| Summary/Abstract |
Is dakaiti in Central and North India a unique form of banditry? Can social banditry exist in a caste-oriented society? How have normative, discursive and moral structures interacted with dakaiti in India? What was the relationship between dakait bands, the state and society—symbiotic, incompatible, or something else? These are a few of the questions this study explores. Dakaiti in India not only begets a new definition of social banditry that challenges Hobsbawm’s assertion that the phenomenon may only transpire in a premodern and pre-industrial society, but also Blok’s argument, contra Hobsbawm, that bandits—as ‘champions of the poor’—are chimerical. Placing excessive emphasis on caste, however, has two main consequences. First, it makes it difficult to recognise social banditry in India and, second, as a result, the causes of the noteworthy decline of dakaiti in India in the 2000s are obscured.
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