Meet Shailaja Paik, Dalit Historian Awarded MacArthur Genius Grant

Indo-American historian Shailaja Paik has become the first Dalit person to earn the coveted MacArthur Fellowship 2024, also known as the 'genius grant'. She is among the 22 recipients this year who will be awarded US$ 800,000. Her scholarship explores the intersection of caste, gender, and sexuality through the lens of Dalit women in modern India. She reflects on the history of caste domination and traces how gender and sexuality are used to suppress and dehumanise Dalit women.

Who Is Shailaja Paik?

Born and raised in Maharashtra, Shailaja Paik experienced caste-based discrimination first-hand as a Dalit person. She grew up with three sisters in a slum in Pune, where they battled many hardships. Her family migrated from a village in Ahmednagar in 1990 after facing systemic marginalisation.

Paik has spoken about how Dalits in her village were forced to stand at a distance at public tube wells and taps, so they would not touch the utensils of the "upper-caste" people. At gatherings, her family was made to sit on the mud floor and offered designated tea cups while the others sat on chairs.

Despite these deep-rooted struggles, Paik persevered and pursued her education in education with remarkable determination. She earned bachelor's and master's degrees in Arts from the University of Pune and then went to England to pursue her PhD at the University of Warrick in 2007.

Paik started her career as an assistant professor of history at Union College. Since 2010, she has been working at the University of Cincinnati, where she is the Charles Phelps Taft Distinguished Research Professor of History and affiliate faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Asian Studies.

Her personal experience and extensive research have led her to author books like Dalit Women’s Education in Modern India: Double Discrimination (2014) and The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India (2022), which trace experiences of Dalit women in a Brahminical society.

Paik also studies the themes of Dalit women's employment, agency, and sexuality, which are pivotal in shaping their lives. Her analysis of hitherto neglected Marathi historical documents and oral histories shows how these women reclaim their identities through "disdained" activities like theatre and arts.

Paik has also published articles in the Journal of South Asian Studies, Gender and History, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, and more. She told the MacArthur Foundation that she analyses the "mechanism of caste social inequality in perpetuating discrimination, stigmatization, and exploitation."

Speaking of her groundbreaking studies on caste and gender, Paik, “I contribute to new global histories of our collective humanity by illuminating the ways Dalit women resist and display resilience and agency — they stand up again and again, continue to get up and out from the under.”