Ambedkar Reading Group Cambridge: Locating Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development

This talk was organised by the ARC and took place on Wednesday 8th February 2023 the speaker is Professor Vivek Kumar, Jawaharlal Nehru University and the chair is Dr Filipe Carreira Da Silva, Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge.

To find out more about the Ambedkar Reading Group at Cambridge please visit: https://research.sociology.cam.ac.uk/ambedkar-reading-group-cambridge-arc

Abstract: Even after centuries of its existence and engagement by social scientists, caste has remained an enigma to be deciphered. Mainstream social scientists have given various theories and characteristics of caste. However, there remain lots of gaps in understanding the caste system even today. In such an academic void one is reminded of a number of texts by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar that have been erased in Indian academia. For instance, in his paper exactly 117 years back, Ambedkar highlighted a number of shortcomings of authorities of that time on caste. He argued, that their mistake is that they did not define caste as a group within and with definite relations to the system as a whole. Hence, reading Ambedkar will help us to answer a number of questions like - Caste as a system, the nature of the Hindu Social structure, the place of the Individual, the origin of Patriarchy, the origin of the Shudra as a Varna; the origin of caste system, and untouchability. Using an interdisciplinary approach mixing Sociology, Anthropology, Linguistics, Indology, etc., theories and applying historical, evolutionary, and comparative approaches Ambedkar successfully provides us total repertoire of ‘Caste System’ and opens new vistas for research when we are witnessing that caste is becoming a global phenomenon.

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