Women Heroes and Dalit Assertion in North India: Culture, Identity and Politics

This is the fifth volume in the series Cultural Subordination and the Dalit Challenge and explores cultural repression in India and ways in which it is overcome. The author shows how Dalit women heroes (viranganas) of the 1857 Rebellion have emerged as symbols of Dalit assertion in Uttar Pradesh and are being used by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) to build the image of its leader, Mayawati.