event
Carnegie India

The Transnational Dimensions of Caste: India and the U.S.

Wed. November 25th, 2020
Zoom Webinar

Recent cases of caste-based discrimination prevalent in large American multinationals have shed light on ways in which the oppressive caste system operates within the American Indian diaspora. How does caste travel from India to the U.S.? What are the ways in which caste-based discrimination takes place amongst the Indian diaspora? How have labor practices, such as recruiting candidates from a small cohort of top schools, shaped the Indian technical workforce's demographics abroad? The session will also examine the links between caste and race in the United States.

Join us for the eight Anahita Speaker Series session of 2020, as Ajantha Subramanian, professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies at Harvard University, draws on her expertise to expand on the transnational dimensions of caste. The discussion will be moderated by Ananya Kumar.

To submit a question for the event, please email carnegieindia@ceip.org. Participants may also submit their questions through the Q&A box in the Zoom webinar or the comments section on our YouTube livestream.

Domestic PoliticsForeign PolicyUnited StatesSouth AsiaIndia
Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
event speakers

Ajantha Subramanian

Ajantha Subramanian is professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies at Harvard University. Her first book, Shorelines: Space and Rights in South India (Stanford University Press, 2009; Yoda Press, 2013), chronicles the struggles for resource rights by Catholic fishers on India’s southwestern coast, with a focus on how they have used spatial imaginaries and practices to constitute themselves as political subjects. Her second book, The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India (Harvard University Press, 2019), analyzes meritocracy as a terrain of caste struggle in India and its implications for democratic transformation.

Ananya Kumar

Ananya Kumar, Carnegie India.