Talk:Dickens Leonard

By Sachi Anjunkar

Dickens Leonard is Assistant Professor in Cultural Studies at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, as of November 2022. According to his university profile, his research interests include postcolonial studies, critical race theory, and cultural politics.

In 2021, he endorsed the "Dismantling Global Hindutva" conference and made the allegation

"the current government of India [in 2021] has instituted discriminatory policies including beef bans, restrictions on religious conversion and interfaith weddings, and the introduction of religious discrimination into India’s citizenship laws. The result has been a horrifying rise in religious and caste-based violence, including hate crimes, lynchings, and rapes directed against Muslims, non-conforming Dalits, Sikhs, Christians, adivasis and other dissident Hindus. Women of these communities are especially targeted. Meanwhile, the government has used every tool of harassment and intimidation to muzzle dissent. Dozens of student activists and human rights defenders are currently languishing in jail indefinitely without due process under repressive anti-terrorism laws."

Publications related to India

Journal Articles

1. Leonard, Dickens. “Towards a Casteless Community: Dalit Experience and Thought as ‘Movement’.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 54, no. 21, 25 May 2019, pp. 47-54.

   The author writes about the Dalit experience in India, according to the author, their ongoing struggle against the caste system which has led Dalit people to convert to Buddhism.

   The author cites the statistics of 1956 to explain the ongoing struggle of the Dalits stating that “The mass conversion of 5 lakh Dalits to Buddhism in October 1956 under the leadership of B R Ambedkar, just seven weeks before his death, has been the single-most defi ning moment of conversion in history “outside the fold.”

   The author argues that religious convergence is considered an attack on Indian culture and Hinduism. The author further even believes that by converting to Buddhism, the Dalits are moving towards a caste-less community which does not make any sense since it’s again a religious convergence.

   “Moreover, religious conversion is portrayed in the national discourse as an attack on Indian culture and the innermost essence of the nation itself. Community, however, is conceptualized very differently by Dalits from those imagined by the nationalist public sphere. In thorough borrowing of tropes and inspiration from various religions and regions across the world, and through a radical articulation from different cultural resources, Dalit experience and thought seem to set a different discourse on conversion as a movement towards caste-less community.”

2. Leonard, Dickens. “One Step Inside Tamilian: On the Anti-Caste Writing of Language.” Social Scientist, vol. 45, issue 1-2, Jan.-Feb. 2017, pp. 19-32.
3. Leonard, Dickens. “Spectacle Spaces: Production of Caste in recent Tamil films.” South Asian Popular Culture, vol. 13, issue 2, Oct. 2015, pp. 155-173.

Book Chapters

1. Leonard, Dickens. “Conscripts of Cinema: Dangerous and Deviant Third Wave.” Tamil Cinema in the Twenty-First Century: Caste, Gender and Technology. Eds. Selvaraj Velayutham and Vijay Devadas. Routledge, 2020, pp. 36-51.
2. Leonard, Dickens. “Anti-caste Communitas and Out-caste Experience: Space, Body, Displacement and Writing.” The Politics of Belonging in Contemporary India: Anxiety and Intimacy. Ed. Kaustav Chakraborty. Routledge, 2019, pp. 101-125.
3. Leonard, Dickens. “From Discourse to Critique? Iyothee Thass and the Dalit Intellectual Legacy.” Multilingualism and the Literary Culture of India. Ed. M.T. Ansari. Sahitya Akademi, 2019, pp. 200-234.
4. Leonard, Dickens, and P. Thirumal. “Incommensurable Sacral-Secular Sectarianism? Rohith-Movement and the Emergence of the Inappropriable.” Secular Sectarianism: Limits of Subaltern Politics. Ed. Ajay Gudawarthy. Sage, 2019, pp. 23-35.
5. Leonard, Dickens. “Oor and the Dangerous Veeran: Critiquing Paruthiveeran/Paruthiveeran as Critique.” Revisiting Cultural Studies: Towards a New Critical Paradigm. Ed. Thomas. Tiruvalla: Mar Thoma College, 2012, pp. 153-158.

Other Essays (including translations)

1. Leonard, Dickens. “Rohith-Movement, Conversion and Re-naming: Notes from Hyderabad.” Critical Times: Interventions in Global Critical Theory. Duke Univ. Press. vol. 3, no. 3, Dec. 2020, pp. 519-27.
2. Leonard, Dickens. “Is there a Nazi Gaze? Possibilities of an Oppositional Look.” Chalachitra Sameeksha, July 2020, pp. 78-81.
3. Leonard, Dickens, and P. Vellaisamy. “Literature and Censorship” (Ilakkiyamum Thanikkaiyum by Perumal Murugan), translated from Tamil to English. Women Philosophers’ Journal (ISSN: 2225-3351, Special Issue on Intellectuals, Philosophers and Women in India: Endangered Species), no. 4-5, Dec. 2018, pp. 125-129.
4. Leonard, Dickens. “Les ‘Conscrits’ du Cinéma: La Troisième Vague Tamoul.” (Conscripts of Cinema: The Tamil Third Wave), translated from English to French. La Nouvelle Revue de l’Inde – Le Tamil Nadu (ISSN: 2104-2969, The New Indian Review – Tamil Nadu), no. 12, Jan. 2017, pp. 94-97.
5. Leonard, Dickens. “Vom Schatten zum Licht: Leben-Tod, Dalit-Sein und die neue Gemeinschaft.” (“From Shadows to Stars”: Living-Deaths, Dalit-ness, and the Coming-Community), translated from English to German by Theodor Rathgeber. Südasien (ISSN: 0933-5196, South Asian), no. 3, Oct. 2016, pp. 37-39.