Critical Philosophy of Caste and Race (CPCR3) Conference
PROGRAMME SCHEDULE
DAY 1 - Friday, 16/01/2026
All Sessions in SENATE HALL (First floor, Main Building)
REGISTRATIONS: 9:15 AM to 9:45 AM
9:45 AM to 10:00 AM
Introduction by Divya Dwivedi, IIT Delhi
Welcome Note by Abhijeet Banerji, HOD, HSS, IIT Delhi
10:00 AM to 11:00 AM
Inauguration of CPCR3 - Prof. Sukhdeo Thorat
KEYNOTE LECTURE 1: RUTH MANORAMA
“At the Crossroads of Caste, Race, and Gender: Dalit Women at the Durban Conference”
TEA/COFFEE: 11:00 AM to 11:30 AM
SESSION 1 - 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM
Raj Kumar, Department of English, University of Delhi (Chair)
Martin Macwan: “Durban: An important milestone but not the end stone”
Asang Wankhede, University of Oxford: “The contemporary Durban: the legal untenability of non-recognition of caste discrimination as a form of racial discrimination”
Divya Dwivedi, IIT Delhi: “Remnants of Durban – Towards a Critical Philosophy of Caste and Race”
LUNCH: 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM
(Senate Hall Foyer, first floor, Main Building)
2:00 PM to 3:00 PM
KEYNOTE LECTURE 2: SHAILAJA PAIK
(Charles Phelps Taft Distinguished Research Professor of History,
University of Cincinnati)
“Caste, Desire, and Danger: Pavalabai Bhalerao’s Revolt”
Sowjanya Tamalapakula, Woxsen University (Chair)
TEA/COFFEE: 3:00 PM to 3:30 PM
SESSION 2 - 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM
Reetika Khera, IIT Delhi (Chair)
Beena J. Pallical, General Secretary, National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR)-DAAA-NDMJ: “Role of Dalit Civil Society Organisations in Global Human Rights”
Prashant Kumar, Research Scholar, IIT Delhi: “Revisiting the Beginnings: Ad Dharm, Memory, and Community in Colonial Punjab”
Florence Laldinpuii, Research Scholar, IIT Delhi: “Necropolitics and its Racial Dimensions: Death of the Racialised 'Other'”
5:00 PM onwards
BOOK LAUNCH - Burnt: Beyond Return (2025)
by Basudev Sunani, trans. From Odia by Raj Kumar
Raj Kumar, Department of English, University of Delhi
Sumanyu Satpathy, former Professor, Department of English, University of Delhi
Mukesh Bairva, Department of English, PGDAV College, University of Delhi
Divya Dwivedi, IIT Delhi (Chair)
***
DAY 2 - Saturday, 17/01/2026
All Sessions in SENATE HALL
(First floor, Main Building)
REGISTRATIONS: 9:30 AM to 10:00 AM
10:00 AM to 11:00 AM
KEYNOTE LECTURE 3: PAUL DIVAKAR
(Global human rights advocate and Convenor of the Global Forum of Communities Discriminated on Work and Descent)
“Dalit Rights to Global CDWD: From Naming to Norms, From Norms to Justice”
Divya Dwivedi, IIT Delhi (Chair)
TEA/COFFEE: 11:00 AM to 11:30 AM
SESSION 3 - 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM
Beena J. Pallical, NCDHR (Chair)
Gogu Shyamala: “Caste Wounds and Global Discourses: Politicization and Theorization of Caste Violence in Post-Durban India”
Sowjanya Tamalapakula, Woxsen University: “Challenging Sacred Narratives: Prof. Vijaya Bharati’s Critique of Epics, Rituals, and Social Hierarchies”
Sreepati Ramudu: “Rethinking Dalit Movement and Dalit Politics”
LUNCH: 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM
(Foyer outside Committee Room, Fifth Floor, Main Building)
2:00 PM to 3:00 PM
KEYNOTE LECTURE 4: GAJENDRAN AYYATHURAI
(Historian and Anthropologist, Göttingen University)
“Towards Raceless and Casteless Humanism: Understanding the
Movements against Race-Caste Power”
Y. S. Alone, School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU (Chair)
TEA/COFFEE: 3:00 PM to 3:30 PM
SESSION 4 - 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM
Sreepati Ramudu (Chair)
Dag Erik Berg, Molde University College, Norway: “The Durban conference and its significance, then and now”
Y.S. Alone, School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU: “Normative, Caste, and Epistemic Quest”
Pratishtha Maurya, Research Scholar, IIT Delhi: “Ambedkar’s Inquiry of Religion: An Epistemic Incision into Caste”
5:00 PM onwards
BOOK LAUNCH - Chunduru Kathalu (2026) by Sowjanya Tamalapakula
Sowjanya Tamalapakula, Woxsen University
Paul Divakar (Discussant), Gogu Shyamala (Discussant)
Y. S. Alone, School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU (Chair)
DURBAN MEMORIES AND MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
By G. Sudhakar & Gorati Venkanna
Sowjanya Tamalapakula, Woxsen University (Chair and Translator)
***
DAY 3 - Sunday, 18/01/2026
All Sessions in SENATE HALL
(FILM SCREENING in LH316)
REGISTRATIONS: 9:30 AM to 10:00 AM
SESSION 5 - 9:30 AM to 11:30 AM
Gajendran Ayyathurai, Göttingen University (Chair)
Aarushi Punia, Independent Researcher: “What’s common between Dalits and Palestinians?”
Thenmozhi Soundararajan, Equality Labs: “25 Years of Racial and Caste Equity Impact of Durban on Dalit Americans”
Smita M. Patil, IGNOU: “Intensifying the Culture: Rethinking Race and Caste”
P. Sivakami, Writer: “The Intersectional Struggle: Decoding Caste and Gender in P. Sivakami’s Narratives”
TEA/COFFEE: 11:30 AM to 11:45 AM
11:45 AM to 1:00 PM
BOOK LAUNCH: Tamil Buddhism and brahminism in Modern
India: Deep Resistance against Caste (2025) by Gajendran Ayyathurai
Gajendran Ayyathurai, Göttingen University
Douglas Ober, Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Fort Lewis College
Gitanjali Surendran, Professor of History, O.P. Jindal Global University
Ajay S Sekher, Associate Professor of English, SSUS Kalady, Kerala
Divya Dwivedi, IIT Delhi (Chair)
LUNCH: 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM
(Foyer outside Committee Room, Fifth Floor, Main Building)
SESSION 6 - ROUND TABLE 1:45 PM to 3:15 PM
Paul Divakar, GFoD (Chair)
Abirami Jothee, All Indian Dalit Mahila Adhikar Manch
Naveen Gautam, Global Forum CDWD
Vinayaraj V.K., The Inclusivity Project
TEA/COFFEE: 3:30 PM to 3:45 PM
SESSION 7 - 3:30 PM to 5:30 PM
P. Sivakami, Writer (Chair)
Jaseemul Farhan, PhD Candidate, Jamia Millia Islamia: “Between Egalitarian Islam and Invisible Caste: Caste, Hierarchy, and Muslim Fishing Villages in Kerala”
Corinne Lennox, University of London: “From Durban to Geneva: Using global governance and transnational alliances to advocate against caste-based discrimination”
Ishan Anand, IIT Delhi: “Wealth Inequality Along Caste and Race Axes in India and the United States”
Shyam Kumar, PhD Candidate, Jamia Millia Islamia: “Reparative Justice and Quest for Dignity: A Case Study of Musahar in Postcolonial Bihar, India”
5:30 PM onwards
FILM SCREENING & DISCUSSION (in LH316, Lecture Hall Complex)
Gail and Bharat (2025) by Somnath Waghmare
BOOK LAUNCH - Buddhism in India: Challenging Brahmanism and Caste (new edition 2026, Navayana) by Gail Omvedt
Aarushi Punia, Independent Researcher (Chair)
Somnath Waghmare, Director
Raj Kumar, Dept. Of English, Delhi University
S. Anand, Editor Navayana Press
CONCEPT NOTE
This third edition of the annual Critical Philosophy of Caste and Race conference focuses on the histories and futures of the arduous and brilliant efforts of the oppressed groups, and aspires towards:
- comprehensive documentation, understanding and theorization of descent-based discrimination,
- increased ethical sensitivity to the harms it inflicts on large sections of society, and
- engaged advocacy for social equality in law, policy, and the institutional and social everyday life.
The conference brings together the participants of Durban-2001 with philosophers, social scientists and writers to discuss the past and present contributions to an egalitarian and sustainable world, to learn from and celebrating the Indian contributions to combatting social inequalities and social injustice, of which the most significant and impactful are the contributions from those social groups who have long suffered these social evils.
The long durée of graded inequality, enslaving inclusion, decimating exclusion, and inferiorizing subjectivation on the Indian subcontinent has been constantly ruptured by the refusals, resistances and revolts of the thinkers, social workers, and leaders of the oppressed (Omvedt 2011; Jogdand, 2023). To mention only a few of their many strands: the poetico-social efforts of the likes of Tukaram and Ravidas were followed by the scholarly and institution-building campaigns of Jotirao and Savitribai Phule, and Iyothee Thass. The academic and political contributions of B. R. Ambedkar, Ayyankali, Mangoo Ram, Periyar, Sahodaran Ayyippan, J. J. M. Nichols Roy, Longri Ao and many other visionaries built on these egalitarian legacies. They in turn paved the way for later advocacy and activism by Kanshi Ram, Dalit Panthers, the Rationalists, and were joined by the literary contagions of fictions and narratives of lived experience of Dalits, Adivasis, and indigenous writers of the Trans-Himalayas (Raj Kumar, 2010; Nongkynrih & Ngangom, 2009).
In the rich tapestry of these Indian contributions to combatting caste and racism, a special and hitherto overlooked place is occupied by the Dalit advocacy campaign against caste and untouchability-based discrimination at the 2001 World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) in Durban, South Africa. The Durban Conference is an inaugural moment whose impact is still unfolding. “Durban,” the name and the place, serves not only as a lighthouse but an effulgent chronotope or even a lieu de mémoire in being the memory of a gathering that still gathers us into the memories of racisms, the remaining responsibility to fight racism, and the memories of a future in which they will continue to be fought and in which they will be ended. Serious research on the meaning of Durban has begun and more is needed (Berg 2007, Natrajan & Greenough 2009; Visveswaran, 2010; Baber 2010; Waughray & Keane 2017; Dwivedi 2025).
REGISTRATION CLOSED
Organised by DIVYA DWIVEDI & SOWJANYA TAMALAPAKULA
Supported by Dept. of Humanities & Social Sciences, IIT Delhi