ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 26, 2019
Identity, Rights, and Awareness: Anticaste Activism in India and the Awakening of Justice through Discursive Practices. By Jeremy A. Rinker. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018, xi + 211 pp., ISBN 978-1-4985-4193-0 (Hardcover), $95.00.
Reviewed by Gajendran Ayyathurai
Gajendran Ayyathurai concludes his review of Jeremy Rinker’s new book on anti-caste movements in India with the hope that “such studies do not remain as institutionalized sojourns of white American and European graduate students and scholars from diverse disciplines who happily check out caste in India, only to go back to their countries, get tenured jobs, and move on with other pet academic themes—a trend which is also emerging among second generation privileged caste Indian Americans and Europeans.” An encouraging sign that critical caste studies is not the passing fancy of privileged academics from India and the West is the first issue of CASTE: A Global Journal of Social Exclusion (February 2020, ISSN 2639-4928, https://journals.library.brandeis.edu/index.php/caste/issue/view/3/Full%20Issue) published by the Heller School at Brandeis University. “Walking the talk” of anti-caste scholarship, Brandeis has also pioneered in outlawing the practice of caste on its campus and in its programs, a first among American universities and colleges: https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/south-asia/caste-based-discrimination-in-spotlight-as-american-private-university-brandeis