Convoluted arguments that equate anti-caste activism in the US with 'Hindu-phobia' seek to reinstate casteist norms that dominant-caste immigrants are accustomed to.
The results of India’s tough Common Law Admission Test are unequal in socio-economic terms, highlighting the deleterious effect that a candidate’s low income and a low caste can have on performance.
Godavari Dange developed a model of farming that enabled vulnerable women farmers in drought-struck Marathwada to stay food secure. Her life story captures the enormity of the region’s crisis, as…
Reservations are — wrongly — blamed for encouraging mediocrity in the medical profession. The historical record shows that the floundering foundations of the profession were laid by doctors who came…
Arguing that race in America is actually caste, Isabel Wilkerson seeks to startle the readers who may have become numbed by debates on race. But by overplaying what is not much more than a clever…
For a century, Hindu organisations have worked amongst Dalits in Bengal to incorporate them into the religious community, while the Left excised the question of caste from its discourse. These…
The decline of farmer identity from the 1990s brought a generation of upwardly mobile Jats close to the BJP. The waning of urban economic opportunities has reminded youth of the security from ties to…
The combination of caste & farmer identity amongst the Jats in western UP uniquely strengthens the resistance to the farm laws, but also creates barriers to creating lasting solidarities with…
The Mahabharata is peopled by the ‘higher’ castes but there are important personages from the ‘lower’ castes whose presence gives a radical salience to ‘dharma’ as set out in the epic, to the point…