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This article shows how untouchability was framed as an ethnographic problem largely through a racial and Brahmanical perspective by looking at some of the main interventions made by British and Indian social scientists on this topic, such as H.H. Risley, G.S. Ghurye and Radhakamal Mukerjee. Dalit traditions, knowledge and theories about their origin were discarded and suffered an epistemicide. Reassessing the history of untouchability as an ethnographic concept is critical as the influence of these theories can still be perceived not only in common understandings about the origin of Dalits but also in the way sociology and anthropology are practised in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the complex nature of untouchability by examining its connections to space and racialization in Ambedkar's political writings, including his experiences of using movement through space as a counter-hegemonic strategy. For Ambedkar, untouchability rested on a perpetual threat of violence which pushed Dalits to "self-racialize" or adopt bodily markers which gave away their caste status in specific places. This permitted the organization of caste hierarchies in space and its constant reproduction through time. Ambedkar became aware that places like the village facilitated the racialization of certain bodies as touchable or untouchable. Yet, the connections between space and racialization were not fixed. Ambedkar's memories of untouchability were linked to "in-between spaces", such as train stations or hotels, where the racialization of Dalits could not be assumed a priori. Such spatial indeterminacy allowed Ambedkar to challenge the behaviour Dalits were supposed to conform to in dominant caste spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]