Caste and Tech with Murali Shanmugavelan and Sareeta Amrute

The Diasporic Hindu Right with Savera

This episode features a conversation with Prachi and Ram, organizers with Savera, a multiracial, interfaith, anti-caste coalition of Indian Americans and partners standing together in the fight against the rise of the transnational far right. After laying out Hindu supremacy as an ideology, we considered the different phases of consolidation of the Hindu right in the United States from its late 20th century orientation around homeland politics to its 21st century effort to forge a Hindu American identity, first through an alignment with U.S. civil rights organizations and then through a realignment with white supremacist forces. We delved more deeply into the role of caste within this formation, in particular the longstanding efforts of the Hindu right in both India and the U.S. to forge Hindu unity by opposing anticaste politics. This took us to a discussion of the Hindu right’s embrace of the pro-Israel lobby’s tactics, especially its weaponization of Hinduphobia as an echo of the weaponization of antisemitism, to battle criticisms of the Modi government in India, and the need to distinguish this from the real rise in both anti-Hindu and antisemitic sentiment. We ended with Savera’s efforts to forge a broad-based antiracist, left majority as a counterweight to the multiracial far right. Read the transcript [https://cdn.craft.cloud/44c3b6c3-3307-4a13-a091-f99416660f91/assets/TCP-Episode-10-transcript.docx#asset:458781@1:url] Guests Prachi Patankar is a writer and activist based in New York. Her speaking and organizing is grounded in feminist, anti-caste, and solidarity commitments. Her writing has appeared in outlets including The Guardian, Indian Express, Al Jazeera, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and Jacobin. She has been interviewed in media including Democracy Now, Jewish Currents, and National Public Radio. Ram is an organizer with the Savera coalition. References Savera, “The Global VHP’s Trail of Violence [https://www.wearesavera.org/resources/reports/],” January 2024. Savera, “Cut From the Same Cloth: the VHP-A’s Ties To Its Indian Counterpart [https://www.wearesavera.org/resources/reports/],” April 2024. Savera and Political Research Associates, “HAF Way to Supremacy: How the Hindu American Foundation Rebrands Bigotry As Minority Rights [https://www.wearesavera.org/resources/reports/],” October 2024. Jyotiba Phule: an anti-caste social reformer and writer from Maharashtra. Satyashodhak Sangh: a social reform society founded by Jyotiba Phule in Pune, Maharashtra in 1873 that addressed caste and gender injustices. Golwalkar: M.S. Golwalkar was the second supreme leader of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing paramilitary organization that advanced the ideology of Hindu supremacy and mobilized around the transformation of India into a Hindu nation. Pracharak: refers to a full-time organizer of the RSS. Houston 2019: “Howdy Modi” was an event organized by the Texas India Forum to welcome Narendra Modi to Houston and featured a joint address by Modi and Donald Trump. Ahmedabad 2020: designed as a reciprocal counterpart to Howdy Modi, “Namaste Trump” was an event organized to celebrate Donald Trump’s official state visit to India and hosted by Narendra Modi in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Article 370: article of the Indian Constitution that granted a special autonomous status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir. This status was abrogated by the Modi government in 2019. CAA/NRC: the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) are policies introduced by the Modi government. The 2019 CAA fast-tracks the naturalization of populations identified as victims of persecution by Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan and explicitly excludes the eligibility of Muslims. The 2019 NRC aims to create an official record of legal citizens of India. Critics and human rights organizations argue that the policies together discriminate against Muslims. If a nationwide NRC is implemented, individuals who lack the required documentation to prove their citizenship could be excluded from the final registry. Because the CAA allows non-Muslims to claim citizenship if they fall through the cracks, Muslims left off the NRC list would face disproportionate risks of statelessness, detention, or deportation. Edward Blum: a conservative legal strategist and the president of the American Alliance for Equal Rights and Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), an organization that fought to overturn affirmative action on the grounds that it constitutes "reverse discrimination" against white and Asian applicants. Dan HoSang [https://americanstudies.yale.edu/people/daniel-hosang]: professor of American Studies at Yale University. “Violent Majorities: Indian and Israeli Ethnonationalism,” Recall this Book/New Books Network, Episodes 118 [https://recallthisbook.org/2023/12/07/118-violent-majorities-indian-and-israeli-ethnonationalism-episode-1-balmurli-natrajan-with-lori-allen-and-ajantha-subramanian/], 119 [https://recallthisbook.org/2023/12/14/119-violent-majorities-indian-and-israeli-ethnonationalism-episode-2-natasha-roth-rowland-with-lori-ajantha/], 120 [https://recallthisbook.org/2024/01/04/120-violent-majorities-roundup-ajantha-lori-jp/], 143 [https://recallthisbook.org/2025/02/06/143-violent-majorities-2-1-peter-beinart-on-long-distance-israeli-ethnonationalism-la-as/], 144 [https://recallthisbook.org/2025/02/20/144-violent-majorities-2-2-subir-sinha-on-hindutva-as-long-distance-ethnonationalism/], 145 [https://recallthisbook.org/2025/03/06/145-violent-majorities-2-3-long-distance-ethnonationalism-roundup-la-as-jp/]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Dalit Feminism with Thenmozhi Soundararajan

This episode features a conversation with Thenmozhi Soundararajan, founder Equality Labs and author of The Trauma of Caste. We discussed her own coming to consciousness of caste as the child of Dalit parents who were “passing” and how her work as an organizer has involved sustained engagement with anticaste thought, Black feminism, and Indigenous epistemologies. The conversation then turned to the practice of solidarity as the building of meaningful and not just transactional relationships and the importance of recognizing the potential of political alignments that may be foreclosed at one moment, only to be given new life in another. Finally, we addressed the need, in our current moment of dying empires and failing democracies, to both work with and beyond the law in order to open new horizons of political imagination and practice. Guest bio Thenmozhi Soundararajan [https://dalitdiva.com/] is founder of the Dalit feminist organization, Equality Labs, and author of The Trauma of Caste. References Thenmozhi Soundararajan, The Trauma of Caste [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/710528/the-trauma-of-caste-by-thenmozhi-soundararajan/] Shramanic faiths: ancient Indian traditions focusing on asceticism, self-reliance, and liberation from the cycle of rebirth that rejected the authority of the Vedas and Brahmanical authority. Ravidassia: religion based on the teachings of Guru Ravidas, a 14th century Indian saint. It was considered a sect within Sikhism until 2009 when it was proclaimed a distinct religion. Bhopal gas tragedy: On 3 December 1984, a leak at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, resulted in what is considered the world’s worst industrial disaster. Reservation: India’s system of caste-based affirmative action. Linda Burnham [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Burnham]: activist and writer who co-founded the Women of Color Resource Center and was a leader in the Third World Women’s Alliance. Combahee River Collective [https://blackpast.org/african-american-history/combahee-river-collective-statement-1977/]: pioneering Black lesbian feminist organization formed in Boston in 1974. Gloria Anzaldúa [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Anzald%C3%BAa]: American philosopher and scholar of Chicana feminism, cultural theory, and queer theory Iyothee Thass: Tamil anti-caste thinker and writer who converted to Buddhism and called upon members of his own Paraiyar caste to do the same. Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule: anti-caste social reformers and pioneers of women’s education from Maharashtra. Ruth King [https://ruthking.net/about-ruth-king/]: Founder of the Mindful of Race Institute Rhonda Magee [https://rhondavmagee.com/]: Professor Emerita at University of San Francisco and teacher of mindfulness Resmaa Menakem [https://resmaa.com/]: psychotherapist and creator of Somatic Abolitionism. Eduardo Duran [https://www.psychotherapy.net/perspectives/articles/eduardo-duran-on-psychotherapy-with-native-americans/]: Native American clinical psychologist, scholar, teacher and healer Collective Future Fund [https://www.collectivefuturefund.org/]: a philanthropic intermediary fund that works with movements mobilizing toward a collective future free from violence. Kolar Gold Fields: former gold mining region in Karnataka, India Equality Labs [https://www.equalitylabs.org/]: a South Asian Dalit civil rights organization. BAPS: The Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Akshardham in Robbinsville, New Jersey is the largest modern Hindu temple outside India. It is the subject of a lawsuit [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/02/new-jersey-hindu-temple-lung-disease] filed by Dalit workers from India accusing the temple of human trafficking and labor exploitation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Caste and Urbanization with Malini Ranganathan and Juned Shaikh

This episode features a conversation with urban geographer, Malini Ranganathan, and historian, Juned Shaikh, on the centrality of caste to urbanization in India. Through a focus on 20th century Bombay (now Mumbai) and 21st century Bangalore (now Bengaluru), we explored the symbiotic relationship between caste and capitalism manifest in the political economy of urbanization from the heyday of industrial capitalism to contemporary neoliberalism. We also delved into the continuities between rural and urban caste relations as seen, for instance, in caste networks that remain key to the movement of capital from rural land to real estate. In addition to the centrality of caste in shaping urbanization, we also considered changes to caste wrought by its role within urban processes. The final part of the episode shifted to a discussion of oppositional mobilization among the urban poor, from the upsurge of literary and political activity among Dalits in Bombay and Bangalore in the 1950s-70s to the ongoing pushback against the threat of dispossession and displacement by real estate and finance capital. Guest bios Malini Ranganathan [https://www.american.edu/sis/faculty/malini.cfm], Associate Professor, School of International Service, American University Juned Shaikh [https://campusdirectory.ucsc.edu/cd_detail?uid=jmshaikh], Associate Professor of History, University of California, Santa Cruz References Khumbarwada: a historic potters’ colony now located within Dharavi, Mumbai (Bombay). OBC: shorthand for Other Backward Classes, a Government of India classification for socially and educationally disadvantaged castes who are beneficiaries of affirmative action. OBCs are distinct from and considered to be relatively more advantaged than the Scheduled Castes, or Dalits, and Scheduled Tribes, or Adivasis, who also benefit from affirmative action. SC/ST: shorthand for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (see above). Malini Ranganathan, David Pike, and Sapna Doshi, Corruption Plots: Stories, Ethics, and Publics of the Late Capitalist City [https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501768750/corruption-plots/#bookTabs=1] (2024) Malini Ranganathan, “Towards a Political Ecology of Caste and the City [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10630732.2021.2007203?src=]” (2022) Malini Ranganathan, “Caste, racialization and the making of environmental unfreedoms in urban India [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870.2021.1933121]” (2022) Juned Shaikh, Outcaste Bombay: City Making and the Politics of the Poor  [https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295748504/outcaste-bombay/](2021) Juned Shaikh, “Imaging Caste [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00856401.2014.936579]: Photography, the Housing Question, and the Making of Sociology in Colonial Bombay, 1900-1939 (2014) Frank Conlon, A Caste in a Changing World: The Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmans, 1700-1935 (1977) Nikhil Rao, House, but No Garden: Apartment Living in Bombay’s Suburbs, 1898-1964 [https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816678136/house-but-no-garden/] (2012) C. J. Fuller and Haripriya Narasimhan, Tamil Brahmans: The Making of a Middle-Class Caste [https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo18241312.html] (2014) Ajantha Subramanian, The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India [https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674987883] (2019) K. Balagopal, Probings in the Political Economy of Agrarian Classes and Conflicts [https://balagopal.org/probings-in-the-political-economy-of-agrarian-classes-and-conflicts/] (2020) Sushmita Pati, Properties of Rent: Community, Capital, and Politics in Globalizing Delhi [https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/properties-of-rent/983A71CF220584202A8DC5212BD2029E], Cambridge University Press (2022). Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in India: Business Strategies and the Working Classes in Bombay, 1900-1940 [https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/origins-of-industrial-capitalism-in-india/3C4F764E812B4F12A98D649C24097150] (1994) Priyanka Srivastava, The Well-Being of the Labor Force in Colonial Bombay: Discourses and Practices [https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-66164-3] (2018) Dana Kornberg, “From Balmikis to Bengalis [https://www.epw.in/journal/2019/47/review-urban-affairs/balmikis-bengalis.html]: The 'Casteification' of Muslims in Delhi's Informal Garbage Economy,” Economic and Political Weekly (2019) Amita Baviskar, Uncivil City: Ecology,. Equity, and the Commons in Delhi [https://books.google.com/books/about/Uncivil_City.html?id=_ByAzQEACAAJ] (2020) Mukul Sharma, Dalit Ecologies: Caste and Environmental Justice [https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/dalit-ecologies/C4FFCB4F9D50301B22F851231B4C51AD] (2024) Liza Weinstein, The Durable Slum: Dharavi and the Right to Stay Put in Globalizing Mumbai [https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781452941127/the-durable-slum/] (2014) Siddalingaiah, A Word With You, World: The Autobiography of a Poet [https://navayana.org/products/a-word-with-you-world/?v=0b3b97fa6688] (2013) Dharavi: a residential area in Mumbai (Bombay) considered one of the world’s largest slums. Chico Mendes: a Brazilian rubber tapper, trade union leader, and environmentalist who fought to preserve the Amazon rainforest and advocated for the human rights of Brazilian peasants and Indigenous people. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Caste and Race: Ambedkar and King with the Ambedkar King Study Circle

This episode features S. Karthikeyan and S. Subbulakshmi, the Convenor and Secretary of the Ambedkar King Study Circle, an anti-caste organization based in Silicon Valley. Our conversation began with a discussion of the choice of B. R. Ambedkar and Martin Luther King Jr. as the titular heads of the organization, then moved on to a conversation about its membership-based structure, the anti-caste struggles in which the AKSC has participated, and the significance of California in general, and the Silicon Valley in particular, as an epicenter of caste consolidation and anti-caste mobilization. Guests: S. Karthikeyan is an IT professional based in Silicon Valley and regular contributor to public outlets such as The Wire. S. Subbulakshmi is a postdoctoral fellow in cognitive neuroscience and has been a member of AKSC since 2024.  Mentioned in the episode: B. R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste [https://www.versobooks.com/products/75-annihilation-of-caste?srsltid=AfmBOoo5DFcHtNLc91r1DLgDQBtziq_bG1mkNTQO6JopkeW9TVCPCJz4] Martin Luther King Jr., “Where Do We Go from Here?” [https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/where-do-we-go-here] Savera [https://www.wearesavera.org/] is a multiracial, interfaith, anticaste coalition of organizations and activists. S. Karthikeyan, “The Hindu Supremacist Disinformation Campaign Against the Caste Discrimination Litigation in US” [https://thewire.in/caste/the-hindu-supremacist-disinformation-campaign-against-the-caste-discrimination-litigation-in-us] S. Karthikeyan, “How Protections Against Caste Discrimination Are Being Opposed in the US” [https://thewire.in/caste/caste-discrimination-hindu-american-foundation-us] S. Karthikeyan, “Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing [https://caravanmagazine.in/caste/cisco-haf-hindu-american-dalit-diaspora]” Ajantha Subramanian, The Caste of Merit [https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674987883] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Transnational Solidarities with Nico Slate

My conversation with Nico Slate began with him reflecting on his own path into the study of historical connections between South Asia and the United States. We then moved to a wide-ranging discussion covering the importance of the transnational scale for an understanding of antiracist and anticaste politics, the repurposing of ‘race’ and ‘caste’ through creative acts of transnational translation, the interplay between the race-colony and race-caste analogies in solidaristic politics across the late 19th and 20th centuries, and the conjunctural factors that have shaped the rise and fall of race-caste scholarship. Guest bio: Nico Slate [https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/history/people/faculty/slate.html], Professor of History. Carnegie Mellon University. References: Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamaladevi_Chattopadhyay]: Indian social reformer, nationalist, feminist, and socialist who promoted handicrafts, handlooms, and theatre. W.E.B. Du Bois [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._E._B._Du_Bois]: American sociologist, historian, and Pan-Africanist who authored some of the most consequential works on the global color line and racial capitalism. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi]: Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political thinker who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India's independence from British rule. Daniel Immerwahr, “Caste or Colony? Indianizing Race in the United States” (2007) Oliver Cox [https://globalsocialtheory.org/thinkers/oliver-cromwell-cox/]: Trinidadian sociologist of race relations. B.R. Ambedkar [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._R._Ambedkar]: Indian jurist and anticaste thinker who chaired the committee that drafted the Indian Constitution and served as the independent India’s first Minister of Law. Lala Lajpat Rai [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lala_Lajpat_Rai]: Indian revolutionary, politician, and author. Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/653196/caste-by-isabel-wilkerson/] (2020) W.E.B. Du Bois, Dark Princess [https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/D/Dark-Princess] (1928). Katherine Mayo, Mother India [https://press.umich.edu/Books/M/Mother-India2] (1927). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]