Historically, oppression has been and continues to be a serious issue of concern worldwide in both developed and underdeveloped countries. The structure of Indian society, with its hierarchies and power structures, is an ideal place to better understand the experience of oppression. Women throughout the long established Indian hierarchy, and members of the lower castes and classes, have traditionally born the force of oppression generated by the Indian social structure. The focus of this research explored the way the way class, caste, and gender hierarchies coalesce to influence the life choices and experiences of an Indian woman born into the lowest level of the caste and class structure. This research specifically addressed the female <i>Dalit </i> cobbler (leatherworker), who exists among a caste and class of people who have been severely oppressed throughout Indian history. One female Dalit cobbler from a rural village was studied. Her life represents three levels of oppression: females (gender), Dalits (caste), and cobblers (class). This study was based on three interconnected research questions that attempted to uncover the way class, caste, and gender hierarchies influence the lives of Dalit female cobblers: what the Dalit female cobbler has experienced in terms of economic, personal, and social struggle; how the Dalit female cobbler manages to get through her day-to-day struggles; and where the Dalit female cobbler sees herself in the future. Participant observation and triangulation were major components in the design of this study, as it was important to view the local daily life of this individual. Detailed field notes were collected and recorded, interviews based on open-ended questions were conducted, and site documents were gathered. The findings that have become evident throughout this observation have increasingly exposed one continuous theme in particular: the "lived' experience and position that one must accept his or her station in life without question. This dissertation, however, has shown how acceptance does not mean that one stops trying to thrive. On the contrary, the life of this particular female Dalit cobbler exemplifies the ingenuity and perseverance of people who are not members of the dominant social structure. It demonstrates how one individual had the ability to negotiate multiple levels of oppression and succeed in sustaining herself, her family, and her community. / Ph. D.

Ambedkar’s role as an Indian political leader during the late colonial period has attracted increased attention politically and historically. However, there is a startling disconnect between the modern, often mythological, construction of Ambedkar and the near forgotten historical figure. His broader programme for social uplift of the underprivileged is often lost in the record of his conflict with M. K. Gandhi and the Indian National Congress and their role as the dominant nationalist group in India at the time. The deification that has resulted from his use of Buddhism as an emancipatory identity has obscured his interpretation of it as a secular political tool in a political debate shaped and dominated by religious identity. This thesis will argue that the Buddhist conversion was a continuation of his political and social programme, not, as some have suggested, a retreat to religion after failing to secure reforms to Indian law and society. / February 2009

Ambedkar’s role as an Indian political leader during the late colonial period has attracted increased attention politically and historically. However, there is a startling disconnect between the modern, often mythological, construction of Ambedkar and the near forgotten historical figure. His broader programme for social uplift of the underprivileged is often lost in the record of his conflict with M. K. Gandhi and the Indian National Congress and their role as the dominant nationalist group in India at the time. The deification that has resulted from his use of Buddhism as an emancipatory identity has obscured his interpretation of it as a secular political tool in a political debate shaped and dominated by religious identity. This thesis will argue that the Buddhist conversion was a continuation of his political and social programme, not, as some have suggested, a retreat to religion after failing to secure reforms to Indian law and society.

Ambedkar’s role as an Indian political leader during the late colonial period has attracted increased attention politically and historically. However, there is a startling disconnect between the modern, often mythological, construction of Ambedkar and the near forgotten historical figure. His broader programme for social uplift of the underprivileged is often lost in the record of his conflict with M. K. Gandhi and the Indian National Congress and their role as the dominant nationalist group in India at the time. The deification that has resulted from his use of Buddhism as an emancipatory identity has obscured his interpretation of it as a secular political tool in a political debate shaped and dominated by religious identity. This thesis will argue that the Buddhist conversion was a continuation of his political and social programme, not, as some have suggested, a retreat to religion after failing to secure reforms to Indian law and society.

We study the existence of special points in extremally disconnected compact topological spaces that witness their nonhomogeneity. Via Stone duality, we are looking for ultrafilters on complete Boolean algebras with special combinatorial properties. We introduce the notion of a coherent ultrafilter (coherent P-point, coherently selective). We show that generic existence of such ultrafilters on every complete ccc Boolean algebra of weight not exceeding the continuum is consistent with set theory, and that they witness the nonhomogeneity of the corresponding Stone spaces. We study the properties of the order-sequential property on σ-complete Boolean algebras and its relation to measure-theoretic properties. We ask whether the order-sequential topology can be compact in a nontrivial case, and partially answer the question in a special case of the Suslin algebra associated with a Suslin tree.

I investigate the spoken dialogue of four Indian novels in English: Mulk Raj Anand's Untouchable (1935), Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan (1956), Rasipuram Krishnaswami Narayan's The World of Nagaraj (1990), and Rohinton Mistry's Family Matters (2002). Roger Fowler has said that literature, as a form of discourse, articulates ideology; it is through linguistic criticism (combination of literary criticism and linguistic analyses) that the ideologies in a literary text are uncovered. Shobhana Chelliah in her study of Indian novels in English concludes that the authors use Indian English (IndE) as a device to characterize buffoons and villains. Drawing upon Fowler's and Chelliah's framework, my investigation employs linguistic criticism of the four novels to expose the ideologies reflected in the use of fictionalized English in the Indian context. A quantitative inquiry based on thirty-five IndE features reveals that the authors appropriate these features, either to a greater or lesser degree, to almost all their characters, suggesting that IndE functions as the mainstream variety in these novels and creating an illusion that the authors are merely representing the characters' unique Indian worldviews. But within this dialect range, the appropriation of higher percentages of IndE features to specific characters or groups of characters reveal the authors' manipulation of IndE as a counter-realist and ideological device to portray deviant and defective characters. This subordinating of IndE as a substandard variety of English functions as the dominant ideology in my investigation of the four novels. Nevertheless, I also uncover the appropriation of a higher percentage of IndE features to foreground the masculinity of specific characters and to heighten the quintessentially traditional values of the older Brahmin generation, which justifies a contesting ideology about IndE that elevates it as the prestigious variety, not an aberration. Using an approach which combines literary criticism with linguistic analysis, I map and recommend a multidisciplinary methodology, which allows for a reevaluation of fictionalized IndE speech that goes beyond impressionistic analyses.