Centre for South Asian Studies

Description

“Biologism of Race & Caste"

The fundamental difference between race and caste is its interaction with modern capitalist forces and the similarity between them is that of the genealogy. Race becomes race (which eventually became white as opposed to the rest) when it was faced with the early modern material world. It developed from concrete to abstractness. In the Greek and Roman Empire, darker people were not enslaved for being black or looked down upon. In fact, records show that black people were kings and generals in the Graeco-Roman world. That didn’t stop the overwhelming sight of scorning of the black skin in the Greek version, although for different reasons. It was not an outright racist colorism but merely a consequential thought. This thought influenced the Islamic Slavery which was transported into the Enlightenment phase in Europe. In this talk, we shall look at the instances of interactions between the forces of the Caste regimen with that of the Race and racializing project. The story of race is quite recent compared to the jati-based varna caste order. The influx of European settler colonization in athwart the colonial empire of the past three centuries produced complex versions of Racialized Castes and the Indian Racial Caste system. These complexities are now attempting to gain visibilities in the intense politics of the twenty first century.

Bio:

Dr. Suraj Yengde is one of India’s leading scholars and public intellectuals. Named as one of the "25 Most Influential Young Indian" by GQ magazine and the "Most influential Young Dalit" by Zee, Suraj is an author of the bestseller Caste Matters and co-editor of award winning anthology The Radical in Ambedkar. Caste Matters was recently featured in the prestigious "Best Nonfiction Books of the Decade" list by The Hindu. His forthcoming titles include: "Caste: A New History of the World", and "Biography of B R Ambedkar".

Suraj is currently a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. He holds a research associate position with the department of African and African American Studies, a non-resident fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, and is part of the founding team of Initiative for Institutional Anti-Racism and Accountability (IARA) at Harvard University. He has studied in four continents (Asia, Africa, Europe, North America), and is India’s first Dalit Ph.D. holder from an African university (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg). He is an International Human Rights attorney by qualification from India and the UK.

The Lecture will be followed by a reception in the MacMillan Room in HCA at 5.30pm