Caste as a Religious, Social, and Political Order
Caste as a Religious, Social, and Political Order
Caste is one of the world's longest-lasting systems of social organization, shaping religion, politics, economics, identity, and everyday life across South Asia and, increasingly, within global diaspora communities. Although traditionally associated with Hindu society, the collected scholarship demonstrates that caste influences multiple religious communities, political institutions, labor markets, educational opportunities, constitutional law, and international human-rights debates. The literature also shows that caste has continually evolved rather than remaining a fixed or unchanging institution.
Historical Origins and Colonial Transformation
The sources trace caste from early social and religious hierarchies through its transformation during colonial rule. Rather than presenting caste as a timeless institution, historians argue that British censuses, ethnography, legal administration, and racial classification helped standardize and harden previously fluid identities into more rigid administrative categories. Colonial knowledge production, surveys, and census practices significantly influenced modern understandings of caste while linking it to governance, law, and political representation.
Religious Foundations and Interpretations
The collected works examine caste primarily through Hindu traditions while also exploring caste-like hierarchies among Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, and other South Asian communities. Topics include ritual purity and pollution, religious authority, temple organization, karma, endogamy, kinship, religious reform, and competing interpretations of sacred texts. The sources also analyze religious movements that challenged inherited hierarchy while acknowledging that caste distinctions often persisted across different faith communities.
Ambedkar and Anti-Caste Thought
A major portion of the material focuses on B. R. Ambedkar and his critique of caste as a system of graded inequality sustained by religious authority and hereditary social organization. His writings argue that meaningful equality requires dismantling caste itself rather than merely reforming its practices. The collection also covers his constitutional work, advocacy for Dalit rights, conversion to Buddhism, and continuing influence on modern democratic theory, social justice, and anti-caste movements.
Social Reform and Anti-Caste Movements
The sources document numerous reform traditions, including the work of Jyotirao Phule, Savitribai Phule, Periyar E. V. Ramasamy, Narayana Guru, Dalit organizations, Self-Respect movements, and Satyashodhak Samaj. These movements challenged Brahminical authority, hereditary privilege, gender inequality, and religious orthodoxy while promoting education, social equality, political participation, and human dignity.
Caste, Democracy, and Electoral Politics
The bibliography explores how caste has adapted to democratic politics rather than disappearing through modernization. Scholars examine caste-based political mobilization, party organization, voting behavior, reservations, representation, coalition building, lower-caste political movements, and the interaction between democratic institutions and inherited social identities. The sources also investigate the relationship between caste, nationalism, Hindutva, and modern political competition.
Constitutional Law, Reservations, and Social Justice
Numerous works examine India's constitutional efforts to abolish untouchability and reduce historical inequalities through reservations, affirmative-action policies, civil-rights legislation, and protections for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. The literature evaluates both the successes and continuing debates surrounding reservation systems, equality before the law, educational admissions, employment, and constitutional reform.
Human Rights and Social Inequality
International organizations, legal scholars, and human-rights groups document continuing caste discrimination affecting education, employment, housing, healthcare, policing, manual scavenging, bonded labor, violence, and access to justice. These sources place caste within broader discussions of international human rights, descent-based discrimination, and global efforts to recognize inherited systems of social exclusion.
Gender, Labor, and Economic Inequality
The collected research demonstrates how caste intersects with gender, occupation, class, entrepreneurship, wealth, education, and labor markets. Studies examine occupational segregation, discrimination in hiring and wages, Dalit feminism, social mobility, economic opportunity, and the ways inherited status continues to shape access to resources despite modernization and economic growth.
Caste Beyond India
Several sources examine caste within diaspora communities in the United States, Canada, Britain, and elsewhere. Topics include discrimination in technology industries, universities, workplaces, religious institutions, and civil-rights law. The bibliography also documents recent debates over recognizing caste as a protected category in anti-discrimination policies adopted by universities and local governments.
Comparative and Global Perspectives
The bibliography compares caste with other systems of hierarchy including race, class, colonial domination, slavery, ethnicity, and nationalism. Comparative scholarship investigates similarities and differences between caste systems and other forms of inherited inequality while emphasizing the importance of historical, political, religious, and economic contexts.
Contemporary Developments
Recent scholarship emphasizes that caste continues to evolve alongside urbanization, globalization, migration, entrepreneurship, digital technology, higher education, and changing political institutions. Rather than disappearing under modernization, many authors argue that caste adapts to new social environments while continuing to influence identity, opportunity, representation, and public policy.
Conclusion
Taken together, these sources portray caste as a multidimensional institution that cannot be understood solely as a religious belief or social custom. Instead, the literature presents caste as an interconnected religious, social, economic, legal, and political order whose historical development continues to shape democratic institutions, human rights, public policy, economic inequality, and everyday life both within South Asia and throughout the global Indian diaspora. The collection also highlights the extensive scholarship devoted to reform movements, constitutional protections, anti-caste activism, and ongoing debates about equality, justice, and social transformation.
Contemporary Caste, Religion, and Social Hierarchy
Coding Caste: Tech Elites, Dalit Exclusion, and the Myth of Meritocracy in the Indian Diaspora
| Human Rights Research Center | Human Rights Research Center | June 12, 2025
Investigates caste privilege and Dalit exclusion in technology industries, arguing that migration and professional success do not automatically eliminate inherited social hierarchies.
Caste Discrimination, International Human Rights, and Hinduism
| Rishika Bajoria | Leiden Journal of International Law | 2025
Examines the shortcomings of international human-rights law in addressing caste discrimination and revisits B. R. Ambedkar’s argument that caste must be annihilated rather than merely reformed.
An Introduction to the Basic Elements of the Caste System of India
| Vina M. Goghari and Arushi Kusi | Frontiers in Psychology | December 21, 2023
Provides an accessible overview of varna, jati, untouchability, colonial classification and the psychological consequences of institutionalized caste oppression.
Indian Americans: Overview
Surveys Indian American communities while discussing how religion, migration, class, caste and family structures shape experiences within the diaspora.
Caste Discrimination Among the Indian Diaspora in the USA
| Dhananjay Kumar | Contemporary Voice of Dalit | 2023
Explores the persistence of caste discrimination among Indian immigrants in the United States, including controversies involving workplaces, temples and universities.
Transnational Discrimination: The Case of Casteism and the Indian Diaspora
| Frédéric Mégret | Transnational Legal Theory | 2023
Develops the concept of transnational discrimination to explain how caste practices migrate across borders and challenge conventional national civil-rights frameworks.
What Role Does Caste Play?
| Stephanie Kramer | Pew Research Center | August 23, 2022
Explains how caste affiliation remains connected to family structure, marriage, sex selection, economic status and eligibility for government reservation programs.
The Modernity of Caste and the Market Economy
| David Mosse | Modern Asian Studies | July 7, 2020
Challenges the assumption that markets and modernization naturally dissolve caste, showing how caste power can be reproduced through labor, capital and social networks.
Caste
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | n.d.
Introduces caste as a hereditary form of social stratification and distinguishes the broad ideological model of varna from the numerous localized communities known as jatis.
Caste Systems
| EBSCO Research Starters | EBSCO | n.d.
Defines caste systems as hereditary political and social hierarchies characterized by restricted mobility, occupational specialization, endogamy and unequal access to power.
Religious Foundations and Interpretations
Seeking Allah’s Hierarchy: Caste, Labor, and Islam in India
| A. P. Sidhick | Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society | 2025
Reviews research on caste-like hierarchy, occupational status and social inequality among Muslim communities in Malabar without reducing them to a simple copy of Hindu caste.
Casteist Demons and Working-Class Prophets: Subaltern Islam in Bengal, circa 1872–1928
| Layli Uddin | Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society | 2023
Examines how marginalized Bengali Muslims used religious movements and prophetic traditions to challenge caste hierarchy, elite authority and colonial social classification.
Attitudes About Caste
| Neha Sahgal et al. | Pew Research Center | June 29, 2021
Presents survey evidence showing that caste identification and opposition to intercaste marriage remain widespread among Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains.
Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation
| Neha Sahgal et al. | Pew Research Center | June 29, 2021
Documents the coexistence of religious tolerance with extensive separation by religion and caste in friendship, marriage, neighborhoods and communal life.
Religious Beliefs
| Neha Sahgal et al. | Pew Research Center | June 29, 2021
Compares religious beliefs across caste categories and shows that social position intersects with beliefs about karma, fate, miracles, spirits and religious healing.
Religious Practices
| Neha Sahgal et al. | Pew Research Center | June 29, 2021
Analyzes how caste status relates to worship, pilgrimage, prayer, religious media, temple attendance and other forms of religious participation.
Measuring Caste in India
| Kelsey Jo Starr and Neha Sahgal | Pew Research Center | June 29, 2021
Explains the methodological and political difficulties involved in measuring caste membership through censuses and surveys in a religiously diverse society.
Introduction: Historicizing Sayyid-ness—Social Status and Muslim Identity in South Asia
| Laurence Gautier and Julien Levesque | Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society | 2020
Explores the historical construction of prestigious Muslim descent identities and their relationship to social rank, religious authority and caste-like stratification.
Hinduism: India, Nepal, and Beyond
| Jeffery D. Long | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics | July 29, 2019
Surveys Hindu traditions and political identities while discussing the relationship among religious authority, caste hierarchy, reform and nationalism.
Paradigms of Society: A Critique of Theories of Caste Among Indian Muslims
| Charles Lindholm | European Journal of Sociology | 1985
Critiques efforts to apply Hindu caste models mechanically to Indian Muslims and emphasizes the importance of kinship, marriage, occupation and local political history.
Historical Formation and Colonial Rule
Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age
| Susan Bayly | Cambridge University Press | March 28, 2008
Provides a wide-ranging history of caste as a changing social, religious and political institution rather than a timeless and unchanging feature of Indian civilization.
Caste and the Colonial State
| Susan Bayly | Cambridge University Press | 2008
Explains how colonial censuses, ethnography, legal administration and recruitment practices transformed fluid social identities into more standardized caste categories.
Historical Origins of a ‘Caste Society’
| Susan Bayly | Cambridge University Press | 2008
Investigates precolonial social hierarchy, ritual status, kingship and political economy to explain how recognizable caste institutions developed over time.
Race, Caste, Tribe, and Gender in India
| Nicholas B. Dirks | Princeton University Press | 2001
Examines how colonial knowledge systems connected caste with racial theory, tribal classification, gender norms and administrative control.
The Ethnographic State
| Nicholas B. Dirks | Princeton University Press | 2001
Shows how British officials used ethnography, surveys and censuses to classify Indian communities and make caste central to colonial governance.
Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India
| Nicholas B. Dirks | Princeton University Press | 2001
Argues that colonial rule did not invent caste from nothing but reorganized and elevated it into the primary framework for understanding and governing Indian society.
The Colonial Sociology of India
| Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer | Social Scientist | 1993
Discusses how colonial forms of knowledge shaped modern understandings of Indian religion, caste, community and political difference.
The Invention of Caste: Civil Society in Colonial India
| Nicholas B. Dirks | Social Analysis | December 1989
Contends that colonial institutions transformed caste by connecting it to state classification, representation, law and the production of social knowledge.
The Census and the Objectification of Caste
| Bernard S. Cohn | Journal of Asian Studies | February 1987
Analyzes how colonial census operations forced complex and contested social identities into fixed categories and ranked administrative lists.
Caste in India: Its Mechanism, Genesis and Development
| B. R. Ambedkar | Indian Antiquary | May 1917
Presents Ambedkar’s early argument that enforced endogamy is the central mechanism through which caste boundaries and hereditary inequality reproduce themselves.
Ambedkar, Anti-Caste Thought, and Religious Conversion
Why B. R. Ambedkar Converted to Buddhism
| Valerian Rodrigues | Scroll.in | October 14, 2016
Explains Ambedkar’s decision to reject Hinduism and adopt Buddhism as a political, ethical and spiritual challenge to caste inequality.
The Buddha and His Dhamma
| B. R. Ambedkar | Government of India | 1957
Reinterprets Buddhism as a rational and socially egalitarian tradition capable of supporting liberty, equality, fraternity and the destruction of caste.
The Rise and Fall of Hindu Women
| B. R. Ambedkar | Government of India | 1951
Connects caste preservation with patriarchal restrictions, endogamy and the regulation of women’s sexuality and social freedom.
The Untouchables: Who Were They and Why They Became Untouchables
| B. R. Ambedkar | Government of India | 1948
Offers Ambedkar’s historical explanation for the emergence of untouchability and its connection to religious conflict, diet and social exclusion.
Who Were the Shudras?
| B. R. Ambedkar | Government of India | 1946
Uses historical and textual arguments to challenge orthodox accounts of the Shudras and investigate their changing position within Brahmanical society.
What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables
| B. R. Ambedkar | Government of India | 1945
Criticizes Congress and Gandhi’s approach to caste, political representation and Dalit emancipation while defending independent political organization by oppressed castes.
Annihilation of Caste
| B. R. Ambedkar | Columbia University | 1936
Argues that caste is sustained by religious authority and scripture and that meaningful social equality requires a fundamental rejection of caste-based Hindu social order.
Waiting for a Visa
| B. R. Ambedkar | Columbia University | circa 1935
Recounts personal experiences of untouchability to show how caste governed travel, housing, education, employment and everyday human interaction.
B. R. Ambedkar
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | n.d.
Profiles the jurist, political leader and social reformer who challenged Hindu caste hierarchy, helped draft India’s Constitution and embraced Buddhism.
Ambedkar’s Buddhism and Its Political Legacy
| The India Forum | The India Forum | n.d.
Discusses Navayana Buddhism as an anti-caste political tradition and considers its continuing significance for Dalit identity, democracy and social justice.
Social Reform and Anti-Caste Movements
Periyar E. V. Ramasamy
| A. R. Venkatachalapathy | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History | February 28, 2020
Examines Periyar’s Self-Respect Movement, atheism, critique of Brahminism and efforts to dismantle caste, patriarchy and religious authority in South India.
Social and Religious Reform in Nineteenth-Century India
| Amiya P. Sen | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History | January 30, 2020
Surveys reform movements that debated caste, women’s rights, religious practice and colonial modernity, including the explicitly anti-caste Satyashodhak Samaj.
The Non-Brahmin Movement in Western India
| Gail Omvedt | Scientific Socialist Education Trust | 1976
Studies the movement inspired by Jyotirao Phule that challenged Brahmin authority, caste inequality and elite domination in colonial Maharashtra.
Cultural Revolt in a Colonial Society
| Gail Omvedt | Scientific Socialist Education Trust | 1976
Interprets the non-Brahmin movement as a cultural and political revolt against caste hierarchy, colonial power and unequal control of education.
Slavery
| Jyotirao Phule | Government of Maharashtra | 1873
Compares caste oppression in India with racial slavery and condemns Brahmanical religious narratives as instruments of social domination.
Gulamgiri
| Jyotirao Phule | Satyashodhak Samaj | 1873
Presents Phule’s foundational critique of caste, priestly authority and religious mythology while calling for solidarity among oppressed communities.
Satyashodhak Samaj
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | n.d.
Describes the Society of Truth Seekers founded by Jyotirao Phule to promote education, social equality and resistance to Brahminical dominance.
Sri Narayana Guru
| Encyclopaedia Britannica Editors | Encyclopaedia Britannica | n.d.
Profiles the Kerala religious reformer who rejected caste exclusion, established temples open to marginalized communities and preached human spiritual equality.
Self-Respect Movement
| Encyclopedia.com Editors | Encyclopedia.com | n.d.
Explains the movement’s attack on caste rank, religious orthodoxy, imposed marriage practices, patriarchy and Brahmin political power.
Dalit Movement
| Hugo Gorringe | Oxford Bibliographies | n.d.
Provides a research guide to Dalit movements, anti-caste thought, political parties, literature, social protest and struggles for dignity and representation.
Caste and Electoral Politics
Rethinking the Study of Electoral Politics in the Developing World: Reflections on the Indian Case
| Adam Michael Auerbach et al. | Perspectives on Politics | 2022
Reviews scholarship on Indian elections and explains how caste, religion, brokerage, welfare and political organization structure democratic participation.
Inequality in Policy Implementation: Caste and Electrification in Rural India
| Michaël Aklin et al. | Journal of Public Policy | 2021
Shows how caste power affects the local implementation of development policies, producing unequal access even when national programs formally promise universal benefits.
Caste, Politics, and Development
| Atul Kohli | Cambridge University Press | 2018
Evaluates caste-based political mobilization, reservations and development outcomes, finding expanded representation but continuing socioeconomic inequality.
Elite Parties and Poor Voters: Theory and Evidence from India
| Tariq Thachil | American Political Science Review | February 2014
Explains how elite-oriented parties can attract lower-caste and poor voters through nonstate welfare services and embedded social organizations.
The Politics of Caste Identities
| Christophe Jaffrelot | Cambridge University Press | 2012
Traces the political mobilization of caste identities from colonial associations to reservations, electoral parties and lower-caste movements.
Caste and Politics in India
| Rajni Kothari | Orient BlackSwan | 2010
Presents influential essays on how caste adapts to democratic competition and how electoral politics transforms caste identities and associations.
India’s Silent Revolution
| Christophe Jaffrelot | Hurst Publishers | 2003
Describes the rise of lower-caste political parties and leaders as a democratic revolution that weakened upper-caste monopolies over political institutions.
The Puzzle of Indian Politics: Social Cleavages and the Indian Party System
| Pradeep K. Chhibber and John R. Petrocik | British Journal of Political Science | 1989
Investigates why India’s numerous caste, religious and linguistic divisions did not produce a straightforward political party for every social cleavage.
Caste and the Decline of Political Homogeneity
| A. H. Somjee | American Political Science Review | March 1973
Examines caste associations as vehicles of political socialization, representation and fragmented decision-making within Indian democracy.
Caste in Indian Politics
| Rajni Kothari | Economic and Political Weekly | December 1970
Argues that caste and democratic politics interact dynamically, with caste providing organizational resources while political competition reshapes caste relationships.
Reservations, Law, and the State
Affirmative Action in India with Horizontal Reservations
| Orhan Aygün and Bertan Turhan | arXiv | February 9, 2026
Analyzes the allocation rules governing India’s intersecting vertical and horizontal reservation categories and proposes mechanisms designed to improve fairness.
Inconsistency of Score-Elevated Reserve Policy for Indian Affirmative Action
| Orhan Aygün and Bertan Turhan | arXiv | December 22, 2023
Evaluates a proposed admissions rule for Other Backward Classes and argues that it conflicts with established principles of Indian reservation law.
Affirmative Action in India: Restricted Strategy Space, Complex Constraints, and Direct Mechanism Design
| Orhan Aygün and Bertan Turhan | arXiv | October 4, 2023
Explains the complex rules governing caste, disability and gender reservations in educational admissions and proposes a more coherent matching system.
Designing Direct Matching Mechanisms for India with Comprehensive Affirmative Action
| Orhan Aygün and Bertan Turhan | arXiv | April 28, 2020
Identifies problems in the implementation of overlapping reservation categories and proposes centralized mechanisms for allocating educational and employment positions.
Court as a Symbolic Resource
| Gerald N. Rosenberg, Sudhir Krishnaswamy and Shishir Bail | Cambridge University Press | 2019
Examines how marginalized groups use courts symbolically and politically, including litigation concerning caste reservations and Muslim caste recognition.
Why Is the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Act So Important?
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | April 9, 2018
Explains the significance of India’s Prevention of Atrocities Act and the continuing violence and impunity that make special legal protections necessary.
Reservations and the Private Sector
| Sukhadeo Thorat | Economic and Political Weekly | June 19, 2004
Makes the case for extending affirmative-action principles beyond government institutions because caste discrimination also shapes private labor markets.
The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989
| Government of India | Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment | 1989
Contains the principal Indian statute criminalizing specified forms of violence, humiliation, dispossession and discrimination against Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955
| Government of India | Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment | 1955
Establishes legal penalties for enforcing disabilities arising from untouchability in access to worship, commerce, water, public facilities and social participation.
Constitution of India: Article 17
| Constitution of India Project | Centre for Law and Policy Research | n.d.
Presents the constitutional abolition of untouchability and provides historical materials concerning the effort to outlaw caste-based exclusion.
Dalit Rights, Violence, and Social Exclusion
Guidance Tool on Descent-Based Discrimination
Provides guidance for identifying and combating discrimination based on caste, inherited occupation and other systems of descent-based social hierarchy.
Caste-Based Discrimination
| Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights | United Nations | March 21, 2016
Reports that caste and analogous systems of inherited status violate the dignity and rights of millions of people in South Asia and elsewhere.
Cleaning Human Waste: “Manual Scavenging,” Caste, and Discrimination in India
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | August 25, 2014
Investigates the caste-based assignment of sanitation labor and the failure of authorities to eliminate manual scavenging despite repeated legal prohibitions.
India: Caste Forced to Clean Human Waste
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | August 25, 2014
Summarizes evidence that members of particular Dalit communities remain compelled to perform degrading sanitation work under coercive and discriminatory conditions.
India: UN Members Should Act to End Caste Discrimination
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | May 14, 2012
Calls for international pressure on India to address segregation, forced labor, police abuse and barriers to land, schooling and public services faced by Dalits.
Hidden Apartheid: Caste Discrimination Against India’s Untouchables
Documents extensive caste discrimination and argues that India has failed to enforce constitutional and international protections for Dalits.
Small Change: Bonded Child Labor in India’s Silk Industry
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | January 23, 2003
Shows how caste, debt, poverty and employer power combine to trap children from marginalized communities in hazardous bonded labor.
Broken People: Caste Violence Against India’s “Untouchables”
| Smita Narula | Human Rights Watch | March 1, 1999
Documents massacres, rape, police abuse, social boycotts and forced labor directed against Dalits and links such violence to entrenched political and economic power.
Dalits Break Through UN Wall of Silence on Caste
| Minority Rights Group International | Minority Rights Group International | n.d.
Describes efforts by Dalit advocates to gain international recognition of caste discrimination as a major human-rights issue.
Caste Discrimination and Human Rights
| International Dalit Solidarity Network | International Dalit Solidarity Network | n.d.
Offers an overview of caste discrimination in employment, education, justice, housing, political participation and humanitarian assistance across several countries.
Caste, Gender, Labor, and Economic Inequality
Caste and Entrepreneurship
| Lakshmi Iyer, Tarun Khanna and Ashutosh Varshney | World Development | 2017
Investigates the barriers and opportunities facing Dalit entrepreneurs and considers whether markets can weaken or reproduce inherited social inequality.
The Forms of Capital and the Forms of Caste
| Satish Deshpande | Economic and Political Weekly | April 5, 2014
Analyzes how caste privilege is converted into educational, social, cultural and economic capital while often appearing to be individual merit.
Understanding Caste and Kinship Within Dalit Feminism
| Sharmila Rege | Economic and Political Weekly | 2013
Explores the distinctive contributions of Dalit feminist thought to understanding marriage, sexuality, kinship, labor and political resistance.
Blocked by Caste: Economic Discrimination in Modern India
| Sukhadeo Thorat and Katherine S. Newman | Oxford University Press | 2012
Uses field experiments and social research to demonstrate that caste influences access to jobs, housing, credit and other opportunities in modern India.
Caste and the Indian Economy
| Ashwini Deshpande | Cambridge University Press | 2011
Reviews evidence on caste disparities in employment, wages, education, wealth and occupational mobility in contemporary India.
Caste and Economic Discrimination
| Sukhadeo Thorat and Katherine S. Newman | Oxford University Press | 2010
Brings together evidence of caste discrimination in labor, housing, education, markets and public services and compares Indian exclusion with racial discrimination elsewhere.
Does Caste Still Define Disparity?
| K. S. Zacharias and V. Vakulabharanam | Economic and Political Weekly | October 14, 2006
Evaluates whether caste remains an independent determinant of wealth, consumption and economic opportunity after accounting for other social factors.
Dalit Women Talk Differently
| Sharmila Rege | Economic and Political Weekly | October 14, 1995
Argues that Dalit women’s experiences cannot be adequately explained by feminist theories that isolate gender from caste, labor and community power.
Caste, Class and Social Articulation in Andhra Pradesh
| K. Balagopal | Economic and Political Weekly | September 30, 1989
Examines the interaction of caste identity, landownership, class conflict and political mobilization in rural Andhra Pradesh.
Caste, Gender and the Indian Labour Market
| International Labour Organization | International Labour Organization | n.d.
Examines how caste and gender interact to shape employment, wages, occupational segregation and vulnerability in India’s formal and informal economies.
Caste Beyond India and in the Diaspora
Rutgers Caste Report
| Rutgers University Task Force on Caste Discrimination | Rutgers University | August 2024
Reviews caste protections adopted by universities and evaluates whether Rutgers should explicitly include caste in its nondiscrimination policies.
Caste Discrimination Comes to the U.S.
| Maria Wood | New Jersey State Bar Foundation | February 26, 2024
Explains the debate over recognizing caste as a protected category in American employment, education and civil-rights law.
Seattle Becomes First U.S. City to Ban Caste Discrimination
| Deepa Bharath | Associated Press | February 21, 2023
Reports on Seattle’s decision to prohibit caste discrimination and presents arguments from Dalit activists, city officials and opponents of the ordinance.
Brown University Adds Caste to Nondiscrimination Policy
| Brown University | Brown University | December 1, 2022
Explains Brown University’s decision to explicitly identify caste as a protected characteristic even where existing ancestry protections might already apply.
Google’s Caste-Bias Problem
| Isaac Chotiner | The New Yorker | June 15, 2022
Discusses the cancellation of a Google presentation about caste and the broader difficulties technology companies face when addressing caste discrimination.
The Smoke and Mirrors of Casteism in the US
| Sonja Thomas | The India Forum | June 10, 2022
Defends explicit caste protections in American institutions and responds to arguments that such policies unfairly single out Hindus or South Asians.
Caste Discrimination Exists in the U.S., Too—But a Movement to Outlaw It Is Growing
| Thenmozhi Soundararajan | Time | February 11, 2022
Describes campaigns to add caste to nondiscrimination rules in universities, unions, political organizations and technology workplaces.
California State University Adds Caste to Anti-Discrimination Policy
| Nani Sahra Walker | Los Angeles Times | January 20, 2022
Reports on the largest American university system’s recognition of caste and the debate among students, faculty and civil-rights advocates.
Caste in Great Britain and Equality Law
| Doug Pyper | House of Commons Library | July 16, 2018
Reviews evidence of caste discrimination in Britain and the legal debate over whether caste should be expressly covered by equality legislation.
Caste in Britain: Socio-Legal Review
| Meena Dhanda et al. | Equality and Human Rights Commission | 2014
Surveys caste identities and discrimination in Britain and assesses possible approaches under employment and equality law.
Comparative, Conceptual, and Global Perspectives
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
| Isabel Wilkerson | Random House | August 4, 2020
Compares India’s caste hierarchy, American racial domination and Nazi racial rule to identify recurring mechanisms that sustain inherited systems of ranked humanity.
Hierarchy and Its Discontents: Culture and the Politics of Consciousness in Caste Society
| Steven M. Parish | University of Pennsylvania Press | 1996
Explores how people living within caste society understand hierarchy, morality, inequality and resistance in everyday cultural life.
Race, Caste and Tribe in Central India
| Crispin Bates | Cambridge University Press | 1995
Examines the historical construction of race, caste and tribal categories in colonial Central India and their connection to administration and political economy.
Homo Hierarchicus
| Louis Dumont | University of Chicago Press | 1980
Presents an influential theory that caste is organized by a religious opposition between purity and pollution, while provoking extensive debate about power and material inequality.
The Remembered Village
| M. N. Srinivas | University of California Press | 1976
Provides an ethnographic account of village social life, caste relations, ritual rank, patronage, change and local political authority in southern India.
Caste in a Changing World
| Gerald D. Berreman | Current Anthropology | April 1967
Treats caste as a system of institutionalized inequality and compares its operation with other forms of stratification and domination.
Social Change in Modern India
| M. N. Srinivas | University of California Press | 1966
Introduces concepts such as Sanskritization, Westernization and dominant caste to explain how caste hierarchy changes through mobility, politics and modernization.
Caste as Social Process
| Frederick G. Bailey | Southwestern Journal of Anthropology | 1957
Examines caste as an evolving process shaped by competition, political strategy and local interaction rather than only as a fixed ritual hierarchy.
Caste, Class and Race
| Oliver Cromwell Cox | Monthly Review Press | 1948
Develops a comparative theory of social hierarchy and argues that caste, class and racial systems must be understood through political and economic power.
Caste and Race: Comparative Approaches
| Oliver Cromwell Cox | Phylon | 1945
Critically compares caste and racial hierarchy and questions whether concepts developed for India can adequately explain racial domination in other societies.
Contemporary Caste, Identity, and Social Change
Caste Embeddedness and Entrepreneurship in Colonial and Contemporary India
| Arindam Roy | Enterprise & Society | 2025
Examines how caste-based trust, occupational inheritance, capital networks and social exclusion have shaped entrepreneurship across colonial and contemporary India.
Caste Identities and Structures of Threats
| Surinder S. Jodhka | Economic and Political Weekly | December 9, 2023
Explores the persistence of caste identities despite urbanization and economic growth, emphasizing the threats and sanctions that enforce hierarchical boundaries.
Dalits and Discourses of Anti-caste Movements in Kerala
| K. S. Madhavan | Social Scientist | 2023
Examines Dalit movements, representations of untouchability and debates over the relationship between caste struggle and communist politics in Kerala.
The Dynamics of Lower-Caste Politics
| Economic and Political Weekly Editors | Economic and Political Weekly | January 15, 2022
Discusses the continuing importance of lower-caste mobilization in elections, party competition and struggles over representation and public resources.
Is There Today a Caste System or Is There Only Caste in India?
| K. L. Sharma | Polish Sociological Review | 2012
Argues that caste has remained resilient by adapting to democracy, markets, education and urban life rather than surviving as an entirely unchanged traditional system.
Caste and Social Change: Caste Associations and Politics in India
| James Manor | India Review | 2012
Evaluates whether caste associations have declined or adapted, concluding that they continue to influence electoral organization and access to political power.
The Political Role of India’s Caste Associations
| Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph | India Review | 2012
Explains how caste associations modernized inherited identities by organizing education, lobbying, electoral alliances and demands upon the state.
Understanding Caste
| Gail Omvedt | SAGE Publications | 2011
Introduces caste as a system of religious legitimation, economic exploitation and political dominance while surveying major traditions of anti-caste resistance.
Caste: Its Twentieth Century Avatar
| M. N. Srinivas | Penguin India | 1996
Collects studies showing how caste adapted to electoral democracy, migration, affirmative action, education and changing patterns of occupation.
The Truth About Us: The Politics of Information from Manu to Modi
| Sanjoy Chakravorty | Context | n.d.
Considers how censuses, maps, classifications and public narratives have shaped understandings of caste, religion and national identity.
Caste, Religion, and Sacred Authority
The Pariah Problem: Caste, Religion, and the Social in Modern India
| Rupa Viswanath | Columbia University Press | 2014
Shows how colonial officials, missionaries and upper-caste reformers reframed caste oppression as a religious or charitable issue rather than a question of labor and political power.
Conversion, Caste and the Church in South India
| Geoffrey A. Oddie | Modern Asian Studies | 2013
Investigates how Christian conversion challenged some caste restrictions while churches and missions also accommodated inherited distinctions among converts.
Religion, Caste, Tribe and Gender: Essays on Society, Culture and Development in India
| T. B. Subba | Rawat Publications | 2010
Examines the intersections of religious identity, caste hierarchy, tribal classification, gender inequality and development policy.
Untouchable Saints: An Indian Phenomenon
| Eleanor Zelliot and Rohini Mokashi-Punekar | Manohar Publishers | 2005
Studies low-caste devotional saints whose poetry challenged ritual status and proclaimed spiritual equality while operating within caste-stratified societies.
The Camphor Flame: Popular Hinduism and Society in India
| C. J. Fuller | Princeton University Press | 2004
Explains how caste, temple worship, purity, priesthood and regional religious traditions structure everyday Hindu social life.
Caste and Christianity: Attitudes and Policies on Caste of Anglo-Saxon Protestant Missions in India
| Duncan B. Forrester | Curzon Press | 1980
Examines missionary disputes over whether caste practices could be tolerated within Christian congregations or had to be rejected as incompatible with equality.
The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism
| Max Weber | Free Press | 1958
Connects caste ethics and religious ideas to occupational specialization, social closure and the historical development of Indian economic life.
Religion and Society Among the Coorgs of South India
| M. N. Srinivas | Oxford University Press | 1952
Uses fieldwork to explain how ritual, kinship, landownership and caste rank interacted in a South Indian regional society.
Hindu Castes and Sects
| Jogendra Nath Bhattacharya | Thacker, Spink and Company | 1896
Provides a colonial-era account of Hindu castes, sects, religious customs and occupational communities that illustrates the classificatory assumptions of its period.
The Hindu Social Order: Its Essential Principles
| B. R. Ambedkar | Columbia University | n.d.
Describes the Hindu social order as a system of graded inequality in which religiously sanctioned rank prevents the formation of solidarity among oppressed groups.
Purity, Pollution, Occupation, and Everyday Life
Caste Panchayats and the Policing of Marriage in India
| A. M. Shah | Economic and Political Weekly | December 25, 2021
Reviews research on caste councils that regulate marriage, inheritance, sexuality and community membership despite the authority of democratic legal institutions.
Caste, Occupation and Politics on the Ganges
| Assa Doron | Routledge | 2008
Examines how boat workers in Banaras mobilize caste history, religious status and occupational identity in struggles over livelihoods and political recognition.
The Remembered Village: Caste and Social Structure
| M. N. Srinivas | University of California Press | 1976
Describes how caste status, factional conflict, landownership and ritual obligations structured relationships in a South Indian village.
The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India
| Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph | University of Chicago Press | 1967
Argues that caste organizations were transformed into modern interest groups capable of political bargaining rather than simply disappearing under modernization.
Kinship Organization in India
| Irawati Karve | Asia Publishing House | 1965
Shows how regional kinship systems, marriage rules and caste endogamy jointly organize family and social life.
Caste Ranking and Community Structure in Five Regions of India and Pakistan
| McKim Marriott | Deccan College | 1960
Compares local systems of caste ranking and demonstrates that hierarchy varies considerably among regions and communities.
Caste and Kinship in Central India
| Adrian C. Mayer | Routledge | 1960
Analyzes caste as a regional network maintained through marriage, kinship, occupation and ceremonial exchange rather than as an isolated village institution.
The Dominant Caste in Rampura
| M. N. Srinivas | American Anthropologist | February 1959
Introduces the concept of the dominant caste to describe communities whose power derives from land, numbers, education and political influence rather than ritual rank alone.
Social Mobility in the Caste System in India
| M. N. Srinivas | American Anthropologist | July 1952
Explains how subordinate communities seek higher status through changes in ritual practice, diet, dress and claims to prestigious ancestry.
The Hindu Jajmani System
| William H. Wiser | Association for Asian Studies | 1936
Describes hereditary exchanges of goods and services among occupational castes while documenting the inequalities embedded within village patronage.
Colonialism, Classification, and the Production of Caste
Caste and the Modern Nation: Incubus or Essence?
| Susan Bayly | Cambridge University Press | 2008
Examines nationalist debates in which caste was portrayed either as a destructive obstacle to unity or as an authentic foundation of Indian civilization.
Western “Orientalists” and the Colonial Perception of Caste
| Susan Bayly | Cambridge University Press | 2008
Explores how European Orientalists and Indian informants interpreted scripture, varna and social practice in producing colonial theories of caste.
Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge
| Bernard S. Cohn | Princeton University Press | 1996
Shows how surveys, law, ethnography, museums and censuses transformed caste and other social identities into objects of colonial administration.
The Castes of Mind and the Colonial Order
| Bernard S. Cohn | Journal of Asian Studies | February 1987
Shows how census categories and enumerative practices objectified caste and encouraged communities to seek official recognition and higher rank.
The Command of Language and the Language of Command
| Bernard S. Cohn | Subaltern Studies | 1985
Explains how colonial mastery of languages and social categories enabled British officials to classify and govern Indian communities.
Enumerating Communities: The Colonial Census in India
| N. Gerald Barrier | Manohar Publishers | 1981
Examines how colonial censuses categorized religion, caste, tribe, language and race and thereby influenced modern identity politics.
The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India
| R. V. Russell and Rai Bahadur Hira Lal | Macmillan | 1916
Documents the colonial classification of communities in central India and the state’s attempt to connect caste with race, occupation and custom.
The Castes and Tribes of Southern India
| Edgar Thurston and K. Rangachari | Government Press | 1909
Catalogues South Indian castes and tribes through colonial ethnography, recording occupations, rituals and racialized assumptions.
People of India
| Herbert Hope Risley | Thacker, Spink and Company | 1908
Illustrates the colonial effort to rank Indian castes through racial anthropology, physical measurement, occupation and assumptions about social precedence.
The Tribes and Castes of Bengal
| Herbert Hope Risley | Bengal Secretariat Press | 1891
Provides a major colonial classification of Bengali communities that helped convert local and contested identities into administrative categories.
Nationalism, Hindutva, and Caste Politics
“Elections Can Wait!”: The Politics of Constructing a Hindu Atmosphere in Kerala
| Dinu Paleri | Modern Asian Studies | 2023
Examines Hindu nationalist organizations that seek to create a unified Hindu public culture across caste divisions through religious and civic activities.
Why Caste Matters
| Suhas Palshikar | Economic and Political Weekly | August 10, 2019
Rejects claims that caste has disappeared from electoral politics and explains its continuing role in representation, coalition formation and social power.
Hindu Nationalism: A Reader
| Christophe Jaffrelot | Princeton University Press | 2007
Collects foundational texts showing how Hindu nationalism has addressed caste hierarchy, religious unity, minority citizenship and national identity.
The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India
| Thomas Blom Hansen | Princeton University Press | 1999
Studies Hindu nationalism as a mass political movement shaped by caste anxieties, urban change, religious symbolism and democratic competition.
The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics
| Christophe Jaffrelot | Hurst Publishers | 1996
Traces the growth of Hindu nationalist organizations and their attempts to reconcile upper-caste leadership with mass mobilization among lower castes.
Caste in Class Politics
| G. K. Lieten | Economic and Political Weekly | 1979
Argues that class movements cannot ignore caste because hereditary status and social exclusion shape workers’ political consciousness and organization.
Castes, Classes and Parties in Modern Political Development
| E. M. S. Namboodiripad | Social Scientist | 1977
Analyzes the relationship among caste communities, class organization and party politics, particularly in Kerala.
Caste, Class and Dominance in Modern Tamil Nadu
| David Washbrook | Modern Asian Studies | 1973
Examines how caste groups, landed elites and political parties interacted in the transformation of Tamil society.
We, or Our Nationhood Defined
| M. S. Golwalkar | Bharat Publications | 1939
Presents an exclusionary conception of Hindu nationhood whose treatment of unity raises questions about caste hierarchy and minority citizenship.
Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu?
| V. D. Savarkar | Veer Savarkar Prakashan | 1923
Defines Hindu nationhood through common territory, culture and ancestry while largely subordinating internal caste differences to nationalist unity.
Democracy, Elections, and Political Representation
Cast(e)ing Votes: Is a Caste Lens Necessary to Understand Indian Elections?
| Economic and Political Weekly Engage | Economic and Political Weekly | 2019
Debates whether voting behavior can still be explained through caste or must be situated within changing economic, regional and ideological contexts.
Identity Politics Is Not the Evil It Is Made Out to Be
| Sudha Pai | Economic and Political Weekly Engage | 2019
Defends lower-caste political mobilization as a legitimate response to entrenched privilege rather than an inherently divisive form of identity politics.
Politics of the Poor: Negotiating Democracy in Contemporary India
| Indrajit Roy | Cambridge University Press | 2018
Examines how marginalized citizens use caste networks, protests, elections and welfare claims to negotiate with political institutions.
Ethnicity and Electoral Politics
| Amit Ahuja and Pradeep Chhibber | Oxford University Press | 2012
Examines how caste and ethnic identities influence party affiliation, candidate selection and voting in India.
Caste in Indian Politics
| Rajni Kothari | Orient BlackSwan | 2010
Explains how caste supplies networks for democratic mobilization while political competition alters the boundaries and internal organization of castes.
The Vernacularisation of Democracy: Politics, Caste and Religion in India
| Lucia Michelutti | Routledge | 2008
Shows how democratic ideas acquire local meanings through caste relationships, devotional practices and everyday political participation.
Caste and Democratic Politics in India
| Ghanshyam Shah | Anthem Press | 2004
Surveys caste movements, political parties, reservations and electoral strategies across India’s states and regions.
Why Ethnic Parties Succeed
| Kanchan Chandra | Cambridge University Press | 2004
Develops a theory of ethnic-party success using the Bahujan Samaj Party and caste-based political competition in Uttar Pradesh.
Democracy and Discontent: India’s Growing Crisis of Governability
| Atul Kohli | Cambridge University Press | 1990
Analyzes how caste, class and regional demands challenged centralized political institutions and transformed India’s party system.
Caste and the Decline of Political Homogeneity
| A. H. Somjee | American Political Science Review | March 1973
Explores how caste associations fragmented political loyalties and became institutions of representation in democratic India.
Reservations, Equality, and Constitutional Politics
The Caste Census and the Politics of Social Justice
| Economic and Political Weekly Editors | Economic and Political Weekly | June 10, 2023
Discusses demands for updated caste data as a basis for distributing reservations, welfare and political representation more equitably.
Reservation and the Return to Politics
| Satish Deshpande | Economic and Political Weekly | September 10, 2022
Examines how reservation controversies reveal continuing conflicts over caste privilege, equality and the meaning of merit.
Affirmative Action in India
| Ashwini Deshpande | Oxford Bibliographies | 2016
Provides a guide to scholarship on reservations in education, employment and politics and their effects on historically disadvantaged castes.
The Grammar of Caste: Economic Discrimination in Contemporary India
| Ashwini Deshpande | Oxford University Press | 2011
Uses economic research to explain how caste disparities persist through employment discrimination, unequal education and inherited resources.
Competing Inequalities: The Scheduled Tribes and the Reservations System in India
| André Béteille | Social Research | 1998
Examines conflicts generated when multiple disadvantaged groups compete for recognition and affirmative-action benefits.
Protective Discrimination Policy and Social Change
| P. S. Krishnan | Economic and Political Weekly | 1996
Evaluates reservation policies as instruments for altering historical inequalities in education, employment and political representation.
States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity
| Wendy Brown | Princeton University Press | 1995
Offers a theoretical framework for understanding how legal recognition of injured identities can both empower marginalized communities and institutionalize categories such as caste.
Reservation Policy and Anti-Reservation Stirrings
| Marc Galanter | Economic and Political Weekly | 1990
Analyzes political resistance to affirmative action and the legal principles used to justify compensatory discrimination.
Competing Equalities: Law and the Backward Classes in India
| Marc Galanter | University of California Press | 1984
Provides a comprehensive history of constitutional law, reservations and the classification of disadvantaged communities in independent India.
The Constitution and the Scheduled Castes
| S. K. Ghosh | Indian Journal of Political Science | 1966
Reviews constitutional safeguards intended to abolish untouchability and secure representation and opportunity for Scheduled Castes.
Caste, Education, Knowledge, and Meritocracy
Caste and Educational Inequality: Evidence from India
| S. Madheswaran and Paul Attewell | Economics of Education Review | 2020
Examines caste gaps in educational access and attainment and considers how family background and discrimination reproduce inequality.
Making Merit: The Indian Institutes of Technology and the Social Life of Caste
| Ajantha Subramanian | Harvard University Press | 2019
Shows how elite technical education converts inherited caste privilege into apparently casteless achievement and professional authority.
The Death of Merit
| Ajantha Subramanian | Economic and Political Weekly | February 13, 2016
Critiques the claim that upper-caste educational success reflects neutral merit rather than accumulated social, cultural and economic advantage.
Caste in Campus: Dalit Students and Institutional Discrimination
| N. Sukumar | Economic and Political Weekly | February 6, 2016
Discusses the isolation, prejudice and institutional barriers experienced by Dalit students in universities and professional institutions.
Caste, Knowledge and Power: Ways of Transforming Society
| S. S. Jodhka | Orient BlackSwan | 2014
Examines how academic knowledge about caste can reproduce elite perspectives or contribute to democratic transformation.
Dalit Literatures in India
| Toral Jatin Gajarawala | Routledge | 2013
Studies how Dalit writers challenge dominant literary traditions and make caste oppression visible through autobiography, fiction and poetry.
Dalit Students in Higher Education
| Sukhadeo Thorat and Paul Attewell | Economic and Political Weekly | October 11, 2008
Documents discrimination against Dalit students and analyzes the institutional mechanisms that affect admission, evaluation and campus life.
Caste and Educational Development
| Geetha B. Nambissan | Economic and Political Weekly | September 1, 2007
Examines unequal access to schooling, discrimination within classrooms and the importance of education in lower-caste struggles for mobility.
Merit, Caste and Discrimination in Indian Higher Education
| Satish Deshpande | Economic and Political Weekly | 2006
Challenges narratives portraying reservations as violations of merit by showing how conventional definitions conceal caste privilege.
Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature
| Sharankumar Limbale | Orient BlackSwan | 2004
Develops a theory of Dalit literature grounded in experiences of caste violence, humiliation, resistance and collective emancipation.
Land, Labor, Capital, and Economic Power
Indian Democracy Has Failed to Advance Redistributive Reforms for Marginalized Groups
| Barbara Harriss-White | Economic and Political Weekly Engage | April 6, 2019
Argues that caste oppression and class exploitation must be addressed together through land reform, labor rights and redistribution.
Caste, Gender and Wage Discrimination in Urban India
| Ashwini Deshpande, Deepti Goel and Shantanu Khanna | World Development | 2015
Measures wage differences associated with caste and gender and evaluates how education and occupational segregation contribute to disparities.
Dalit Capital: State, Markets and Civil Society in Urban India
| Aseem Prakash | Routledge | 2015
Investigates Dalit entrepreneurship and asks whether market participation can provide autonomy from caste-based economic dependence.
Dalit Households in Village Economies
| V. K. Ramachandran | Economic and Political Weekly | July 31, 2010
Examines landlessness, wages, debt and labor dependence among Dalit households in rural India.
Why Untouchability? Untouchability and the Rural Economy
| Amit Thorat | Economic and Political Weekly | 2002
Connects practices of untouchability with material interests, labor control and the maintenance of rural economic hierarchy.
Capitalism and the Transformation of Agrarian Caste Relations
| Utsa Patnaik | Economic and Political Weekly | 1986
Examines how capitalist agriculture changes but does not necessarily eliminate caste-based labor exploitation and land inequality.
Land, Caste and Politics in Indian States
| Pranab Bardhan | Cambridge University Press | 1984
Explains how caste-based landed elites and political coalitions constrained redistributive land reform.
Caste, Class and Agrarian Relations
| Gail Omvedt | Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars | 1982
Analyzes the relationship between caste domination, landownership, agricultural labor and class struggle in rural India.
Caste and the Economic Frontier
| Frederick G. Bailey | Manchester University Press | 1957
Studies how economic change and competition reshape caste rank and political alliances in eastern India.
Caste and Labour: The Political Economy of Discrimination
| International Labour Organization | International Labour Organization | n.d.
Reviews the ways inherited status affects occupational mobility, wages, workplace treatment and access to secure employment.
Gender, Marriage, Sexuality, and Caste Reproduction
Inter-caste Marriage and the Reproduction of Caste
| Ravinder Kaur | Economic and Political Weekly | July 25, 2020
Examines why intercaste marriages remain uncommon and how families, communities and violence enforce caste endogamy.
Caste and Gender in Contemporary India
| Subhadra Mitra Channa and Joan P. Mencher | Routledge | 2019
Explores how women’s labor, sexuality, marriage and family roles contribute to the reproduction of caste boundaries.
Gendering Caste: Through a Feminist Lens
| Uma Chakravarti | SAGE Publications | 2018
Explains how caste and patriarchy reinforce each other through endogamy, control of sexuality, division of labor and religious ideology.
Why Did the Mahad Satyagraha Burn the Manusmriti?
| Forward Press | Forward Press | December 25, 2017
Explains Ambedkar’s public rejection of the Manusmriti as a symbolic attack on religious rules supporting caste and patriarchal subordination.
Honour, Caste and Women’s Rights
| Prem Chowdhry | Economic and Political Weekly | June 8, 2013
Connects honor-based violence with caste councils, landownership, patriarchal authority and opposition to self-chosen marriages.
Against the Madness of Manu
| Sharmila Rege | Navayana | 2013
Brings together Ambedkar’s writings on caste and gender and emphasizes the centrality of women’s oppression to caste reproduction.
Dalit Women: The Gender Effects of Caste Discrimination
Documents violence, economic exploitation and institutional discrimination experienced specifically by Dalit women.
Caste and Gender: The Violence Against Women in India
| Mary E. John | Economic and Political Weekly | 1996
Examines how caste status and patriarchal power influence women’s exposure to violence and access to justice.
Political Economy of Production and Reproduction: Caste, Custom and Community in North India
| Prem Chowdhry | Oxford University Press | 1994
Shows how control over marriage and women’s sexuality sustains caste purity, property relations and agrarian power.
Conceptualising Brahmanical Patriarchy in Early India
| Uma Chakravarti | Economic and Political Weekly | April 3, 1993
Develops the concept of Brahmanical patriarchy to describe the joint regulation of caste hierarchy, women’s sexuality and property.
Dalit Movements, Culture, and Political Assertion
Dalit Politics in Contemporary India
| Surinder Kumar | Routledge | 2018
Examines Dalit parties, social movements, leadership and the changing relationship between electoral representation and social transformation.
Republic of Caste: Thinking Equality in the Time of Neoliberal Hindutva
| Anand Teltumbde | Navayana | 2018
Argues that caste has been reinvigorated by neoliberal inequality, electoral calculation and Hindu nationalist politics.
Dalit Assertion
| Anand Teltumbde | Economic and Political Weekly | February 27, 2016
Discusses new forms of Dalit protest and asks whether symbolic recognition has translated into structural changes in land, employment and political power.
Dalit Studies
| Ramnarayan S. Rawat and K. Satyanarayana | Duke University Press | 2016
Presents interdisciplinary scholarship that places Dalit intellectual traditions, histories and political struggles at the center of caste studies.
Dalits in Modern India: Vision and Values
| S. M. Michael | SAGE Publications | 2007
Collects research on Dalit religion, identity, politics, literature, education and struggles for equality.
Dalit Politics and the Search for Political Power
| Sudha Pai | Cambridge University Press | 2002
Studies the rise of the Bahujan Samaj Party and the opportunities and limitations of caste-based electoral empowerment.
Dalit Visions: The Anti-Caste Movement and the Construction of an Indian Identity
| Gail Omvedt | Orient Longman | 1995
Interprets anti-caste movements as alternative democratic traditions challenging Brahmanical definitions of Indian culture and nationhood.
From Untouchable to Dalit: Essays on the Ambedkar Movement
| Eleanor Zelliot | Manohar Publishers | 1992
Traces the emergence of Dalit identity through Ambedkarite politics, Buddhist conversion, literature and collective organization.
Untouchable: An Indian Life History
| James M. Freeman | Stanford University Press | 1979
Uses one person’s life story to illustrate the everyday operation of untouchability, labor dependence and efforts at social mobility.
The Chamars
| George W. Briggs | Oxford University Press | 1920
Provides an early ethnographic account of a major Dalit community, useful for examining colonial attitudes toward caste, occupation and religious identity.
