Introduction

This chapter sets up the central problematic addressed in the book. Invoking six case studies, both from India and beyond, it points to the profusion of meanings, allusions and cultural connotations, often contradictory, that cloak the idea of the ‘vagabond’. While pointing to the arbitrariness in the juridico-political imagination and the ambiguity in the cultural articulation of the ‘vagabond’, this chapter signals how multiple layers – forced vagabonds, archival-historical vagabonds, re-presented vagabonds, self-professed vagabonds – within the nuanced category ‘vagabond’ may coexist or mirror each other. It discusses the critical issue of conceptual inexactitude or incongruence among terminologies (for vagabond) from across cultures and times, and how the book deals with it.