The Politics of Social Theory: A Critical Analysis of the Caste-Modernity Paradigm (original) (raw)
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Historiography of Caste: Some Critical Observations and Some Methodological Interventions
In almost all the cases, the entire gamut of writings, research papers and various other kinds of essays on the caste-system, begin with some sentences or phrases that have been so overused as to be rendered into cliché, and since even after getting thoroughly worn out these clichés present the reality to a certain extent, as such I would also use a few similar sentences to begin with.
Caste(s): Through the Archetypal ‘Orientalist’ Predicament of Sociology on India
This article interrogates the articulations on the concept of caste(s) by digging its origin, pathways and the good fortune it enjoyed since its birth with a brief appraisal of Dumontian notion of caste. The paper also makes an attempt to show how the stereotype of anthropological ‘other’ as an integral part of colonial epistemological and ontological thinking provided the basis for analysing caste as ‘other’ which became the be-all and end-all category for explaining Indian social reality and, which again in its turn have orientalized Indian sociological imagination subsumed under Social Anthropology and Indology. The paper shows how caste and sub-caste have no direct correspondence with Varna or Jati. And, finally, Dumont’s views on caste and hierarchy in India are unsubstantiated as Dumont turns speculative into empirical and empirical into speculative in the distinguished company of Anthropological/Orientalist tradition of Hegel, Marx and Weber. The need of the hour is to critically look at the dependence on caste for explaining reality in India. The paper calls for a more appropriate and reflexive classifications based on theoretical-methodological rigor and in-depth study of Indian society without resorting to Eurocentric and Colonial biases.
Thinking Historiographically: Caste and Gender in India
2016
The longevity and persistence of what we generally understand to be "Indian civilization" is profound in its scope, stretching our sense of "history" and challenging the epistemological tools we have at our disposal to understand the myriad of "event horizons" that constitute the development of its culture. Here, I want to halt for a second and make sure that we are sensitive to the terms "culture," "country" and "nation." They are often combined and defined in ways that confuse their unique, and I emphasize, separate roles in defining who we are as a society and culture. Perhaps it is a result of the exigencies of India's struggle for freedom from British rule that the conflation of culture and nation developed as a convenient political thesis in the early years of India's birth as a nation-state. But, such a pairing tends to confuse what are the causes of cultural or social problems in contradistinction to problems or weaknesses in political structure. I will come back to this problem of the conflation of culture, nation, country, when I mention how the difference between how the historian practices "history," and how the nation state practices "history." Allow me to introduce the subject of this seminar at this point. Thinking about caste and gender from an historical perspective inevitably requires us to tackle the question: what is the relationship between culture, literature and power? After all, we are forced to conceive of "history" as a series of events. Yet, to understand the culture in which events take place, particularly when those events took place hundreds or thousands of years ago requires us to account for, or at least be sensitive to, the burden of data associated with said events. In this regard, we need a theoretical position regarding the particularities of the relationship of caste and gender from an historical perspective. Such theorization had led to the particulars from which generalized universalizations have been typically produced. Extrapolating from such particulars and applying them to the contemporary situation needs serious examination and justification. For understanding the non-capitalist, non-modern, non-West, the theory problem that confronts us is acute. Scholars typically reduce culture to power or power to culture, and miss what may have been different about their relation to each other in the past. We need to be aware of how social, economic and political orders cohere, of the mechanisms at work in their coherence, and how they have been uniform, if at all, throughout history. This point is particularly important when we think about caste and gender historically. It is not an easy thing to theorize pre-modernity without deploying the theoretical instruments
Caste and Equality in India: A Historical Anthropology of Diverse Society and Vernacular Democracy, London: Routledge, 2021. , 2021
This book presents an alternative view of caste in Indian society by analysing caste structure and change in local communities in Orissa from historical and anthropological perspectives. Focusing on the agricultural society in the Khurda district of Orissa between the eighteenth century and 2019, the book links discussions on the current transformation of society and politics in India with analyses of long-term historical transformations. The author suggests that, beyond status and power, there is another value which is important in Indian society, namely ontological equality, which functions as the politico-ethical ground for asserting respect and concern for the life of others. The book argues that the value of ontological equality has played an important role in creating and affirming the diverse society which characterises India. It further contends that the movement towards vernacular democracy, which has become conspicuous since the second half of the 1990s, is a historically groundbreaking event which opens a path beyond the postcolonial predicament, supported by the affirmation of diversity by subalterns based on the value of ontological equality. This important contribution to the study of Indian society will be of interest to academics working on the social, political and economic history, sociology, anthropology and political science of South Asia, as well as to those interested in social and political theory. Table of Contents 1. Introduction: towards a cultural-politics of ethics in everyday practice 2. Managing diversities: frontiers, forest communities and little kingdoms 3. Local society and kingship: reconsidering ‘caste’, ‘community’ and ‘state’ 4. Early colonial transformation: the emergence of wedged dichotomies 5. Consolidation of colonial dichotomy: political-economy and cultural identity 6. Postcolonial tradition: the biomoral universe 7. Cash and faction: ‘the logic of the fish’ in the political-economy 8. Ritual, history and identity: goddess Rāmacaṇḍī festival 9. Recast(e)ing identity: transformations from below 10. Vernacular democracy: a post-postcolonial transformation 11. Conclusion: beyond the postcolonial
Caste, race and difference. The limits of knowledge and resistance
This article reconsiders the past and the present of Dalit and lower-caste struggle in India, including recent efforts to link caste and race in order to make a common platform against discrimination at international fora. It explores the burden of colonial concepts and statist imaginaries in the shaping of objectified identities by Dalits, especially as they seize upon and crucially rework such categories. Critically engaging with the notion of coloniality, 'the other side of modernity', the article reveals the limits of categorical perspectives and intellectual theory in the articulation of social worlds. Instead, it points towards a global sociology that acknowledges and affirms ambivalence and contradiction as crucial attributes of thinking, writing and practice.
Caste, Contemporaneity and Assertion
Economic and Political Weekly , 2016
An evolutionary and historical method has not helped us to understand the Caste System and its exploitative nature in Indian Society. Therefore, we need to analyse it from a new perspective , that is, from a contemporary perspective which on the one hand highlights the domination and monopolization of secular institutions of governance, production, education etc. by so-called upper castes. And exclusion and simultaneous assertion of the so-called lower- castes Dalits. The paper has deliberately avoided the status and assertion of the intermediary and Other Backward (Shudra) Castes because paucity of space.
In Search of a New Vocabulary: A Preliminary Note on Caste and its Emerging 'System
Anthropologists do not usually demand ... exacting standards and will settle to regard as adequate whatever can yield promising explanations at any given time. But if we can be more liberal in our judgments of adequacy, we should also be more conscientious in appraising our kit of conceptual tools. All too often concepts come burdened with the connotations and implications of the past contexts that gave rise to them. Hence a periodic review of our stock of ideas is neither an exercise in antiquarian nostalgia, nor a ritual occasion for rattling the bones of our ancestors. It should be, rather, a critical evaluation of the ways we pose and answer questions, and of the limitations we might bring to that task.