Papers by Ajantha Subramanian
La modernité à partir d'en bas : citoyenneté locale sur le littoral méridional de l'Inde
Revue internationale des sciences sociales, 2003
Versions papier et électronique : le numéro est expédié par poste. Il est également accessible im... more Versions papier et électronique : le numéro est expédié par poste. Il est également accessible immédiatement en ligne. ... Versions papier et électronique : les numéros sont expédié par poste au fur et à mesure de leur parution. Tous les numéros en ligne sont immédiatement ...
International Social Science Journal, 2003
American Ethnologist, 2003
Open Magazine, 2015
here has recently been a rapid escalation of political tension around IIT Madras's decision to de... more here has recently been a rapid escalation of political tension around IIT Madras's decision to de-recognize the student organization, Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle (APSC). An anonymous letter sent by some IIT Madras students to the Ministry of Human Resource Development accused the APSC of "creating hatred among student [sic] in the name of caste and trying to polarize the ST, SC students." The letter also charged that the group is "politically motivated" to "create hatred against the prime minister and the Hindus." The Dean of Students validated this allegation in two missives of his own to the APSC, advising them to change their name to something less "polarizing" and chiding them for "controversial activities." The Dean and the letter writers share two key assumptions: that the political activities of the APSC were unprecedented, and that caste politics has no place at the
Oxford Bibliographies Online, 2011
Public Culture, 2019
In the lead-up to independence, Indian statesmen grappled with how to address persistent social i... more In the lead-up to independence, Indian statesmen grappled with how to address persistent social inequalities within an emerging democratic polity. The end of colonial rule promised equal citizenship in place of subject-hood. At the same time, there was general agreement in the Constituent Assembly that the disparities of caste and class demanded substantive redress. At the time, two points of debate emerged that have been remarkably resilient. The first was whether redress through caste quotas was itself discriminatory and a violation of the right to equality. Time became one means of reconciling equality and the need for "compensatory discrimination"; lawmakers proposed reserved seats for lower castes in educational institutions and in public-sector employment as a temporary departure from a liberal baseline of formal equality. Another means of reconciling the two was scope: to maintain the "rule" of equality, quotas were to remain applicable only to a minority of "backward" citizens. The second point of debate was around perpetuating caste as a form of social distinction by according it legal recognition. Caste classification was deemed necessary for "Scheduled Castes," those on the lowest rung of the caste ladder who suffered the stigma of untouchability. However, there was far less consensus on how to classify the intermediate castes. For these groups, lawmakers underscored the need to think of caste in relation to economic class in determining "backwardness" so that caste would remain tied to the "real" economy and, with modernization, wither away. These concerns expressed ambivalence around acknowledging caste as a form of lived inequality that was irreducible to other forms of stratification. The tension between a governmental commitment to eliminating forms of inequality
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Papers by Ajantha Subramanian