the Dalits.
One of the leading Dalit intellectuals Baburao Bagul has produced the following
metaphysics to attempt a moral surgery of the heart, which is filled with the moral
resources that produce negative judgment about others. Bagul in his literary
imagination restores an aesthetic power to the Dalit life that has been sought to
be morally degraded by the twice-born in India. He says, “You (twice born) call us
untouchable; yes we are untouchables so is the SUN can you touch the SUN? You treat
us as untouchables; so we are. Can you conquer panchamahabhute? You refuse to
embrace us because you think we are untouchable. Can you embrace Death?”17 The
metaphorical vocabulary that is a mixture of affirmation (SUN, Panchamahabhute)
and negation (death) is self-explanatory, requiring no further elaboration. Its
aesthetic is something about producing an authorial meaning; then Baburao’s meta-
language is also producing a different and perhaps authorial meaning of the world
of untouchables. Similarly, the addressee in this imagination is the social tormentor
who in light of the moral force of universal reason is supposed to transform himself
into a decent human being.
However, one finds this production of authorial meaning quite problematic on
the following grounds. First, Baburao’s imagination involves Romanticism, which in
turn makes “untouchable” as the category of imagination quite central for the Dalit
aesthetic. One might find Baburao taking the twice-born into the romantic world
308 Gopal Guru

and thus replacing the need for confronting the latter in the domain of concrete
social life. Those upper caste who take the need for moral surgery seriously are
supposed to subject them continuously to this metaphysics as some of them may
have the infinite capacity to “refill” the heart with “morally objectionable” content.
Thus, a successful moral surgery depends on the simultaneous elimination of sources
that fill this heart with the “dirty substance.” Secondly, as corollary to the first, an
act of resignification itself has an inherent limitation. It can be accused of involving a
contradictory assumption: optimism and pessimism. At the level of optimism, it tries
to recover the human essence in the Dalit self; but at another level it also suggests an
impossibility to seek recognition from the touchable in whose eyes the Dalits never
morally grow out of their stigmatized Dalithood. Thus, resignification does not receive
reciprocal recognition as the touchables’ aesthetic power, dependent on their reified
essence: an ascendant sense of social arrogance and the totality of social dominance.
The Dalit literary imagination that is central to their aesthetic also performs as the
standard to define what a warm touch is and what is cold. The Dalit literary power
to evaluate the moral quality of touch would always imagine the untouchable as a
live-wire, which then is inaccessible to the cold and hence conditional touch of the
upper caste.18 Thus, the upper-caste reluctance to offer reciprocal recognition to the
Dalit has to be understood in terms of the reciprocal reification of social relations
between the two. In fact it is the upper-caste imagination to communicate benign
judgment that gets reified. The touchable refuses to take flight into the ideal Dalit
world. This ideal world of the Dalit is not built up around the sociological premise
but around the normative promise of mutual respect and mutual recognition of
equal human worth. Finally, in the absence of mutual recognition, Dalit attempts at
resignification look not only to be self-satisfying, but these efforts also look prodigal.
They look prodigal in terms of the moral economy of vocabulary. The vocabulary
such as the Dalit as glowing sun and hence the symbol of equality and freedom adds
to the interpretive value of aesthetic. Ironically, this aesthetic value also requires
untouchablity as a constant negative reference point for triggering the aesthetic
imagination of Dalits. However, Dalits do not have control over the reproduction
of structural meanings embedded in untouchability. Secondly, on the brighter side,
refusal to recognize the moral worth of the Dalit ironically provides the basis for a
Dalit aesthetic, which they progressively deploy to eliminate stigmata as ontological
wounds. The Dalit aesthetic at the political level is deeply agential. Let us see in the
next section how Dalits put political content into the category of skin and touch.
Let me bring back the aesthetic from its elevation to metaphysics by Bagul
to its material substance. In this particular section I would like to put forth the
argument that the production of leather as a material practice produces the aesthetic
of leather. Secondly, the Dalit imagination involving the object of leather tends to
produce different meanings that get differentially built up around the different
kinds of musical forms that the leather produces in the process of its own physical
expansion—for example, tauting. The production of leather demands the delicate
handling of hide or raw skin of animals. The process of flaying the skin from the
dead cattle requires both skill and energy. That is to say, to separate the hide from
the carcass in one piece, it is risky to use the knife that might damage the skin. Hence
Aesthetic of Touch and THE Skin 309

one has to thrust the hand or fist into the hide and separate it from the carcass. Thus
there is an art involved in such separation.
The process of producing superfine leather thus involves a division of labor,
which is sanctioned and regulated by the caste ideology. At the initial stage that
involves flaying the skin from the animal, it is one of the subcaste of untouchables
to which the caste rules have mandated the job of flaying. Incidentally these are
also castes that are at the lower rung of horizontal hierarchy. Thus in Maharashtra,
it is the Mahars who used to do this job a few decades ago. In Andhra Pradesh and
Karnataka states of India, it is the Madiga caste that does this job. Treating the
raw hide that is the next stage is done by the caste called “Dhor” in Maharashtra.
This particular caste plays the most important role in converting a raw hide into
a semi-finished leather. At the third stage semi-finished leather travels to another
untouchable caste, Chambhar, who then converts this leather into different articles
such as leather buckets, footwear, and so on. Production thus involves a division of
labor that also assigns an aesthetic value to leather. This aesthetic value is different
from the aesthetic that the touchable whose experience involves the consumption
and the offer of an utilitarian angle attached to it while the aesthetic value that
the Dalit attaches to leather is subversion. Let us look at the question as to how
a Dalit aesthetic associated with resignification of leather produces different but
emancipatory meaning out of leather.
The ideological construction of leather by the Dalit tends to produce a normative
language that definitely militates against the “batbatit” of Annabhau Sathe’s
vocabulary, meaning that the upper caste tend to attach to leather either through
consuming the cricket ball or through using leather as a poison weapon to humiliate
Dalits (e.g., the Dalits are forced to carry chappal on their heads in Tamil Nadu).
Dalit literary imagination uses the act of flaying the raw hide from the carcass
in order to produce a politically subversive meaning that has implications for
creating anxiety in the upper-caste self that otherwise feels quite settled without any
intellectual challenge from below. In the Brahmanical metaphysics of caste, flaying
the skin is related to the ritual act of rendering the skin of another human being
untouchable. Thus, flaying as a symbolic act, is tantamount to the grafting of a
stigma onto the skin of an untouchable. This grafting is of course different from
the skin grafting in the medical science. Grafting of skin in the second sense is
temporary while it is permanent in the former sense. However, the Dalit seems to
shed this skin with stigma attached to it through modernist mediation at one level
and ethical transformation at another. Shedding of skin not in degree but in absolute
terms could also be seen in terms of the untouchables converting to Buddhism in
1956. Casting off dead or stigmatized skin is evident in the literary imagination of
the prominent Dalit poet who says:
Jenvha tumi fadat hota; tenvha amhi fadakt hoto,
Jenvha amhi fadakto tenvha tumhi fadata19
(When you, the upper caste, were dissecting our skin through the ideology of purity–
pollution, we the untouchables were flaying the skin of the dead cattle. Now we are
flaying your skin through the force of modernity; you are dealing with the dead
310 Gopal Guru

skin.) Thus the Dalit poet is turning the defiling meaning of leather against those
who produced this meaning so as to push the Dalit out of the civilizational sphere
that is based on the corporeal touch of skin. In this regard, it is important to bring
in here the difference between the social meaning attached to skin in the cultural
context in which white skin is treated as the touchstone of social gradation and social
status. In Jamaica, for example, hierarchical status valuations of different people
were made according to different grade of skin “shading,” with pure whiteness being
widely valued in hegemonic cultural discourse as superior to all, and declining value
corresponding to lesser degrees of whiteness and the lowest value for blackness.20 In
the Indian context, on the other hand, this pyramidal notion of skin is not relevant
as the color is a confusing category in caste terms. It is the scale of touch that decides
the social value of a person.
At the assertive level where Dalits take recourse to modernity, the vocabulary
undergoes an inversion, thus acquiring a subversive meaning of Dalit aesthetic
existence vis-à-vis the socially dominant castes. Thus, in such inversion the
vocabulary in Marathi “fadane” (flaying) acquires a discursive character available for
the intersecting purposes of both the socially dominant and those who are fighting
their cultural subordination.
At another level, leather also provides discursive ground for Dalits who then
put an emancipatory meaning, thus making language a normative resource to
bring out a sense of reason within the recalcitrant touchable. Leather provides
reason as a weapon with which the Dalits seek to fight upper-caste prejudice.
Let us look at the following folk song that was composed by the Dalit in the
early 1950s with the intention to expose the contradiction within the upper
castes’ social attitudes. “You (upper caste) drink water from the ‘mot’ leather
bucket that we stitched for your irrigation. But you do not touch us!”21 This
particular song clearly brings out the sense of unfairness that is associated with
the discriminatory social attitude of the upper caste. This song also shows that
the upper caste have introduced a hierarchical meaning in an object of leather
according to which the live skin of the untouchable is not worthy of touch. As
against this even the dead skin (mot) of a cow, for example, is less problematic for
the upper caste. The Dalit aesthetic hints at the language of justice and equality,
which is folded into the leather bucket but which flows with the water that is
released from the leather bucket. The cognitive capacity of the Dalit unfolds the
emancipatory meaning that is hidden in the leather bucket. Dalits through their
cognition take on leather, render the very idea of leather much more complex
in a conceptual sense. The complex language emerges from their experience of
discrimination. The social construction of a leather bucket provides universal
ground on which the Dalit acquires not only morally, but epistemologically
superior discursive position from which to reason with the upper caste that the
former are right and equality and justice are on their side. Social construction of
leather has a goal in as much as it seeks to persuade the upper caste about the fact
that there is an unconditional value to reason. For the Dalit, therefore, reason
is an instrument to attain truth and to neutralize prejudice that is linked to the
hierarchical construction of skin or leather.
Aesthetic of Touch and THE Skin 311

This force of reason also opens up the dialogue within the Dalit community
that has spiritualized the idea of skin to the extent that the live skin of their body
has acquired a negative meaning in their own cognitive scheme. In Maharashtra,
the lower-caste women have developed a spiritual reason not to cover their skin
that is associated with the top of their corporeal body. They further argue that
it is the greed for skin of the dead mythical deer in Rāmāyaṇa that was the root
cause for Rāmāyaṇa. In Rāmāyaṇa, Sita had the fascination for the skin of a
mythical deer, as she desired to stitch a “kancholi,” an upper garment made out
of the skin of deer. Hence she sends Laksman to get the deer but in the process
renders herself vulnerable to Ravana’s evil designs. Since skin is the root cause of
such calamity, why wear the blouse at all? This thinking can come under heavy
rational scrutiny if one takes the force of reason as available in the Dalit songs
as mentioned above.
The tactile auditory aesthetics from the Dalit perspective results from the leather
dynamics, which is built up around two opposite conditions: tauting and flaccidity.
When leather is molded into a tauting form or when it is transformed into an
expansive mode, it is in such condition, that leather creates the condition for music
and rhythm. In this regard, it is also interesting to note that it is not the skin alone
that is responsible for producing rhythm and music when its gets mounted on the
two metal rings that connect this leather. In fact the melody is guaranteed by the
leather cord that is used to stitch the leather to the metal ring. The leather drum that
the Dalits beat on several occasions is the symbol of the arrival of their freedom. The
sound of the drum travels across both the physical and spiritual boundaries that in
the olden times had constrained the sound of drum to both time and space. To put
it differently, Dalits were forced to beat the drums not only on certain religious and
cultural occasions but also to announce their arrival in the public sphere that was
regulated by the ideology of purity–pollution. This ideology did not allow the Dalit
to enter the public spaces at will. They were forced to announce their arrival, even
if they had entered the traditional village boundaries at the designated time in the
evening and in the afternoon. This time was reserved for the untouchable because
it is during this time the Dalit would not carry their shadows with them as shadows
were also considered as the source of ritual pollution by the top of the twice-born.
The liberating sound of the “halagi” that was played in the late evening continues
to permeate the entire “panchcroci” village vicinity with spiritual meaning. This
spiritual music does have a soothing impact on the troubled soul of the Brahmin
even today. If the upper caste raises objections to a Matang (Dalit) playing the Dafale
(drum) for his own spiritual satisfaction, then the Matang can turn the same musical
instrument into a poison weapon, which can then be used in the art of resistance
against the local lords. The Dalit would refuse to taut the leather in case it has
become flaccid due to moisture conditions. For the satisfaction of the local lord,
the untouchable would try to warm the drum on a fire but he would not warm the
crucial part of the drum (the leather stitched to the metal ring with leather cord)
with the intention of producing a high musical note, but to retain its flaccidity.
This would not give any clue to the lord who would feel completely frustrated and
ultimately accuse the drum of emptiness, of not yielding music.
312 Gopal Guru

However, there are rather intellectually agile Dalit aestheticians who would not
buy into this description of Dalit drum as empty pot. For example Sumitra, a Dalit
woman who taught music at the Maharaja College at Mysore in Karnataka, would
argue that the Dalit drum is not empty. In fact, she would argue that it is filled with
moral significance. According to her, while producing music for the upper castes,
it shows tolerance toward upper-caste arrogance and hence involves endurance of
pain. Sumitra’s elevation of the drum to the highest level of aesthetic expression
where the word-stretching is ontologically linked to the existential condition of
a poor who is perpetually involved in the struggle to stretch within the limited
resources. At another level, the phenomenon of stretching or expanding the skin
also involves both pain and joy. The expansion of skin of a pregnant woman, which
metaphorically acquires the size of a drum, involves both physical pain and worldly
joy. The male’s inability to expand the skin the same way as pregnant woman does
may lead to psychological pain that the former cannot expand the skin as he is not
biologically equipped for pregnancy. Yet in another sense, the leather drum plays a
vicious role in terms of subsuming the cry of the widow who does not want to die
with her husband on the pyre. In the heyday of Sati, the upper-caste patriarchy used
to play drums loudly so that the people around the pyre as spectacle could not hear
this cry. Thus in the case of the Dalit, using drums as the symbols of freedom, but
in another case of a high-caste Hindu widow it assumes the role of a villain.22 The
ontology of melancholy produced through the music of the drum resonates with the
cry of a burning woman.
From the above presentation, one might get the sense that the universe of the
aesthetic has fragmentary articulation. This kind of articulation emanates essentially
from interesting forms of aesthetic consciousness. The absence of an ethical element
in the formation of aesthetic consciousness necessarily accounts for this intersecting
nature. Thus, aesthetic consciousness in the Indian context acquires not just the
differential but the discriminatory expression rooted in the hierarchical conception
of skin. Thus, the upper caste would consider “formatted” dead skin as an aesthetic
object. The people of this caste, however, would treat the live skin of an untouchable
as an object of repulsion. Even today, the upper castes take every care to protect
their skin not only from the touch but even from the “defiling shadow” of the live
skin of the untouchables. But it is also worthy of our attention that satisfaction of
aesthetic taste, in modern times, eliminates the separation between skin and touch.
The realm of the “laukika” (quotidian) brings about a certain intimacy between
skin and touch. However, the logic of the ideology of purity–pollution continues
to prevent the upper caste from touching the live skin, while it—for pragmatic
reasons—touches the formatted dead skin (the leather ball). The idea of ritual
repulsion continues to produce a differential sensual response to dead skin as against
the live skin. In a paradoxical way, dead skin and the live skin of the upper caste,
which lack sensitivity of touch, achieve ontological unity in as much as both kinds of
skin lose their porous surface and become seamless. The dead skin loses its porous
surface and hence sensitivity through its separation (flaying) from the beast’s body,
while the impact of the ideology of purity–pollution converts the live skin of the
upper caste into a dead skin as it resists subtracting the vitality that can be obtained
Aesthetic of Touch and THE Skin 313

through touching the other live skin. Paradoxically, the upper caste—for aesthetic
reasons—finds more value in the dead skin (the cricket ball) than in the live skin
of an untouchable leather worker. An aesthetic privileging dead skin over live skin
introduces a contradiction between ethics and aesthetic. The core concern of this
essay was to address this contradiction and suggest its resolution by making vitality
of touch dependent on the ethics of touch. Touch, in an ethical sense, is the vital
moral need of the decent society. The realization of decent society in turn is based on
the gradual elimination of the sense of smelling and sniffing. Sniffing and smelling
provides the basis for the hierarchical aesthetic sensibilities. Sniffing regulated by
the norms of purity and pollution in the Indian context makes the mutual touching
of live skin difficult, if not impossible. Sniffing—not as the physical sensation of a
property, but more as ritual resource—aids the upper caste in protecting themselves
by creating distance and cordoning of the boundaries around the socially privileged
body. Thus, smelling and sniffing generates both moral and social resistance to the
human act of touching the live skin. Unconditional touching assumes the absences of
smelling and sniffing. In an unconditional touching, that which is used by the upper
caste as banisters (such as smelling and sniffing) would no longer be needed for
acquiring aesthetic sensibilities. By intensifying the distance from hearing to seeing,
the aesthetic becomes nonvisceral. In fact, unconditional touching would produce
unity between ethics and aesthetic. It would remove the very basis that seeks to put
the aesthetic of dead skin before the ethics of touching the live skin. In fact, ethics
of touch would have moral power to convert the live skin that has been deadened
by the ideology of purity–pollution. We can substantiate this point by citing the
most clinching scene in the epochal novel Sanskara.23 In the novel the authorial
character Praneshacharya—an upper-caste Brahmin who is constituted and activated
by the ideology of purity-pollution—uses smell and sniffing so as to insulate his
ritually pure skin from touching the skin of an untouchable woman. This folding
of oneself into “pure” skin, however, in an ethical sense produces deadness in his
skin. Praneshacharya’s struggle to fold him into “pure” skin, effectively dissolves
into moral insignificance and hence through insulation it acquires deadness. It is
the emancipatory touch of Chandra, an untouchable woman and the protagonist
of the novel, that converts the dead skin of Praneshacharya into live skin. This
happens through Chandra’s revolutionary act of embracing the self-insulated
orthodox Brahmin. This divine touch of Chandra helps this orthodox Brahmin to
flow freely out of the body that had become a cesspool filled with the ideology of
purity-pollution. Chandra’s ethical move in the novel also sends a message, to some
of the leading poets such as Baburao Bagul and folk singers such as Waman Kardak,
for example, not to become a sparrow and to not remain merely in an imagined
world,24 but to remain a human being in the concrete world and to become both the
subject and object of the aesthetic of emancipation. It would also suggest that the
Dalit and its opposite (the Brahmin) should flow like a clean wind and clean water.
Flowing like wind and water is another name for freedom. The benefit of initiating a
politically responsible aesthetic of touch would be the breathing of ethics back into
the philosophy of the senses. Aesthetic sensibilities derived from the sensation of the
eyes like seeing and from the ears listening to music may be an important component
314 Gopal Guru

of the philosophy of the senses, but such philosophy without the ethics of touch
would be breathless. In order to restore breath to this philosophy of aesthetics, one
needs to reflect on the ethics of touch. It cannot assign completeness based on eyes
and ears, if it lacks sensitivity to and readiness for active touch. Politically and vitally,
aesthetics without ethics is breathless.

Notes
* I would like to thank Prof. Arindam Chakrabarti for his social and cognitive
generosity that helped me in believing that there is some worth in my essay.
1. Jacques Ranciere, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, trans.
Gabriel Rockhill (London and New York: Continuum International Publishing Group,
2004).
2. Gopal Guru, “Rejection of Rejection,” in Humiliation: Claims and Context, ed.
Gopal Guru (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 212.
3. Paul Guyer, Kant (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 161.
4. This is my personal conversation with the dalit activist from Lucknow. Many dalit
activists preserve this memory even today.
5. Lasit Malinga is the Srilankan fast Bowler.
6. Roslyn Wallach Bologh, Dialectical Phenomenology: Marx’s Method (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), p. 20.
7. P. Balu, a leather worker’s son, was a leading cricketer from Mumbai in the
early 1920s. This has been documented by C. B. Khairmode in the Biography of
Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (Marathi) (Pune: Sugawa Publication, Vol. 2, 1991),
p. 146.
8. N. Judith Shklar, Ordinary Vices (Cambridge, MA and London, England: The Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, 1984). The focus of this important study is on the
negative aspect of snobbery.
9. Anzieu Didier, The Skin Ego, trans. Chris Turner (New Haven, CT and London: Yale
University Press, 1989), p. 104.
10. Ibid., p. 61.
11. Levinas has discussed Ethics of Face in his work on Totality and Infinity: An Essay on
Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969). For
the discussion on ethics of face refer to section III of the volume.
12. Sundar Sarukkai, “Phenomenology of Untouchability,” in Cracked Mirror, ed. Gopal
Guru and Sundar Sarukkai (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 157.
13. “Drumbeat, Yendluri Sudhakar,” trans. Syed Mujeebuddin, in Steel Nibs Are
Sprouting: New Dalit Writings from South India, ed. K. Satyanarayan and Suzie Tharu
(Noida, Uttar Pradesh: HarperCollins India, 2013), p. 592.
14. Ashok Chousalkar and Randhir Shinde (eds.), Collection of Essays by Annabhau Sathe
(Marathi) (Kolhapur Shramik Prathistahn, 2011), p. 38.
15. Ibid.
Aesthetic of Touch and THE Skin 315

16. K. Satyanarayana and Suzie Tharu, Steel Nibs Are Sprouting: New Dalit Writings from
South India (Noida, Uttar Pradesh: HarperCollins India, 2013), p. 592.
17. Guru, Humiliation.
18. N. K. Hanumanthaiah, “Dossier In Hannda,” in Steel Nibs Are Sprouting: New Dalit
Writings from South India, ed. Satyanarayana and Suzie Tharu, (Noida, Utter Pradesh:
Harper and Collins, 2013), pp. 372–74.
19. This is an oral communication with P. I. Sonkamble who taught me English Literature
at Babasaheb Ambedkar College, Aurangabad.
20. Anna Marie Smith, “Rastafari as Resistance and the Ambiguities of Essentialism in
the New Social Movements,” in The Making of Political Identities, ed. Laclau Earnest
(London: Verso, 1994), p. 184.
21. Gopal Guru, Dalit Cultural Movement and Dialectics of Dalit Politics in Maharashtra
(Mumbai: Vikas Adhyayan Kendra, 1997), p. 6.
22. Sumant Muranjan, Purohit Vargache Varchsvae ani Baharatcha Samajik Itihas
(Marathi) (Wai: Pradnya Path Shala, 1973), p. 134. In this particular work Muranjan
has taken trouble to document important testimonies of the Western travelers who
made moving observation about Sattee as a spectacle.
23. U. R. AnantMurty, Sanskara, 2nd edition (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012).
24. This has been the theme of leading dalit poets such as Baburao Bagul and Waman
dada Kardak from Maharashtra. The metaphor of a bird is used as the symbol
of freedom and it also expresses the desire to escape the trauma and stigma of
untouchability and casteism.