The Caste of Merit

The Caste of Merit PDF Author: Ajantha Subramanian
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067424348X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
How the language of “merit” makes caste privilege invisible in contemporary India. Just as Americans least disadvantaged by racism are most likely to endorse their country as post‐racial, Indians who have benefited from their upper-caste affiliation rush to declare their country post‐caste. In The Caste of Merit, Ajantha Subramanian challenges this comfortable assumption by illuminating the controversial relationships among technical education, caste formation, and economic stratification in modern India. Through in-depth study of the elite Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs)—widely seen as symbols of national promise—she reveals the continued workings of upper-caste privilege within the most modern institutions. Caste has not disappeared in India but instead acquired a disturbing invisibility—at least when it comes to the privileged. Only the lower castes invoke their affiliation in the political arena, to claim resources from the state. The upper castes discard such claims as backward, embarrassing, and unfair to those who have earned their position through hard work and talent. Focusing on a long history of debates surrounding access to engineering education, Subramanian argues that such defenses of merit are themselves expressions of caste privilege. The case of the IITs shows how this ideal of meritocracy serves the reproduction of inequality, ensuring that social stratification remains endemic to contemporary democracies.

The Caste of Merit

The Caste of Merit PDF Author: Ajantha Subramanian
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067424348X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Get Book Here

Book Description
How the language of “merit” makes caste privilege invisible in contemporary India. Just as Americans least disadvantaged by racism are most likely to endorse their country as post‐racial, Indians who have benefited from their upper-caste affiliation rush to declare their country post‐caste. In The Caste of Merit, Ajantha Subramanian challenges this comfortable assumption by illuminating the controversial relationships among technical education, caste formation, and economic stratification in modern India. Through in-depth study of the elite Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs)—widely seen as symbols of national promise—she reveals the continued workings of upper-caste privilege within the most modern institutions. Caste has not disappeared in India but instead acquired a disturbing invisibility—at least when it comes to the privileged. Only the lower castes invoke their affiliation in the political arena, to claim resources from the state. The upper castes discard such claims as backward, embarrassing, and unfair to those who have earned their position through hard work and talent. Focusing on a long history of debates surrounding access to engineering education, Subramanian argues that such defenses of merit are themselves expressions of caste privilege. The case of the IITs shows how this ideal of meritocracy serves the reproduction of inequality, ensuring that social stratification remains endemic to contemporary democracies.

Caste and Class in India

Caste and Class in India PDF Author: Kanhaiya Lal Sharma
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Book Description
Contributed articles.

Caste and Class in India

Caste and Class in India PDF Author: Govind Sadashiv Ghurye
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Caste
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description


Caste and Class in India

Caste and Class in India PDF Author: Govind Sadashiv Ghurye
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Caste
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description


The Republic of India

The Republic of India PDF Author: Alan Gledhill
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description


Caste, Class and Democracy

Caste, Class and Democracy PDF Author: Vijai P. Singh
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351529927
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
This volume is an introduction to the role of caste and class in Indian society, meant to emphasize certain important aspects of Indian society such as continuity and change in caste, economic classes, status of women, status of Harijans, village poli-tics, overseas Indians, and casteism and tribalism. Its theoretical interest is to explain the dynamics of social inequalities in Indian society. All but one of the essays are based on research conducted in India. The other is based on research on Indian plantation workers in Sri Lanka, and included here to demonstrate that the concepts of caste and class are relevant to understanding In-dians who have emigrated to overseas countries.

Caste and Race in India

Caste and Race in India PDF Author: Govind Sadashiv Ghurye
Publisher: Popular Prakashan
ISBN: 9788171542055
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 510

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Book Description
Over The Years This Book Has Remained A Basic Work For Students Of India Sociology And Anthropology And Has Been Acknowledged As A Bona-Fide Classic.

Dalit Women Speak Out

Dalit Women Speak Out PDF Author: Aloysius Irudayam S.J.
Publisher: Zubaan
ISBN: 9381017379
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
“Women always face violence from men. Equality is only preached, but not put into practice. Dalit women face more violence every day, and they will continue to do so until society changes and accepts them as equals.” — Bharati from Andra Pradesh The right to equality regardless of gender and caste is a fundamental right in India. However, the Indian government has acknowledged that institutional forces arraigned against this right are powerful and shape people’s mindsets to accept pervasive gender and caste inequality. This is no more apparent than when one visits Dalit women living in their caste-segregated localities. Vulnerably positioned at the bottom of India’s gender, caste and class hierarchies, Dalit women experience the outcome of severely imbalanced social, economic and political power equations in terms of endemic caste-class-gender discrimination and violence. This study presents an analytical overview of the complexities of systemic violence that Dalit women face through an analysis of 500 Dalit women’s narratives across four states. Excerpts of these narratives are utilised to illustrate the wider trends and patterns of different manifestations of violence against Dalit women. Published by Zubaan.

Gender, Caste and Class in India

Gender, Caste and Class in India PDF Author: Neelima Yadav
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Caste
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
An analysis of the status of women depends on an understanding of gender relations in a specific context. Examining gender relations as power relations makes clear that these are sustained by the institutions within which gender relations occur. For women, absence of power results in the lack of access to and control over resources, a coercive gender division of labour, devaluation of their work, and a lack of control over their own labour, mobility as well as sexuality and fertility. Gender equality thus demands substantive transformation, a set of policies and conditions created by the state that facilitate the reallocation of resources, thereby increasing women s control over resources that confer power at individual, household, and societal levels.

Daughters of Independence

Daughters of Independence PDF Author: Joanna Liddle
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813514369
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Joanna Liddle and Rama Joshi explore the connection in India between gender and caste, and gender and class. They ask whether the subordination of women has diminished as India moves from a caste to a class structure, and what effect colonization had on the status of women in India. Focusing on educated, professional women, the authors look at the particular experiences of 120 women they interviewed, and also interpret the larger patterns of social relations that emerge from the interviews. These sensitive stories are told with an eloquence that is often moving and inspiring. For thousands of years Indian women have had a cultural tradition of resisting male domination. At the same time, the control of female sexuality has always been central to social hierarchies in India. Women are constrained in both class and caste hierarchies, to help distinguish the men at the top of the hierarchy from men at the bottom, where women are less constrained. In class society the seclusion of women allowed men to have sexual control over women and to retain the property that was transferred in marriage. In contemporary India, professional women have had success entering the professions as the social groups to which they belong move increasingly to class rather than caste structures. But men continue to control the type of education they receive and the type of employment open to them, and to participate in the sexual harassment of women in the workplace. The concept that women are inferior to men--a concept that is not part of the Indian cultural heritage--is growing. In a sense, working professional women strengthen male control. The class structure is no more egalitarian than the caste structure, as oppression simply takes other forms.