Caste in Contemporary India

Caste is a contested terrain in India’s society and polity. This book explores contemporary realities of caste in rural and urban India. It examines questions of untouchability, citizenship, social mobility, democratic politics, corporate hiring and Dalit activism. Using rich empirical evidence from the field across Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and other parts of north India, this volume presents the reasons for the persistence of caste in India from a new perspective. The book offers an original theoretical framework for comparative understandings of the entrenched social differences, discrimination, inequalities, stratification, and the modes and patterns of their reproduction.

This second edition, with a new Introduction, delves into why caste continues to matter and how caste-based divisions often tend to overlap with the emergent disparities of the new economy. A delicate balance of lived experience and hard facts, this persuasive work will serve as essential reading for students and teachers of sociology and social anthropology, social exclusion and discrimination studies, political science, development studies and public policy.

Surinder S. Jodhka is Professor of Sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University and Senior Affiliate Fellow at the Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi, India. His research interests include the dynamics of rural transformations and agrarian change; social inequalities — old and new — and their reproduction with a focus on the social life of caste and the varied modes of its articulation in contemporary India; and the political sociology of community identities. His recent publications include Contested Hierarchies, Persisting Influence: Caste and Power in 21^st Century India (ed. with James Manor, 2017); Inequality in Capitalist Societies (with Boike Rehbein and Jesse Souza, 2018); The Indian Middle Class: Oxford India Short Introductions (with Aseem Prakash, 2016); Interrogating India’s Modernity (2013); Caste: Oxford India Short Introductions (2012); Village Society (ed. 2012); Community and Identities: Contemporary Discourses on Culture and Politics in India (2001). He is the editor of the Routledge book series ‘Religion and Citizenship’. He is among the first recipients of the ICSSR-Amartya Sen Award for Distinguished Social Scientists for the year 2012.