Textual Lives of Caste Across the Ages: Hierarchy, Humanity and Equality in Indian History

by Prathama Banerjee (Editor), Janaki Nair (Editor), Mrinalini Sinha (Editor), Shabnum Tejani (Editor)

Overview

The essays in this volume explore the myriad ways in which caste (varna and jati) has been theorized and critiqued in multiple philosophical, religious, logical and narrative traditions in India. Spanning ancient, medieval and modern times, and in diverse classical and vernacular languages, the chapters show how the social fact of caste, and imaginations of kinship, community and humanity were historically subject to epistemological, spiritual, and existential debate in both elite and popular circles in India.

Textual Lives of Caste Across the Ages seeks to bridge the interdisciplinary gap between historians and sociologists by focusing on texts that help us think across the sociological and philosophical, the political and the religious, the epistemological and the aesthetic, and indeed, the elite and the popular. The volume also sets up a conversation between scholars specializing in different regions, archives, and historical periods and demonstrates how caste imaginaries have been deeply diverse and contested in India's past. Reconstructing these diverse traditions of social and existential criticism helps us in our contemporary struggles against caste hierarchy and untouchability and enriches our contemporary critical repertoire.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350355040
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	05/28/2026
Series:	Critical Perspectives in South Asian History
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 1.11(d)

About the Author

Prathama Banerjee is Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, India. A historian of 19th- and 20th-century India, her research interests include political, intellectual and cultural history. Her most recent book is Elementary Aspects of the Political: Histories from the Global South (Duke University Press, 2020).

Janaki Nair was Professor of History at Jawaharlal Nehru University, India, until her retirement in 2020. She has written on the social, cultural and political history of modern India. She has published widely in Indian and international journals. Her publications include Women and Law in Colonial India (1996) and Miners and Millhands: Work, Culture and Politics in Princely Mysore (1998).

Mrinalini Sinha is Alice Freeman Palmer Professor of History at University of Michigan, USA. A historian of Modern South Asia and the British Empire, her books include Colonial Masculinity: the 'manly Englishman' and the 'effeminate Bengali' in the late 19th century (Manchester, 1995) and Specters of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire (Duke, 2006).

Table of Contents

Introduction, Prathama Banerjee (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, India)
Part II: Caste and Philosophy
1. Systems of Philosophy for and against Caste, Pradeep P. Gokhale (Savitribhai Phule University, Pune, India)
2.The Philosophy of Caste in 17th Century India, Samuel Wright (Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin, Germany)
3. The Curious Career of Shunya: Politics and Metaphysics of Caste Thinking in Eastern India, Prathama Banerjee (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, India)
4. Caste Hierarchies and Dissent in Tamil Manuscript Culture, S. Gunasekaran (Jawaharlal Nehru University, India)
Part II: Caste and Heterodoxy
5. Anti-Brahmana or Anti-Brahmanical: Reading Early Buddhist and Jain Legends, Chandrabhan P. Yadav (Delhi University, India)
6. Dissent in an Indian Intellectual Tradition: Limits and Possibilities, Meera Visvanathan (Shiv Nadar University, India)
7. Distinct Figurations: Thassar's Buddha and Civilizational Memory, Dickens Leonard (Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India)
Part III: Legends and Stories
8. The Matanga King Trisanku and History from Below, Kanad Sinha (Sanskrit College & University, Kolkata, India)
9. Antaja kings in Mlecch Land: The political between caste and law in early eighteenth-century Hindustan, Samyak Ghosh (Columbia University, USA)
10. In Need of an Avatar: Sri Sri Harililamrita and Anti-Caste Thought in Matua Dharma, Praskanva Sinharoy (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata, India)
Part IV: Views from the Outside
11. Translating Caste: A Study of Select Perso-Arabic Texts', Md. Sajjad Alam Rizvi (Presidency University, Kolkata, India)
12. From Battuta to Makhdum II: Savarna Habitus, Corporeal Shields, and Caste Acoustics on the Malabar Coast, P. K. Yasser Arafath (University of Delhi, India)
13. The Textuality of Caste in Sharad Patil's Marxism-Phule-Ambedkarism, Rahul Sarwate (Ahmedabad University, India)
Part V: Body and Caste
14. Rewriting Life: Caste, Body and Time in Tulsi Ram's Murdahiya, Shivani Kapoor (Jindal Global University, Sonepat, India)
15. Drawing Caste to Fasten the Nation, Prabhat Kumar (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, India)
Bibliography
Notes

Editorial Reviews

This important collection moves seamlessly between premodern and modern iterations of caste to illuminate philosophically rich and diverse regional debates which challenge any singular focus on caste's coloniality. Their inquiry into the historical ontology of caste across diverse disciplinary domains opens new horizons for future research while recalling the depth, duration, and remarkable durability of an anticaste philosophy.” —Anupama Rao, Professor of History and MESAAS; Director, Institute for Comparative Literature and Society; and convenor of the Ambedkar Initiative at Columbia University, USA

From the Publisher