The Making of the Dalit Public in North India is a detailed commentary on politics and political consciousness, participation, and mobilization among the Dalits in northern India. Based on extensive fieldwork at the village level in eastern Uttar Pradesh, it deals with the social and political history of Dalits in the state from 1950 to the present.

Using alternative sources stories and narratives alive in the oral tradition and collective memory of the oppressed and marginalized Dalits, Narayan documents various social upheavals that have taken place in post-Independence India. He also examines the process of politicization of Dalit communities through their internal social struggles and movements, and their emergence as a political public in the State-oriented democratic political setting of contemporary India.