Throbbing with righteous anger at centuries of oppression and denial against dalits, this collection of essays, as Susie Tharu says in her incisive Foreword, act as 'both poison/venom and remedy'. He writes on some of the most horrendous tales of the slaughter of dalits - the Melavalavu murder - where power overturns the rule of law. 2012, Manu Bhagavan published Book Review: Urmila Pawar, The Weave of My Life: A Dalit Womans Memoirs and Ravikumar, Venomous Touch: Notes on Caste.

He provocatively critiques the film-maker Lenins much awarded docu-feature, Knock-Out. He declares that fundamentalism moves hand in hand with consumer culture. Ravikumar charts the history of discrimination against dalits in terms of land ownership, labour and education, condemns the celebration of the golden jubilee of independence under Hindu authority in 'independent India'. Azhagarasan 0 ratings by Goodreads ISBN 10: 8185604762 /ISBN 13: 9788185604763 Published by Stree-Samya Publications, 2009 Condition: GoodHardcover Save for Later FromGF Books, Inc.(Hawthorne, CA, U.S.A.

As he himself talks of in the Preface, for him the personal is political, and questions of power in society, derived from his engagement with Marx, Bakunin, Derrida, Foucault and other philosophers and his wide readings in Tamil literature, permeate his writings. Venomous Touch: Notes on Caste, Culture and Politics Ravikumar Translated From The Tamil By R. Ranging from the centrality of caste, the logic of communalism, ideas on culture, the politics of the media, education, censorship and literature, just to mention a few of his interests, these essays provide an unsettling impact on the consensuses of democratic India. Combative, however partisan, and yet often beguilingly playful, these essays, many translated from the Tamil for the first time, bring Ravikumars concerns to a wider audience.

Venomous Touch by Ravikumar