Opinion Nandu Ram, who brought ‘lived experience’ into mainstream sociology, significantly changed Dalit discourse

In Silencing the Past, Haitian anthropologist Michel Trouillot showed how diverse histories are silenced during the production and reproduction of mainstream history. These undocumented voices shape the folklore and the everyday narratives of the marginalised. In India, the historical silencing of Dalits, Adivasis, and other communities moved sociologist and former JNU professor Nandu Ram. He documented the unarchived histories — he published the five-volume Encyclopaedia of Scheduled Castes in India — and also brought “lived experience” into mainstream sociology, significantly changing Dalit discourse.

Ram, who died on July 13 aged 78, was born to a family of Dalit labourers in Uttar Pradesh. Having grown up in a village where his family was forced to live on the outskirts, he experienced both spatial segregation and inequality. These experiences, coupled with his understanding of ethnographic nuances, led to the publication of The Mobile Scheduled Caste: Rise of a New Middle Class, where he identified the emergence of a “Dalit middle class” that was the result of affirmative action and Ambedkarite resistance. His edited anthologies, like Beyond Ambedkar: Essays on Dalits in India and Dalits in Contemporary India, showed how Dalit politics could be read both through and beyond Ambedkar.

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Though his works were sometimes criticised by scholars for failing to delineate Dalit-OBC relations, Nandu Ram was among the first sociologists who brought Ambedkar into mainstream sociological discourse. In his introductory address at the first Dr Ambedkar Memorial Annual Lecture, Ram said, “Both the left and right-wing historians of modern India… have almost siphoned the Dalit movement(s) in their writings.” He devoted his life to retrieving and restoring the balance.