Recently the social scientist Shailaja Paik of Indian origin who writes about and researches on Dalit women has been awarded an $800000 grant by the MacArthur foundation, which hands out such grants each year for ‘extraordinary’ achievements or promise.
When the Foundation made the reception of her fellowship public, it stated that “Through her work that elucidates the experiences of Dalit women as agents navigating complex worlds, Paik demonstrates that caste continues …to shape the lives of Untouchables.”
Ms Paik is a history professor at the University of Cincinnati; she is a research professor and holds an affiliate status in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Asian Studies programs.
Reacting to the book, the Foundation said: “Paik offers fresh lens for analysing caste oppression and maps how gender and sexuality are deployed to strip Dalit women of their humanity.”
The MacArthur Fellowships or better known under the name “genius grants” are awarded to people from science and education, through to art and advocacy as the Foundation states that they are “exceptional creative individuals as a risk on their capacity”.
The selections this are done in a blind fashion depending on the recommendations reached and also does not entertain any application or lobbying for the grants that are granted without any precondition and are disbursed incrementally in the space of five years.
In response, The Foundation said her recent programme was on the lives of women performers of Tamasha, a vulgar form of folk theatre mainly performed by Dalit communities of Maharashtra for over four centuries.
This claim juxtaposes against the states efforts to reinvent Tamasha as a dignified and authentic Marathi tradition, ashlil (the mark of the vulgar) remain attached to the bodies of Dalit Tamasha women, it said.
Based on the project, she published a book, “The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India’.
It said, “Paik also deconstructs the story of Dr B.R. Ambedkar, the most charismatic social reformer of the twentieth century discussing caste eradication.”
During an interview with the National Public Radio, the US government subsidised broadcaster, she said that she was also a victim of the Dalit community and was born and grew up in a slum area in Pune city but she taught herself by following the footsteps of her father who prioritised education.
After completing her master’s degree from the Savitribai Phule University in Pune, she did her PhD at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom.
She also had a turn as a visiting assistant professor of South Asian history in Yale University.
Of the 1,153 people who have been awarded fellowships since the programme was initiated in 1981, most of them have been men.
Pioneering Scholarship received by Ms. Shailaja Paik
Shailaja Paik is a groundbreaking scholar whose research area encompasses Dalit and Gender and Sexuality in Modern India. Through her work she has expanded and enriched the understanding of Dalit feminist epistemology. Her books focus on capturing daily experiences of successive generations of Dalit women through first person ethno- oral history and then present their testimonies of discrimination and respectability.
Her profuse material is derived from English, Marathi and Hindi resources. Documenting the hitherto untold stories of the socially and culturally sidered lower strata of Indian society has been a task not easy for scholars because research, especially in the social sciences is grossly under-emphasized in most mainstream universities in India.
Since there is no record of Dalit historiography for such a long time she had recently started building an archive for her interviews and findings.
On its website, the MacArthur Foundation said of Paik’s work: “Paik offers new understanding of the caste suppression and maps how gender and sexuality are employed to erase Dalit women’s agency and subjectivity.”
MacArthur Foundation fellowships are named as ‘no-strings attached’ grant check that is disbursed over five successive years to creative artists, scholars and researchers whose work is perceived to fit important holes in the history of knowledge production.
There are no queries made as regards their expenditure of the funds; in this manner the fellow is chosen through a system of extramural nominators. Other Indians who have been awarded this fellowship includes; mathematician Subhash Khot and bio engineer Manu Prakash awarded in the year 2016 and environment engineer Kartik Chandran the year 2015 and all of them are IIT graduates.
Among the 22 MacArthur fellows this year, there is a sociologist, trans scholar, dancer, poet, disability activist, computer scientist, filmmaker, violinist, and evolutionary biologists and the science educator and the legal scholar as well as the oceanographer. From 1981 the foundation has made 1, 131 fellowships available.
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