Castes In India

Author : Ajantha Subramanian
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 067424348X
Total Pages : 385 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Caste of Merit written by Ajantha Subramanian and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-12-03 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the language of “merit” makes caste privilege invisible in contemporary India. Just as Americans least disadvantaged by racism are most likely to endorse their country as post‐racial, Indians who have benefited from their upper-caste affiliation rush to declare their country post‐caste. In The Caste of Merit, Ajantha Subramanian challenges this comfortable assumption by illuminating the controversial relationships among technical education, caste formation, and economic stratification in modern India. Through in-depth study of the elite Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs)—widely seen as symbols of national promise—she reveals the continued workings of upper-caste privilege within the most modern institutions. Caste has not disappeared in India but instead acquired a disturbing invisibility—at least when it comes to the privileged. Only the lower castes invoke their affiliation in the political arena, to claim resources from the state. The upper castes discard such claims as backward, embarrassing, and unfair to those who have earned their position through hard work and talent. Focusing on a long history of debates surrounding access to engineering education, Subramanian argues that such defenses of merit are themselves expressions of caste privilege. The case of the IITs shows how this ideal of meritocracy serves the reproduction of inequality, ensuring that social stratification remains endemic to contemporary democracies.

Author : Alan Gledhill
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.22/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Republic of India written by Alan Gledhill and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Nicholas B. Dirks
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400840945
Total Pages : 386 pages
Book Rating : 4.46/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Castes of Mind written by Nicholas B. Dirks and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-09 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When thinking of India, it is hard not to think of caste. In academic and common parlance alike, caste has become a central symbol for India, marking it as fundamentally different from other places while expressing its essence. Nicholas Dirks argues that caste is, in fact, neither an unchanged survival of ancient India nor a single system that reflects a core cultural value. Rather than a basic expression of Indian tradition, caste is a modern phenomenon--the product of a concrete historical encounter between India and British colonial rule. Dirks does not contend that caste was invented by the British. But under British domination caste did become a single term capable of naming and above all subsuming India's diverse forms of social identity and organization. Dirks traces the career of caste from the medieval kingdoms of southern India to the textual traces of early colonial archives; from the commentaries of an eighteenth-century Jesuit to the enumerative obsessions of the late-nineteenth-century census; from the ethnographic writings of colonial administrators to those of twentieth-century Indian scholars seeking to rescue ethnography from its colonial legacy. The book also surveys the rise of caste politics in the twentieth century, focusing in particular on the emergence of caste-based movements that have threatened nationalist consensus. Castes of Mind is an ambitious book, written by an accomplished scholar with a rare mastery of centuries of Indian history and anthropology. It uses the idea of caste as the basis for a magisterial history of modern India. And in making a powerful case that the colonial past continues to haunt the Indian present, it makes an important contribution to current postcolonial theory and scholarship on contemporary Indian politics.

Author : Isabel Wilkerson
Publisher : Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN 13 : 0593230272
Total Pages : 545 pages
Book Rating : 4.75/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Caste written by Isabel Wilkerson and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2023-02-14 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • “An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions—now with a new Afterword by the author. #1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, O: The Oprah Magazine, NPR, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, New York Post, The New York Public Library, Fortune, Smithsonian Magazine, Marie Claire, Slate, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews Winner of the Carl Sandberg Literary Award • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • National Book Award Longlist • National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist • PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist • PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Longlist • Kirkus Prize Finalist “As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.” In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched, and beautifully written narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their outcasting of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity. Original and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.

Author : R.K. Pruthi
Publisher : Discovery Publishing House
ISBN 13 : 9788171418473
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Indian Caste System written by R.K. Pruthi and published by Discovery Publishing House. This book was released on 2004 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contents: Introduction, The Caste System, India s Social Customs and Systems, The Changing Concept of Caste in India: History and Review, Society: Class, Family and Individual, Division of Castes, Expulsion from Caste, Caste System: A Case of South India, Caste System in India, Various Rules: Religion and Caste, Organisation and Jurisdiction, Disintegration and Multiplication of Caste, Caste and Structure of Society, Our Social Heritage.

Author : Balmurli Natrajan
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136647562
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.67/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Culturalization of Caste in India written by Balmurli Natrajan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-07-20 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In India, caste groups ensure their durability in an era of multiculturalism by officially representing caste as cultural difference or ethnicity rather than as unequal descent-based relations. Challenging dominant social theories of caste, this book addresses questions of how caste survives the system that gave rise to it and adapts to new demands of capitalism and democracy. Based on original fieldwork, the book shows how the terrain of culture captured by a new grammar of caste revitalizes castes as cultural communities so that the culture of a caste is produced, organized and naturalized in the process of transforming jati (fetishized blood and kinship) into samaj (fetishized culture). Castes are shown to not be homogenous cultural wholes but sites of hegemony where class, gender and hierarchy over-determine the meanings and materiality of caste. Arguing that there exists a new casteism in India akin to a new racism in the USA, built less on biology and descent and more on purported cultural differences and their rights to exist, the book presents an extended critique and a search for an alternative view of caste and anti-casteist politics. It is of interest to students and scholars of South Asian culture and society.

Author : Diane P. Mines
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780924304552
Total Pages : 93 pages
Book Rating : 4.53/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Caste in India written by Diane P. Mines and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A clear and compelling introduction to one of the world's most complex and misunderstood social systems. This volume offers an exhaustive overview of the anthropology and history of caste based on extensive reading and over two decades of ethnographic research in rural South India. It also speaks to the wider political and economic dimensions of caste as it is lived and debated in India today. Caste in India will be a most welcome addition to introductory courses in anthropology, history, sociology, geography, and political science.

Author : B. R. Ambedkar
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9789358042481
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.86/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Castes In India written by B. R. Ambedkar and published by . This book was released on 2023-08-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Castes in India" by B.R. Ambedkar is an incisive and seminal work that examines one of the most enduring social institutions in Indian society-caste. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the caste system, its historical origins, and its profound impact on Indian society. Ambedkar delves into the complex structure of caste, dissecting its divisions, hierarchies, and oppressive practices that have shaped the lives of millions for centuries. He presents a comprehensive critique of the caste system and offers a vision for its eradication and emancipation. He passionately argues for social justice, equality, and the importance of individual rights, challenging the entrenched notions of superiority and discrimination perpetuated by the caste system. Ambedkar's groundbreaking work remains a cornerstone in the discourse on caste and social reform in India, and his profound insights and unwavering commitment to social reform make this book an essential read for anyone seeking to understand the complexities of caste and its impact on Indian society.

Author : Anirban Kashyap
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.29/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Scheduled Castes in India written by Anirban Kashyap and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Attempts have been made in this study to present an over-all profile of the Scheduled Castes from different dimensions i.e., facts, figures and their interpretations, the policy of segregation of a sizable section of Indian population on the basis of caste.

Author : Edgar Thurston
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 536 pages
Book Rating : 4.94/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Castes and Tribes of Southern India written by Edgar Thurston and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: