Book
Launch Programme at the Centre for
Social Sciences and Humanities(CSH)
A book: Caste in Contemporary India written by Professor Surinder S. Jodhka, a
brilliant academician, was launched at the Centre for Social Sciences and
Humanities, New Delhi. The programme was organsied by CSH to release this book
under the chairmanship of Prof(Dr) Leila
Choukroune, Director of the CSH and Head of the Globalisation and Regulation
Research Area. A brief introduction was given by Prof(Dr) Leila Choukroune
about the book. Prof(Dr) Satish Desphande, Professor of Sociology, Department
of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics( University of Delhi), Prof Gilles
Verniers, Assistant Professor in Political Science, Ashoka University and CSH
Research Associate, Dr Jules Naudet, CSH Senior Research in Sociology and Head
of the Politics and Society Research Area shared the dias. All of them
discussed briefly about the book. Faculties, scholars, and students from JNU
and other universities attended this
programme. High tea was served to all
the participants.
Abstract 
Many
in urban India tend to believe that caste would and should have disappeared by
now had it not been politicized and used by wily actors in India’s electoral
politics. Its institutionalization through the reservation policy, the quotas
for Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Classes, is also cited as the other
reason for its continued survival. Against the popular middle-class assumption
that the continued presence of caste is a result of incomplete modernization of India’s economy and its
cultural values, the book constructs a different trajectory of caste. The
institution of caste has seen significant changes, particularly during the past
four or five decades.
This
change has been experienced almost at all levels and almost in all regions of
the country, although not following a single evolutionary or linear path of
progression.
More
importantly, even when the institution of caste and the social and economic
structures sustaining it undergo significant changes, caste has not
disappeared. Even in regions where the change in social and economic domains of
rural life has been quite “radical” and the older order of caste has nearly
disintegrated, caste-based divisions and inequalities continue to matter and
often overlap with the emergent disparities of the new economy, both rural and
urban. The realities of caste in contemporary times are also not exhausted by
analyses of electoral politics.
Caste
matters in multiple ways and in different spheres of social, economic and
political life, sometimes visibly, sometimes not so visibly. The book is an
outcome of Prof. Jodhka’s work on caste completed over the past decade and
half. Most of this research has been in the form of empirical explorations of
contemporary manifestations of caste carried out both in rural as well as in
urban settings in northwest India.
They
represent a specific mode of engaging with the subject, which is different from
the manner in which caste was imagined and studied by sociologists/ social
anthropologists and other social scientists until the 1970s, or even in the
1980s. However, the book is not only about documenting the empirics of caste in
contemporary India, but tries to present a framework that would hopefully help
us understand social inequalities in other societies as well.
Academic Profile of Prof Surinder S. Jodhka
Prof. Surinder S. Jodhka
Prof. Jodhka researches on different
dimensions of social inequalities - old and new - and the processes of their
reproduction. Empirical focus of his work has been the dynamics of caste and the
varied modes of its articulation with the nature of social and economic change
in a neo-liberal€ India; studies of agrarian social change and
contemporary rural India; and the political sociology community identities. His
publications include Interrogating India€™s Modernity (ed. OUP
2013); Caste: Oxford India Short Introductions (OUP
2012); Village Society (ed. Orient Blackswan 2012); Community
and Identities: Contemporary Discourses on Culture and Politics in India (ed.
Sage 2001). He is editor of the Routledge India book series on €˜Religion and
Citizenship. He is among the first recipients of the ICSSR-Amartya Sen Award
for Distinguished Social Scientists, for the year 2012.
Inputs by Rahul Kumar,
(rkbsooru@gmail.com), Associate Editor, Sagar Media Inc.
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