Humans, Nonhumans, and Other Humans: The Animal Turn in South Asian History

The imagination of the nonhuman in South Asian history was often through processes of dehumanization. References to Indian dogs in terms of caste and untouchability, the use of various animals as beasts of burden, the comparisons of aboriginal tribes with primates, and the enactment of animal cruelty acts, were all achieved through the multifarious processes of the dehumanization of castes, tribes, and the rural and urban poor.  In the nineteenth century, this nonhuman adaptation of the human featured in the colonial deployment of anthropology, zoology, social stratification, empathy, and labor. While the nonhuman category has emerged as a critique of anthropocentrism in historical research, particularly within imperial history, this presentation problematizes this assumption by suggesting that historically, thinking with animals was a tool of deploying human labor and social hierarchies and their concomitant dehumanization.