Mobilizing the Marginalized

Amit Ahuja is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research focuses on the processes of inclusion and exclusion in multiethnic societies. He has studied this within the context of ethnic parties and movements, military organization, intercaste marriage, and skin color preferences in South Asia. Professor Ahuja's research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Institute of Indian Studies, the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, the Hellman Family Foundation, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Michigan.

• List of Figures, Maps, and Tables Preface Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations1 Introduction 2 Mobilization and the Marginalized 3 Historical Dalit Social Mobilization 4 The Effects of Historical Dalit Social Mobilization 5 Dalit Party Performance and Bloc Voting 6 Dalit Social Mobilization and Bloc Voting 7 How Mobilization Type Shapes Dalit Welfare 8 The Identity Trap 9 Conclusion: Whither Dalit Politics? Appendix A Focus Groups and Follow-up Interviews Appendix B Locality-based Campaign Survey Appendix C An Observational Study Assessing Caste Boundaries in the Indian Marriage MarketGlossary Index

Armed with substantial research and possessing intellectual energy to challenge conventional wisdom, Amit Ahuja provides a convincing counterpoint to fallacious understandings of the layered relationship between self-assertion movements and ethnic electoral mobilization.