The contributions in this issue forward a nuanced exposition of how the production of racial difference in India buttresses and is reproduced through Hindu nationalist, casteist, and colonial projects that generate tacit or explicit consent for continued violence against racialized others. At the same time, the articles look transnationally, examining how regional forms of racial difference marked by caste and tribe, for instance, have long articulated with historical forms of global racial capitalism. Ultimately, this special issue attends to the narratives and experiences of those living at the margins, who strategically deploy racial concepts to build international solidarity movements beyond the narrow confines of the nation-state. In so doing, it hopes to derive insights on the necessity of transnational translations, even as it directs renewed attention to the specificity of regional hierarchies that shape everyday life and death in India.

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Tel. +44 (0) 113 343 9730 2 B.R. Ambedkar, Franz Boas and the rejection of racial theories of untouchability Abstract: This paper analyses Ambedkar's challenge to racial theories of untouchability. It examines how Franz Boas' ideas about race, via Alexander Goldenweiser, influenced Ambedkar's political thought. Ambedkar is situated as a thinker aware of larger changes taking place in Western academia in the early twentieth century. During his time at ColumbiaUniversity, Ambedkar familiarised himself with ideas that rejected the fixity of identities and racial hierarchies. Ambedkar, following Boas, rejected the idea that Untouchables's place in society was determined by their supposed racial inferiority. Instead, he argued that untouchability was a cultural problem that could be fought and eradicated.

This article examines B. R. Ambedkar’s dramatically shifting politics in the years prior to Partition. In 1940, he supported the creation of Pakistan. In 1946, he joined Winston Churchill in his demands to delay independence. Yet, in 1947, Ambedkar rejected Pakistan and joined the Nehru administration. Traditional narratives explain these changes as part of Ambedkar’s political pragmatism. It is believed that such pragmatism, along with Gandhi’s good faith, helped Ambedkar to secure a place in Nehru’s Cabinet. In contrast, I argue that Ambedkar changed his attitude towards Congress due to the political transformations elicited by Partition. Ambedkar approached Congress as a last resort to maintain a political space for Dalits in independent India. This, however, was unsuccessful. Partition not only saw the birth of two countries but also virtually eliminated the histories of resistance of political minorities that did not fall under the Hindu–Muslim binary, such as Dalits. In the case of Ambedkar, his past as a critic of Gandhi and Congress was erased in favour of the more palatable image of him as the father of the constitution. This essay reconfigures our understanding of Partition by showing how the promise of Pakistan shaped the way we remember Ambedkar.