New Books Network The Caste Question with Suraj Yengde and Anupama Rao
Feb 1, 2026
Anupama Rao, historian at Columbia who studies colonialism, gender, and caste politics. Suraj Yengde, scholar, public intellectual, and anti-caste activist. They explore how caste is defined as a power-based social order. They compare caste and race globally. They trace historical turns, discuss Ambedkar’s Buddhist rupture, lived Dalit imaginaries, and why Wilkerson’s book struck a chord.
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Caste As A Structured Social Relationship
- Caste is a structured social relationship linking rank, labor, and the body rooted in religious ideas but transformed by modernity.
- Status and economic worth can diverge, making caste a persistent, complex regime of inequality.
Caste As An Airtight Social Compartment
- Suraj frames caste as an 'airtight' social compartment that preserves lineage, purity, and exclusion across domains of life.
- He emphasizes caste's global analogues as systems legitimized by descent and social closure.
Don’t Rely Solely On Intercaste Marriage
- Don't reduce annihilation of caste to only inter-caste marriage; address institutional complicity and individual self-respect too.
- Support projects that build agency and dignity, not just social mixing as a sole strategy.
