Caste: A Global Story

Caste, and caste-based discrimination, are not just Indian issues. They are experienced throughout the world, from Britain to Bahrain, Canada to South Africa. This is a global phenomenon, demanding global solutions.

Leading scholar Suraj Milind Yengde shines a light on the Dalit experience internationally, from indentured laborers in the nineteenth-century Caribbean to present-day migrant workers in the Middle East. Combining history, ethnography and archival research, he offers a compelling, comparative approach to caste and race from ancient times to today. What have been the impacts of colonialism, religion and nationalism on caste-based hierarchies worldwide? What can we learn from caste-related movements in India and internationally? Why hasn’t the South Asian diaspora embraced the anti-caste struggles of the homeland? And what are the limits of Dalit-Black solidarity?

Exploring the global footprint of the anti-caste struggle--from its links with Black Lives Matter to the work of international Ambedkarite organizations--this is a powerful analysis of world politics from the perspective of one of the most oppressed communities on Earth. Asking probing questions about the nature of inequality, Yengde issues an energetic call for a cosmopolitan Dalit universalism, as a vital part of today’s fight for social justice and equality.

Suraj Milind Yengde is Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies and a Ford Foundation Presidential Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. His second doctorate at the University of Oxford explored the intellectual histories of caste and race from the Middle Ages to the present. He is the bestselling author of Caste Matters.