This monograph presents a history of caste and class in the modern city through the experience of Dalits (members of the lowest caste) in twentieth-century Bombay. There, urban life did not dismantle caste, but instead made it robust and insulated it in the garb of modernity. Juned Shaikh demonstrates that the urban built environment and language are two sites for the habitation of caste in Bombay, as they are the spaces where it was concealed and eclipsed by class. The built environment is thus a quintessential marker, in which elements such as housing, tenements, slums, water supply, and drainage systems readily divulge the class of inhabitants.

Shaikh explores the intersection and entanglement of caste and class by focusing on a cluster of groups that occupied subordinate positions in both these hierarchies: the Dalits. Their experience is relevant not only to South Asianists, but resonates with that of oppressed populations throughout the world.