Shabd aur Sangeet: Unravelling Song-Text in India edited by Shubha Mudgal, Aneesh Pradhan and Kunal Ray, New Delhi: Three Essays Collective, 2019; pp 362; ₹ 7 50
The incident in Pune wherein a Brahmin employer filed a police complaint—and the police filed a case under various laws—against her domestic help on the grounds that the latter misrepresented her caste highlighted the many levels of casteist prejudices even among the so-called ‘caste-less’ upper and middle classes. Unfortunately, the incident did not generate a wider protest against the systemic fault lines in society.