“Is caste race?” Discourses of Racial Indianization

Abstract

This paper investigates how the official discourse of race and caste are constructed in response to the Dalits' claims that casteism is racism and caste should be included in the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, and Xenophobia (WCAR held in Durban in 2001). The research question driving this project probes into discursive strategies and logics, which deny any association of caste with race in the Indian context and the significance of race denial. The paper also questions whether the denial of association of race and caste is indicative of racial Indianization. I argue that in India, race lives through the category of caste as a form of racial Indianization.

Understating South Asia interculturally and communicatively: What the contemporary scholarship tells us

“…Caste is an important marker of discrimination in South Asian societies, especially when it is still actively practiced in various parts and in various forms. In problematizing the practices of caste, a few articles have theorized as well as compared the concept of caste and race in the postcolonial context (Das, 2013, 2014). Drawing from several examples of discrimination and xenophobia, the articles, on the one hand, showed how the disenfranchised communities were excluded from the mainstream; and on the other hand, they challenged the discourse of homogenous nation‐state as well as the discourse of national integration in the post‐liberalized era.…”

Multiple racializations in a multiply modern world

“…Nearly all the work in this area has been area based, with a notable focus on East Asia (Kowner and Demel 2014a;Dikötter 1997a), especially Japan (Siddle 1996;Weiner 1994Weiner , 2009Dower 1998;Koshiro 2003) and, increasingly, China (Dikötter 1990(Dikötter , 1992Mullaney 2011;Leibold 1997;Crossley 1999;Johnson 2011). There is a smaller body of work on North Africa and the Middle East (Lewis 1990;Hamel 2013;Esseissah 2016) and South Asia (Robb 1997;Baber 2004; McDuie-Ra 2015), the latter overlapping with an increasing willingness to address the connections between caste, religion and racialisation (Das 2014;Baber 2010).…”

What is in a name? How caste names affect the production of situated knowledge

“…These layers forge a social system based on order and hierarchy. Though scholars disagree on the extent to which these three elements are coterminous in describing caste, there is a broad consensus that caste is not a bounded rigid system, and historically had a greater fluidity than colonial accounts and surveys of South Asian caste systems allowed (Das, 2014;Fuller, 1996;Shinde, 2016;Waldrop, 2004;Witsoe, 2012). In post-Independence India, the fluidity of caste identities are now overlaid with a layer of state administration and ordering with categories of 'Scheduled Tribe' (ST), 'Scheduled Caste' (SC) and 'Other Backward Classes' (OBC) in resource-based opposition to 'Forward Castes' (Das, 2014).…”

“…Though scholars disagree on the extent to which these three elements are coterminous in describing caste, there is a broad consensus that caste is not a bounded rigid system, and historically had a greater fluidity than colonial accounts and surveys of South Asian caste systems allowed (Das, 2014;Fuller, 1996;Shinde, 2016;Waldrop, 2004;Witsoe, 2012). In post-Independence India, the fluidity of caste identities are now overlaid with a layer of state administration and ordering with categories of 'Scheduled Tribe' (ST), 'Scheduled Caste' (SC) and 'Other Backward Classes' (OBC) in resource-based opposition to 'Forward Castes' (Das, 2014). These latest caste identities have taken on new meaning linked to securing greater advantages and privileges, and have produced practices of caste consolidation and/or construction in a (re)politicisation of caste so that groups can secure access to caste-based quotas, reservations and affirmative action policies (see Shinde, 2016 andWitsoe, 2012).…”

“…I consciously make a distinction here between 'race' and 'caste', with the latter belonging to South Asia and relations between South Asians. Though I acknowledge the political moves led by Dalits to understand casteism as racism, and acknowledge the importance of this to a progressive and just Indian politics and society (see Das, 2014, for a detailed discussion of 'race' and 'caste' in India). For me, caste was an old-fashioned word from my parents' old fashioned world.…”