This volume wouldn’t have been possible without the help we received as we waded through uncertain terrains of inquiry. The incisive and critical feedback, and guidance to further readings, we received from Uma Chakravarti, Vaibhav Abnave, V. Geetha, Aishwary Kumar, Soumyabrata Choudhury, Shiraz Iqbal and Anupama Rao were crucial. From them we learnt the blind spots of our exercise and the right questions we should ask ourselves. Their advice forced us to re-evaluate and strengthen our nascent ideas. The consistent and unstinting support we received from Wendy Lochner of Columbia University Press helped us push through the long months that went into the book’s creation. We were also helped along by interns Purvi Rajpuria, Asad Dhaumya, Arjun Banerjee and Ishan Bhattacharya, who brought wisdom beyond their years to this project. Bibek Debroy, as always, helped us with unpacking some of the Sanskrit verses. Shiva Shankar and Hoshang Merchant kept us afloat in times of scarcity. The immense contribution of Juli Perczel, who edited this book for us, pointed out our theoretical blunders, and cut down our excesses, cannot be overstated. We thank Shyama Haldar for her keen proof-reading. For the exhaustive and meticulous Index, we thank Aatika Singh.
The charged and much-needed partisan critiques of our annotated edition of Annihilation of Caste (2014) kept us on our toes—the exercise here, we hope, is nourished by such lessons firmly dealt out; its intrinsic lacks, its own. Lastly, our gratitude to Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd for lending his voice to this book, for bringing his years of experience and knowledge, to contextualize the import of this project in the present.