ABSTRACT
I initially began this study with the aim of examining a narrowly focused history of untouchable migration and identity construction in Singapore. Using as a starting point the contemporary public disappearance of practices, attitudes and identities associated with prejudice against untouchables, along with the relative absence of the untouchable in the historical record, I set out to accomplish a number of goals based on the directions of my early research. I wanted to establish that untouchables had migrated in significant numbers; to understand the reasons why they undertook migration; and to uncover how untouchable migrants overcame caste disabilities overseas. My intention was to plot the decline of caste attitudes and identities in Singapore throughout almost a century of migration, and to examine and uncover the new identity narratives that replaced untouchable identity. During the nineteenth century, when Indians began overseas migration as labourers in many parts of the British Empire, replacing slaves and transmarine convicts in the imperial labour economy, the majority of colonial observers predicted that caste would rapidly erode in an overseas environment and that migration would be an emancipatory experience for untouchables.
