ABSTRACT
Introduction In an impassioned essay, ‘How Egalitarian Are the Social Sciences in India?’, Gopal Guru, a leading dalit intellectual, writes, ‘It is frustrating, if not tragic, for dalits to languish in raw empiricism’.1 According to him, ‘... Indian social science represents a pernicious divide between theoretical brahmins and empirical shudras’.2 Elaborating the point, he writes:
Social science discourse in India is being closely disciplined by self-appointed juries who sit in the apex court and decide what the correct practice according to the canons is. These juries decide what is theory and what is trash. It is a different matter that these canons lack authenticity as they are borrowed from the west unreservedly. The apex court in social sciences with its full bench in Delhi keeps ruling out subaltern objections as absurd and idiosyncratic at worst and emotional, descriptive-empirical and polemical at best.3
