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The socio-anthropological and historical writings on caste identify it as a quintessential South Asian phenomenon exclusive to the Hindu religion. While acknowledging the roots of caste, this paper examines caste through a long historical lens and argues that caste is one of the oldest forms of inequality and hierarchy in human history. Caste as a social organization and system of exploitation continued to attract the attention of Europeans, from ancient Greek historian Megasthenes to modern European encounters in the fifteenth century. This talk tracks the historical genealogies of castes and investigates the intersections of caste and race in shaping the modern world, especially in the formation of racial hierarchies. It argues that caste acted as a template for race in reimagining the racial system of oppression and exploitation in the modern world.

 

 

Chinnaiah Jangam is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He is a visiting scholar at the Department of History, University of Pennsylvania, U.S.A. He writes on the social and intellectual history of Dalits and the anti-caste movements in modern South Asia. His first book, Dalits and the Making of Modern India, was published by Oxford University Press in 2017. It presents the critical role of Dalits in the imagination and making of modern India. His translation of the seminal Dalit text Gabbilam (Bat) by Gurram Jashuva, father of Dalit literature in Telugu, was published as Gabbilam (Bat): A Dalit Epic by Yoda Press in 2022 and was the winner of the Association for Asian Studies A. K Ramanujan Prize for Translation, 2024. He is finishing two book manuscripts on the long durée history of caste in South Asia and a memoir based on his mother, Jogini Chinnubai. He co-founded the South Asia Dalit Adivasi Network (SADAN) in Canada.