Conference devoted to critical discussion of the special issue “Caste and Racism in India” of the journal Critical Philosophy of Race (Penn State Univ)
organized by Divya Dwivedi, Dickens Leonard M., and Yashpal Jogdand
In a first of sorts, the leading journal of anti-racist inquiry Critical Philosophy of Race (Penn State University Press) has dedicated a special issue to critical studies of caste. Published in April 2023 under the title “Caste and Racism in India”, this issue presents incisive articles on caste and on the productive comparisons between caste-ization and racialization, and the intertwined legacies of anti-racist and anti-caste thought. It also includes the first ever English translation of Umesh Bagade's landmark article “Subaltern Studies and the Transition in Indian History Writing” by Yashpal Jogdand and Vaishnavi Bagade.
These contributions deepen the interrogation of a long history of scholarship on caste, across disciplines, devoid of an anti-caste ethical imperative. They also mark a first in initiating the interrogation of philosophy’s simultaneous caste blindness and complicity in perpetuating the caste order. This special issue therefore also makes anti-caste thought a desideratum that must be introduced into the fields of Critical Race Theory and Critical Philosophy of Race.
REGISTRATION CLOSED.
Graphics by Rahee Punyashloka; Portrait of Gopal Guru by Sudeep
Programme
DAY 1 - THURSDAY, 7 March
REGISTRATIONS: 9h-10h
10h -11h30 - DOGRA HALL (1st floor, Main Building)
Welcome Address: Divya Dwivedi, IIT Delhi
KEYNOTE LECTURE: GOPAL GURU
(Former Chief Editor, Economic and Political Weekly; and Former Professor, JNU Delhi)
“The Shared Moral Universe of Dalits and Blacks”
Farhana Ibrahim, Head of Dept., HSS, IIT Delhi (Chair)
Dickens Leonard, IIT Delhi (Discussant)
TEA/COFFEE (Main Foyer, ground floor, Main Building)
All Sessions in SEMINAR HALL (Ground floor, Main Building)
SESSION 1: 11h45 to 13h
P. Thirumal, HCU Hyderabad (Chair)
Aarushi Punia, IIT Delhi: “The Necessity of Dalitude: Being Dalit in Urban and Academic Spaces in the Twenty-First Century in India”
Amit Thorat, JNU Delhi (Discussant)
LUNCH BREAK 13h-14h
SESSION 2: 14h-15h15
Purnima Singh, IIT Delhi (Chair)
Yashpal Jogdand, IIT Delhi: “Ground Down and Locked in a Paperweight: Toward a Critical Psychology of Caste-Based Humiliation”
Arvind Mishra, JNU Delhi (Discussant)
TEA/COFFEE
SESSION 3: 15h30 - 16h45
Milind Wakankar, IIT Delhi (Chair)
Kalyan Kumar Das, Presidency University: “Nietzsche contra Manu: Ambedkar’s Nietzsche Moment and the Politics of Dalit Rage”
Ankit Kawade, JNU Delhi (Discussant)
SESSION 4: 17h-18h30
Amit Thorat, JNU Delhi (Chair)
Ravikant Kisana, Woxsen Univ., Hyderabad: “Anand Teltumbde & Suraj Yengde (eds) The Radical in Ambedkar”
Sumeet Mhaskar, OP Jindal Univ, Sonepat (Discussant)
DAY 2 - FRIDAY, 8 March
All sessions in LH325 (3rd floor, Lecture Hall Complex Opp. Main Building)
SESSION 5: 9h30 -10h45
Sumeet Mhaskar OP Jindal Univ, Sonepat (Chair)
Dickens Leonard, IIT Delhi: “Sarithiram as Interpretative Pedagogy: Iyothee Thass’s Casteless Community and History”
P. Thirumal, HCU Hyderabad (Discussant)
TEA/COFFEE
SESSION 6: 11h–12h15
Yashpal Jogdand (Chair)
Divya Dwivedi, IIT Delhi: “The Evasive Racism of Caste—and the Homological Power of the ‘Aryan’ Doctrine”
Y. S. Alone, JNU Delhi (Discussant)
SESSION 7: 12h15 – 13h30
Harish Wankhede, JNU Delhi (Chair)
Sowjanya Tamalapakula, TISS Hyderabad: “Whatever Happened to Jogta and Jogtin?”: Subjugation of Dalits in Lower-Caste Religious Practices”
Smitha M. Patil, IGNOU Delhi (Discussant)
LUNCH BREAK 13h30–14h15
SESSION 8: 14h30 – 15h45
Madhulika Sonkar, IIT Delhi (Chair)
Khalid Anis Ansari, APU Bangalore: “Revisiting the Minority Imagination: An Inquiry into the Anticaste Pasmanda-Muslim Discourse in India”
Harish Wankhede, JNU Delhi (Discussant)
TEA/COFFEE
SESSION 9: 16h-18h ROUNDTABLE - LH325
Umesh Bagade, BAMU, Aurangabad
“Subaltern Studies and the Transition in Indian History Writing”
(Translated by Yashpal Jogdand and Vaishnavi Bagade)
Y S Alone, JNU Delhi (Chair)
Prabodhan Pol, Manipal Univ., &
Santosh Suradkar, Gondwana Univ., Gadchiroli (Discussants)
CLOSING REMARKS: Yashpal Jogdand, IIT Delhi
Graphics by Rahee Punyashloka; Portrait of Gopal Guru by Sudeep
