The NLS Public Lecture Series | The Unearned Privileges of Meritorious Castes

This week’s public lecture will be delivered by Dr. Suraj Yengde on the topic “The Unearned Privileges of Meritorious Castes.” The lecture will take place on December 9, 2022 at 4 PM in the Old Academic Block.

About the Speaker

Dr. Suraj Yengde is a DPhil candidate at the Faculty of History at Oxford University. Dr. Yengde is founder and curator of Dalit Film Festival and co-founder of Equity in Policy Education initiative started at Harvard.

He is also the author of the bestseller, Caste Matters (2019) and a co-editor of the award-winning anthology with Dr. Anand Teltumbde, The Radical in Ambedkar: Critical Reflections (2018). Caste Matters was a bestseller and listed as the “Best Non-fiction Book of the Decade” by The Hindu. The book’s Malayalam translation won the Kerala state award for translation. The book has been translated into three languages, with four more in progress. He has written over a hundred articles in academic and non-academic journals. His articles have appeared in Ethnic & Racial Studies, Diaspora Studies, Caravan, Seminar, Economic & Political Weekly, among others. He is currently working on two manuscripts. The first, Caste, A History of the World, is under contract with Allen Lane and the second, Biography of Dr B R Ambedkar under contract with Juggernaut.

Abstract

This talk will interrogate the personal-family centered question of caste and the privileges that remain unconcerned with the dominant castes claiming castelessness. How caste, culture, and capital interact in an intimate sense in the Brahminical fold will also be analyzed in the lecture.