More than Badboo : The Many Lives of Caste, Leather, and Labor

Abstract Dalit writing on and against caste has produced an important archive of how caste is performed, experienced, and reiterated through social, political, and economic processes. This genre of writing employs detailed phenomenological and experiential descriptions of how bodies and objects are situated within caste discourse, thereby revealing the workings of caste in everyday life. Writing about leather—an object marked by the material and sensorial stains of caste, in particular its foul smell, badboo—is a recurring theme in Dalit writing produced by the leatherworking castes. On the one hand, the object of leather often appears as a source of humiliation in these narratives; yet, on the other hand, Dalit authors have also centered leather and leatherwork as a source of pride in their labor, craft, and history. This essay examines the literary lives of leather and the dual position that it occupies as an object of pride and humiliation in the lives of the leatherworkers. In doing so, the essay argues that through the material and experiential accounts of leather and leatherwork, Dalit writing offers a layered and nuanced reading of concepts such as humiliation, pride, and labor. In turn, the essay argues that Dalit writing interrogates how caste is experienced and performed through these intersecting and competing categories.