Caste, Education, and Social Struggle in India and the United States

Please register to join us on Monday, April 22 at 3:30pm for a panel on “Caste, Education, and Social Struggle in Modern India,” featuring Ajantha Subramanian, Professor of Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center, and Shailaja Paik, the Charles P. Taft Distinguished Professor of History and Affiliate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Asian Studies at the University of Cincinnati. Moderated by Aarti Sethi, Assistant Professor at the Department of Anthropology at UC Berkeley, and 2023-2024 Matrix Faculty Fellow.

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Abstract
The capture of socio-economic power in India is by an oppressor “upper-caste” minority has operated through violent control over knowledge, and the exclusion of the vast majority of oppressed “lower-caste” communities from basic access to education. However caste discrimination is not sequestered in India. While Indian Americans represent themselves as “caste-less”, and caste as a quaint phenomenon that has been left behind in India, caste is alive, well, and thriving in the United States, particularly in the sphere of education. In the past three years anti-caste activists, scholars, and their allies have succeeded in drawing attention to caste discrimination on US campuses. This struggle has succeeded in many universities, such as Brandies University, Brown University, Harvard University, UC Davis, and the University of California State University system, adding caste as a protected category in anti-discrimination codes. This panel draws linkages between struggles over affirmative action and education in India, and the transitional histories of caste struggle in the United States, with the hope that, through rigorous critical engagement with structures of oppression and the discourses they engender, it may be possible to build a more just and egalitarian future.

Panelists
• Ajantha Subramanian, Professor of Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center
• Shailaja Paik, Charles P. Taft Distinguished Professor of History and Affiliate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Asian Studies, University of Cincinnatti
• Aarti Sethi (moderator), Assistant Professor at the Department of Anthropology at UC Berkeley, and 2023-2024 Matrix Faculty Fellow

Sponsors
Presented by the Social Science Matrix. Co-sponsored by the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion, Program in Critical Theory, Department of English, Global Metropolitan Studies, Center for Race and Gender, Institute of South Asian Studies, and Department of Anthropology.

Admission Information
This event will be presented in-person and will not be livestreamed. If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, contact Chuck Kapelke at ckapelke@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible.