ABSTRACT
Early twentieth century didactic literature and domestic manuals for middle-class and upper-caste women in Hindi established a similar binary between the pativrata and the Dalit woman, who was over-sexualized in terms of a kutni, and depicted as greedy, cheating, practicing witchcraft and possessing animalistic tendencies. As one Hindi author put it in 1915, the war demonstrated that the most technologically advanced European nations “had reached the very limit of barbarism”. In the Hindi public sphere the “showcasing of the wild” was present also beyond the periodical press. Hindi readers’ interest in classifying the world’s people was manifested also in a “Dictionary of people”, published by the Bhugol Karyalaya, Allahabad, a press specializing in geography books. The chapter presenst the bulk of the arguments on the “showcasing of the wild” have mainly drawn on early twentieth century Hindi journals that addressed what Francesca Orsini has termed “a not-yet-too-clearly-defined ‘Hindu Hindi’ readership.”
