Ponnivalavan's bellowing voice belies his modest stature as it reverberates throughout the vehicle he guides across Thiruvallur's rugged countryside. Educated till the eighth standard, Ponni is the gregarious personal assistant to VCK General Secretary D. Ravikumar during his 2014 parliamentary bid. While the candidate campaigns in an open-air jeep flanked by DMK district leaders and a bevy of coalition allies, Ponni tails them as closely as possible. He juggles three cell phones throughout the day while frequently running between vehicles at intermittent stops to ferry water, information, and campaign supplies to the party brass. Initially cheerful, Ponni becomes increasingly riled as the campaign progresses. Despite being Ravikumar's personal assistant, his car is frequently pressed to the tail end of the convoy. He chastises the cavalier demeanor of DMK bigwigs, whose new polished Toyota SUVs blaze past the candidate's aged Mahindra Scorpio, mimicking their penchant for waxing poetic about Ravikumar. One day, Ponni turns to me with a smug grin and states: “Michael, you should ask them: You are always introducing Ravikumar as the ‘DMK coalition candidate’ and declaring publicly: ‘He is [DMK Chairman] Kalaignar's candidate! He is [DMK Treasurer] Stalin's candidate!’ If he really is your candidate, why have you only given [figure redacted] rupees? You should give more [money]!” Visibly entertained by this proposition, Ponni cackles aloud and repeats the joke for emphasis.

When the campaign vehicle's PA system dies just before noon, the convoy stops at a nearby hotel for an early lunch, allowing time for technicians to acquire parts and resolve the glitch. While party workers eat rice meals in the attached restaurant, Ponni leads me to an air-conditioned room where DMK district leaders, eager to make up for lost time, discuss changes to the day's itinerary. Once the logistics were settled, they turned to me to inquire about my impressions of the campaign and underscore the generosity of their party executive for giving two seats to a “small, Dalit party.” Abruptly, an elbow begins to needle my ribs and Ponni mutters under his breath: “Ask them, Michael!” When I fail to act on his cue, Ponni broaches the subject himself.

In the early evening of April 14, 1990, the Dalit Panthers convened a public ceremony in K. Pudur, a large Dalit colony in northeast Madurai, to unveil their new movement flag. Photographs of the event depict activists seated on metal folding chairs behind a wooden table. A portrait of Ambedkar adorns the thatched hut behind them. Beneath the portrait, a hand-drawn banner reads: “Liberation is attained through war. New horizons are borne through blood.” As was typical of DPI events, this was a family affair. Children milled about the speakers’ table as activists explained the design features of their flag. Its background, composed of broad red and blue stripes, symbolized their commitment to revolutionary politics and Ambedkarite principles, while the five-pointed star at its center signified their primary objectives, namely to annihilate caste, dismantle the class structure, attain women's rights, foster Tamil nationalism, and vehemently resist imperialism. To achieve these goals, they pledged to upend “the parliamentary democratic system,” which they insisted had hitherto failed to emancipate Dalits and, instead, reduced their community to “listless puppets that raise their hands and nod their heads” at the time of elections. DPI leaders reaffirmed their commitment to boycott elections and pledged to follow an extra-electoral path to promote Dalit development and realize their democratic rights. As exemplified by the snarling cat at the center of the white star, they vowed to pursue these objectives with “the fury of a panther.”

From the early 1990s, DPI leaders embraced bellicose rhetoric and cultivated a militant public disposition. They saw a revolutionary potential in Dalit politics and sought to transform Dalit into a radical political subjectivity.

For more than a quarter of a century, Sean O’Casey enjoyed living in what he called the ‘delightful county’ of Devon. O’Casey remained newsworthy in Ireland until his death, but he lived in relative anonymity in this English seaside area, and today the county does little to remember the writer. This chapter examines the way that O’Casey interacted with the local area of Devon, and the chapter also illustrates how his writing was shaped by the personal events that happened in this geographical location, such as the death of his son Niall from cancer in 1956, his interaction with Devon neighbours, and the contact he enjoyed with visitors who travelled to meet him, such as the Irish playwright Denis Johnston.

One evening against the backdrop of a parliamentary campaign, D. Ravikumar elaborated on an enduring friction between minority representation and electoral reservations, and how they relate to a political constituency. Although electoral reservations were first conceived on the basis of community to ensure the presence of specific groups in elected bodies, elections are conducted on the basis of territory, in a geographically demarcated, socially segregated joint electorate, where Dalit voters are insufficient in number to elect their preferred candidates. As Ravikumar asserts, these representatives are rarely selected by Dalits—the presumed beneficiaries of reservation—but, instead, by an upper caste majority that often prefers Dalit candidates who will, to quote another longtime VCK leader, “take a soft corner on Dalit issues.”2 Ravikumar questions whether electoral reservations produce “genuine” representatives of Dalit communities or, alternatively, if these figures are simply individuals from Dalit communities, emphasizing that these classifications are not always mutually inclusive. Elections in a joint electorate generate contradictory pressures for Dalit politicians, who are expected to champion their community's interests despite their reliance on higher castes that may not share Dalit priorities. Stressing the longevity of this dilemma, Ravikumar guides our conversation to B. R. Ambedkar's well-documented concerns on how the institutional design of electoral reservations would impact the character of minority representation.

In his writings and speeches, Ambedkar grappled with electoral reservation at both theoretical and practical levels, deliberating over how to best ensure democratic institutions support substantive minority representation. Anticipating that caste would shape voting behavior, he predicted that Dalits, a permanent minority, would fail to garner sufficient imperative in joint electorates where representatives are elected by popular vote. Although Dalits, if politically consolidated, may possess the clout to impact election outcomes, they nonetheless lack the capability to select their own representatives. In his view, Dalits elected in a joint electorate would be accountable to a caste majority that selected them and, therefore, only “nominal” representatives of their community. Ambedkar anticipated that the mere presence of Dalits in elected bodies would be insufficient to ameliorate their condition. He argued that a handful of legislative seats would not suffice for India's Dalits because, he cynically asserted, “a legislative Council is not an old curiosity shop” but, instead, an institution that holds “the powers to make or mar the fortunes of society.”

On August 15, 1997, India celebrated its golden jubilee of Independence. In the capital city of New Delhi, organizers prepared lavish ceremonies to commemorate the occasion, beginning with a midnight program broadcast from the Central Hall of Parliament that reenacted prominent scenes from the freedom struggle and featured A-list vocals from Lata Mangeshkar and Bhimsen Joshi alongside audio recordings of founding figures such as M. K. Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Subhas Chandra Bose. In the afternoon, tens of thousands of spectators thronging the city's broad avenues near the historic Red Fort were treated to a flyover by the Indian Air Force that showcased its newly acquired Russian Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets streaking across the sky with tri-colored contrails matching the Indian national flag streaming in their wake. Shortly thereafter, Prime Minister I. K. Gujral addressed the nation. His speech paid tribute to India's diverse mosaic of languages and cultures, extolled its commitment to secular values, and pledged to uphold its democratic traditions. As dusk fell, fireworks lit up the night sky as patriotic hymns hummed from loudspeakers late into the evening.

In the southernmost state of Tamil Nadu, Dalit activists sought to capture national attention with a radically different program. In the preceding weeks, Thol. Thirumavalavan, the firebrand leader of the state's largest Dalit movement, the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal (Liberation Panthers)—also known as the Dalit Panther Iyakkam (DPI; Dalit Panther Movement)—dispatched postcards to his deputies that praised their “successful uprising” in Chennai the previous week. On July 23rd, the DPI had conducted a massive procession that brought traffic in the state capital to a standstill.