ABSTRACT

What then is the dalit idea of the past? And what would be the link between that dalit past and the task of a dalit historiography? How can one support the claim that a history of what grounds dalit politics is not recoverable within historiography? Let us turn here to another instance of such an insight into time as Kabir’s, one which could also suggest for us a new understanding of religion in its moment of institution. It will provide us with a picture of dalit antiquity, but a picture severed from any ties with the merely archaic. Here I have recourse to a relatively recent attempt to write a prehistory of the popular. The attempt yielded a generative account of the possible links between Kabir and earlier traditions of heterodoxy and radicalism in the Indic scene such as that of tantra and yoga. I am referring to the work of David Lorenzen. I want to show how Lorenzen opened up the very idea of prehistory in ways that can no longer be limited to the historical bases of caste dissent or protest. The uncovering of these bases through archival and ethnographic means, exploring the earliest traces of low-caste dissent in the past while also inhabiting the life-worlds of the present-day followers of Kabir, the Kabirpanthis, has been the basis of his wide-ranging oeuvre.