Textual Lives of Caste Across the Ages - (Critical Perspectives in South Asian History) by Prathama Banerjee (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The essays in this volume explore the myriad ways in which caste (varna and jati) has been theorized and critiqued in multiple philosophical, religious, logical and narrative traditions in India. Spanning ancient, medieval and modern times, and in diverse classical and vernacular languages, the chapters show how the social fact of caste, and imaginations of kinship, community and humanity were historically subject to epistemological, spiritual, and existential debate in both elite and popular circles in India.

Textual Lives of Caste Across the Ages seeks to bridge the interdisciplinary gap between historians and sociologists by focusing on texts that help us think across the sociological and philosophical, the political and the religious, the epistemological and the aesthetic, and indeed, the elite and the popular. The volume also sets up a conversation between scholars specializing in different regions, archives, and historical periods and demonstrates how caste imaginaries have been deeply diverse and contested in India's past. Reconstructing these diverse traditions of social and existential criticism helps us in our contemporary struggles against caste hierarchy and untouchability and enriches our contemporary critical repertoire.

Review Quotes

This important collection moves seamlessly between premodern and modern iterations of caste to illuminate philosophically rich and diverse regional debates which challenge any singular focus on caste's coloniality. Their inquiry into the historical ontology of caste across diverse disciplinary domains opens new horizons for future research while recalling the depth, duration, and remarkable durability of an anticaste philosophy.
Anupama Rao, Professor of History and MESAAS; Director, Institute for Comparative Literature and Society; and convenor of the Ambedkar Initiative at Columbia University, USA

About the Author

Prathama Banerjee is Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, India. A historian of 19th- and 20th-century India, her research interests include political, intellectual and cultural history. Her most recent book is Elementary Aspects of the Political: Histories from the Global South (Duke University Press, 2020).