“Thoothan” (translates - messenger) personifies, in the history of Tamil Dalits - the brief and significant meeting of two protagonists – The messengers of god (the evangelists) and the designated messengers of death (the Paraiyars of Tamil Nadu) and their encounters with the photographic medium.
The book is an attempt to determine when and how visibility for Dalits as a community emerges, specifically through photographs and the visual media in the context of Tamil Nadu, a southern state in India. It tries to decipher the social structure in which this visibility occurred and how it contributed to a collective identity perceived by the community and others.
