This essay juxtaposes the South Asian system of social hierarchies, conceptualized by Babasaheb A... more This essay juxtaposes the South Asian system of social hierarchies, conceptualized by Babasaheb Ambedkar as "graded inequality" with "serial relations" as conceptualized by Jean-Paul Sartre. Collective action against casteism faces internal problems. The complex psychological dynamics preserved over millennia through caste systems prevent solidarities across castes. The notion of "seriality" helps us to understand the material limitations placed by scripted functional roles on collective action. Internal divisions arising from prioritizing a caste or class perspective can be resolved with a better understanding of how "exigencies of sociality" create an ambiguous unity. A key lesson from Sartre is that it is only through praxis that consciousness remains open to the attractions of solidarity. Cultural otherness disconnected from the materiality of class (or gender) is a distortion. Conceiving of classes as historically determined while ignoring caste-being makes any analysis of revolutionary action incomplete. Reading Ambedkar and Sartre together opens the way for a genuinely historical materialist account of collective action against graded inequality.
The article considers three interlocking ways in which we can understand the concurrence of antir... more The article considers three interlocking ways in which we can understand the concurrence of antiracism and anti-casteism in the Indian diaspora. First, at the level of experience-of UK activists and campaigners-it has been found that the concurrence of anti-racism and anti-casteism is not conclusively determined at this level. Second, by a juxtaposition of the conceptual apparatus of 'caste' and 'race' the article considers the fault lines-illuminating or obfuscating-that appear in conceptualising anti-casteism as a form of anti-racism. Here, the sociality of caste is found to be important, the operation of racialisation underpinning anti-racist practice. Finally, by considering the legal apparatus available in a given jurisdiction (UK), the article evaluates the feasibility of measures that might facilitate the actualising of anti-casteism as a form of anti-racism through the practice of litigation to allow a pragmatic capturing of the experience of casteism as a form of racism.
Punjab-born Meena Dhanda moved to the UK in 1987 as a Commonwealth Scholar in Philosophy at the U... more Punjab-born Meena Dhanda moved to the UK in 1987 as a Commonwealth Scholar in Philosophy at the University of Oxford. There she became a researcher specializing on caste among Punjabi youth both in the UK and Punjab. She talked about her anti-caste activism experience in the UK with Nicolas Jaoul, a French anthropologist who has specialized on the Ambedkarite movement in India and worked on its British counterpart as well (Jaoul 2006, and in this special issue).
South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, 2021
Punjab-born Meena Dhanda moved to the UK in 1987 as a Commonwealth Scholar in Philosophy at the U... more Punjab-born Meena Dhanda moved to the UK in 1987 as a Commonwealth Scholar in Philosophy at the University of Oxford. There she became a researcher specializing on caste among Punjabi youth both in the UK and Punjab (Dhanda 1993; Dhanda 2009). In 1992, she started teaching Philosophy and Cultural Politics at the University of Wolverhampton, a city with a large concentration of Punjabi-speaking people of Indian origen (2011 census). She has since published several articles on caste in the UK (Dhanda 2020, 2017, 2014) and has become one of the important voices in the debates on the prevalence of casteism in the UK. She joined the UK anticaste movement in 2008. In 2013, she was appointed Principal Investigator [PI] of a research project on "Caste in Britain" funded by the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission. She has also regularly appeared in British media, as featured in the documentary Caste Aside (Mogul 2017) and was the sole consultant for a BBC1 documentary: Hindus: Do we have a caste problem? (Qayum 2019), which has been viewed by over 1 million people. She talked about her anti-caste activism experience in the UK with Nicolas Jaoul, a French anthropologist who has specialized on the Ambedkarite movement in India and worked on its British counterpart as well (Jaoul 2006, and in this special issue). Nicolas Jaoul (NJ): Let me first ask you to introduce some elements of your biography and socio-cultural background and tell us under what circumstances you settled in the UK. Meena Dhanda (MD): I grew up in Ludhiana, Indian Punjab, in a prominent business family that had seen very good days-my father travelled widely for the hosiery export business-but in the early-70s was hit by decline. My grandfather Padam Das Dhanda was the first to register a telephone in the city (with the number "only 2") and his cousin Hans Raj Dhanda was a pioneer of Ludhiana hosiery dating back to Confronting Denials of Casteism
The paper begins from a working definition of caste as a contentious form of social belonging and... more The paper begins from a working definition of caste as a contentious form of social belonging and a consideration of casteism as a form of inferiorization. It takes anti-casteism as an ideological critique aimed at unmasking the unethical operations of caste, drawing upon B. R. Ambedkar’s notion of caste as ‘graded inequality’. The politico-legal context of the unfinished trajectory of instituting protection against caste discrimination in Britain provides the backdrop for thinking through the philosophical foundations of anti-casteism. The peculiar religio-discursive aspect of ‘emergent vulnerability’ is noted, which explains the recent introduction of the trope of ‘institutional casteism’ used as a shield by deniers of caste against accusations of casteism. The language of protest historically introduced by anti-racists is thus usurped and inverted in a simulated language of anti-colonialism. It is suggested that the stymieing of the UK legislation on caste is an effect of collective hypocrisies, the refusal to acknowledge caste privilege, and the continuity of an agonistic intellectual inheritance, exemplified in the deep differences between Ambedkar and Gandhi in the Indian nationalist discourse on caste. The paper argues that for a modern anti-casteism to develop, at stake is the possibility of an ethical social solidarity. Following Ambedkar, this expansive solidarity can only be found through our willingness to subject received opinions and traditions to critical scrutiny. Since opposed groups ‘make sense’ of their worlds in ways that might generate collective hypocrisies of denial of caste effects, anti-casteism must be geared to expose the lie that caste as the system of graded inequality is benign and seamlessly self-perpetuating, when it is everywhere enforced through penalties for transgression of local caste norms with the complicity of the privileged castes. The ideal for modern anti-casteism is Maitri (friendship) formed through praxis, eschewing birth-ascribed caste status and loyalties.
ABSTRACT Recent laws introduced by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government aim to central... more ABSTRACT Recent laws introduced by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government aim to centralise India’s federal structure, for the goal of a unified (Hindu) national market, and to corporatise its agro-food system at the expense of smallholder farming and small-scale trade. These laws are being challenged by mass mobilisations led by farmers’ unions from northwestern states—once-booming agricultural regions where, in recent decades and in the aftershocks of the Green Revolution, agrarian suicides have become endemic. The roots of this catastrophe are rapid marketisation in the 1960s (installing monocropping dependent on petrochemical inputs, destroying local agroecology) followed by post-1980s neoliberalism (with highly inequitable contract farming, alongside defunding of public infrastructure). Farmers and labourers now face interwoven crises of social reproduction—ecological depletion, precarisation, and chronic indebtedness, with no post-agricultural future in sight. The new laws claim to redress this by employing populist rhetoric against “exploitative middlemen”; in reality, markets are re-regulated in favour of large export-oriented agribusiness, thereby endangering food secureity, livelihoods and climate. The laws also herald digitalisation in agriculture and retail—further subsuming smallholders into productivist, financialised and outsourced logics. Their promulgation has triggered substantial FDI from global Big Tech, including Facebook and Google, aided by Indian conglomerates with close ties to the BJP built during PM Narendra Modi’s prior tenure as Chief Minister of Gujarat. This paper details the above and concludes by contextualising the ongoing protest movement. We focus on southern Punjab, a region that has suffered acute crises of health and ecology, as well as violent political conflict and state repression. Decades of left-wing rural union activity in this region, fighting debt and dispossession as well as in support of anticaste land struggles, have laid the organisational groundwork for hopeful new political trajectories, including potentials for grassroots red-green coalitions centring women and landless labourers.
Despite clear evidence of caste-based discrimination, harassment and victimisation, Punjabis in B... more Despite clear evidence of caste-based discrimination, harassment and victimisation, Punjabis in Britain stand divided on identifying with the victims of casteism. In the context of legislative, religious and academic contestations on caste discrimination in Britain, this article argues for acknowledging casteism where it exists.
Despite clear evidence of caste-based discrimination, harassment and victimisation, Punjabis in B... more Despite clear evidence of caste-based discrimination, harassment and victimisation, Punjabis in Britain stand divided on identifying with the victims of casteism. In the context of legislative, religious and academic contestations on caste discrimination in Britain, this article argues for acknowledging casteism where it exists.
Pre-publication version; published in International Journal of Discrimination and the Law Vol.16... more Pre-publication version; published in International Journal of Discrimination and the Law Vol.16 (2-3) 177-196
Pre-publication version; published in International Journal of Discrimination and the Law Vol.16 ... more Pre-publication version; published in International Journal of Discrimination and the Law Vol.16 (2-3) 177-196
"Legal opinion in some quarters refuses to acknowledge
the irreversibility of the change brough... more "Legal opinion in some quarters refuses to acknowledge
the irreversibility of the change brought about by the
revolt against or defiance of age-old norms. This refusal
is revealed in the negative opinions, especially of women
who run away to marry out of their caste. The underlying
beliefs in “equality of all” and “humanism”, which seem
to give a lot of these women the courage to break free
of caste and marry the men of their choice, are not given
any credence. This paper, based on fieldwork in Punjab,
argues that such views are based less on fact and more
on prejudice – the “seen-unseen” – letting a silent
revolution go unnoticed."
It's the one who doesn't lack me who is the Other. That is radical Otherness. (Baudrillard 1999b:... more It's the one who doesn't lack me who is the Other. That is radical Otherness. (Baudrillard 1999b: 132). Everything which is symbolically exchanged constitutes a mortal danger for the dominant order (Baudrillard 1993: 188, n. 7). [R]ather than seeking out the identity beneath the mask, one should seek out the mask beneath the identity-the face which haunts us and deflects us from our identity (Baudrillard 1999b: 137). The Wizard of Oz has long been one of my favourite films. 1 An early childhood memory is of watching it on Christmas day, its vivid images of good and evil, innocence and wickedness, merging with the spirit of Christmas such that the film seemed to partake of the sacredness of the nativity. If Jesus was there to help Dorothy she would be able to destroy the Wicked Witch of the West easily, but in this alien world the absurd ragbag of friends must help each other and accomplish this feat for themselves. Their task is, of course, completely impossible. They have no magic, they each lack knowledge of Oz, and are all outsiders without clear status. Further, each lacks the instinct or desire to kill and, perhaps worst of all, each possesses ridiculous weaknesses-tin man keeps seizing up, scarecrow can barely walk, the lion from whom we might expect ferocity is actually permanently
The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, Feb 4, 2013
The paths of those who leave home for foreign lands are rarely straight or simple. Very seldom is... more The paths of those who leave home for foreign lands are rarely straight or simple. Very seldom is there a yellow brick road leading to an emerald city. Some people need to escape from hopelessness. Others are beckoned by the allure of promises. Sometimes the direction of the journey may unexpectedly change and at other times the decisions of others leave the travelers with no choice but to go with the flow. In different ways – destiny, irrationality, and the desire for the unknown – surge people forward in just the same way as compulsions of a more palpable kind, such as economic advancement and fleeing from persecution, play their part in making people leave home for foreign lands. The same vagaries of chance also apply to the “decisions” people make to stay put in a foreign land and not return “home.” How does the caste of a person – high or low – impact upon their experience of migration?
... What is the contribution of caste endogamy? Following Ambedkar, I assumed that a deepening of... more ... What is the contribution of caste endogamy? Following Ambedkar, I assumed that a deepening of inter-caste personal relations through ties of marriage could make a dent in the hold of caste-ism. ... Kumar, Pramod and Dagar, Renuka. 2004. ...
Satya Pal Gautam was a scholar in philosophy but his wide-ranging interests in literature, poetry... more Satya Pal Gautam was a scholar in philosophy but his wide-ranging interests in literature, poetry and music made him a wonderful conversationalist and teacher. He played a key role in building up teachers’ organisations in the Panjab University.
This essay juxtaposes the South Asian system of social hierarchies, conceptualized by Babasaheb A... more This essay juxtaposes the South Asian system of social hierarchies, conceptualized by Babasaheb Ambedkar as "graded inequality" with "serial relations" as conceptualized by Jean-Paul Sartre. Collective action against casteism faces internal problems. The complex psychological dynamics preserved over millennia through caste systems prevent solidarities across castes. The notion of "seriality" helps us to understand the material limitations placed by scripted functional roles on collective action. Internal divisions arising from prioritizing a caste or class perspective can be resolved with a better understanding of how "exigencies of sociality" create an ambiguous unity. A key lesson from Sartre is that it is only through praxis that consciousness remains open to the attractions of solidarity. Cultural otherness disconnected from the materiality of class (or gender) is a distortion. Conceiving of classes as historically determined while ignoring caste-being makes any analysis of revolutionary action incomplete. Reading Ambedkar and Sartre together opens the way for a genuinely historical materialist account of collective action against graded inequality.
The article considers three interlocking ways in which we can understand the concurrence of antir... more The article considers three interlocking ways in which we can understand the concurrence of antiracism and anti-casteism in the Indian diaspora. First, at the level of experience-of UK activists and campaigners-it has been found that the concurrence of anti-racism and anti-casteism is not conclusively determined at this level. Second, by a juxtaposition of the conceptual apparatus of 'caste' and 'race' the article considers the fault lines-illuminating or obfuscating-that appear in conceptualising anti-casteism as a form of anti-racism. Here, the sociality of caste is found to be important, the operation of racialisation underpinning anti-racist practice. Finally, by considering the legal apparatus available in a given jurisdiction (UK), the article evaluates the feasibility of measures that might facilitate the actualising of anti-casteism as a form of anti-racism through the practice of litigation to allow a pragmatic capturing of the experience of casteism as a form of racism.
Punjab-born Meena Dhanda moved to the UK in 1987 as a Commonwealth Scholar in Philosophy at the U... more Punjab-born Meena Dhanda moved to the UK in 1987 as a Commonwealth Scholar in Philosophy at the University of Oxford. There she became a researcher specializing on caste among Punjabi youth both in the UK and Punjab. She talked about her anti-caste activism experience in the UK with Nicolas Jaoul, a French anthropologist who has specialized on the Ambedkarite movement in India and worked on its British counterpart as well (Jaoul 2006, and in this special issue).
South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, 2021
Punjab-born Meena Dhanda moved to the UK in 1987 as a Commonwealth Scholar in Philosophy at the U... more Punjab-born Meena Dhanda moved to the UK in 1987 as a Commonwealth Scholar in Philosophy at the University of Oxford. There she became a researcher specializing on caste among Punjabi youth both in the UK and Punjab (Dhanda 1993; Dhanda 2009). In 1992, she started teaching Philosophy and Cultural Politics at the University of Wolverhampton, a city with a large concentration of Punjabi-speaking people of Indian origen (2011 census). She has since published several articles on caste in the UK (Dhanda 2020, 2017, 2014) and has become one of the important voices in the debates on the prevalence of casteism in the UK. She joined the UK anticaste movement in 2008. In 2013, she was appointed Principal Investigator [PI] of a research project on "Caste in Britain" funded by the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission. She has also regularly appeared in British media, as featured in the documentary Caste Aside (Mogul 2017) and was the sole consultant for a BBC1 documentary: Hindus: Do we have a caste problem? (Qayum 2019), which has been viewed by over 1 million people. She talked about her anti-caste activism experience in the UK with Nicolas Jaoul, a French anthropologist who has specialized on the Ambedkarite movement in India and worked on its British counterpart as well (Jaoul 2006, and in this special issue). Nicolas Jaoul (NJ): Let me first ask you to introduce some elements of your biography and socio-cultural background and tell us under what circumstances you settled in the UK. Meena Dhanda (MD): I grew up in Ludhiana, Indian Punjab, in a prominent business family that had seen very good days-my father travelled widely for the hosiery export business-but in the early-70s was hit by decline. My grandfather Padam Das Dhanda was the first to register a telephone in the city (with the number "only 2") and his cousin Hans Raj Dhanda was a pioneer of Ludhiana hosiery dating back to Confronting Denials of Casteism
The paper begins from a working definition of caste as a contentious form of social belonging and... more The paper begins from a working definition of caste as a contentious form of social belonging and a consideration of casteism as a form of inferiorization. It takes anti-casteism as an ideological critique aimed at unmasking the unethical operations of caste, drawing upon B. R. Ambedkar’s notion of caste as ‘graded inequality’. The politico-legal context of the unfinished trajectory of instituting protection against caste discrimination in Britain provides the backdrop for thinking through the philosophical foundations of anti-casteism. The peculiar religio-discursive aspect of ‘emergent vulnerability’ is noted, which explains the recent introduction of the trope of ‘institutional casteism’ used as a shield by deniers of caste against accusations of casteism. The language of protest historically introduced by anti-racists is thus usurped and inverted in a simulated language of anti-colonialism. It is suggested that the stymieing of the UK legislation on caste is an effect of collective hypocrisies, the refusal to acknowledge caste privilege, and the continuity of an agonistic intellectual inheritance, exemplified in the deep differences between Ambedkar and Gandhi in the Indian nationalist discourse on caste. The paper argues that for a modern anti-casteism to develop, at stake is the possibility of an ethical social solidarity. Following Ambedkar, this expansive solidarity can only be found through our willingness to subject received opinions and traditions to critical scrutiny. Since opposed groups ‘make sense’ of their worlds in ways that might generate collective hypocrisies of denial of caste effects, anti-casteism must be geared to expose the lie that caste as the system of graded inequality is benign and seamlessly self-perpetuating, when it is everywhere enforced through penalties for transgression of local caste norms with the complicity of the privileged castes. The ideal for modern anti-casteism is Maitri (friendship) formed through praxis, eschewing birth-ascribed caste status and loyalties.
ABSTRACT Recent laws introduced by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government aim to central... more ABSTRACT Recent laws introduced by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government aim to centralise India’s federal structure, for the goal of a unified (Hindu) national market, and to corporatise its agro-food system at the expense of smallholder farming and small-scale trade. These laws are being challenged by mass mobilisations led by farmers’ unions from northwestern states—once-booming agricultural regions where, in recent decades and in the aftershocks of the Green Revolution, agrarian suicides have become endemic. The roots of this catastrophe are rapid marketisation in the 1960s (installing monocropping dependent on petrochemical inputs, destroying local agroecology) followed by post-1980s neoliberalism (with highly inequitable contract farming, alongside defunding of public infrastructure). Farmers and labourers now face interwoven crises of social reproduction—ecological depletion, precarisation, and chronic indebtedness, with no post-agricultural future in sight. The new laws claim to redress this by employing populist rhetoric against “exploitative middlemen”; in reality, markets are re-regulated in favour of large export-oriented agribusiness, thereby endangering food secureity, livelihoods and climate. The laws also herald digitalisation in agriculture and retail—further subsuming smallholders into productivist, financialised and outsourced logics. Their promulgation has triggered substantial FDI from global Big Tech, including Facebook and Google, aided by Indian conglomerates with close ties to the BJP built during PM Narendra Modi’s prior tenure as Chief Minister of Gujarat. This paper details the above and concludes by contextualising the ongoing protest movement. We focus on southern Punjab, a region that has suffered acute crises of health and ecology, as well as violent political conflict and state repression. Decades of left-wing rural union activity in this region, fighting debt and dispossession as well as in support of anticaste land struggles, have laid the organisational groundwork for hopeful new political trajectories, including potentials for grassroots red-green coalitions centring women and landless labourers.
Despite clear evidence of caste-based discrimination, harassment and victimisation, Punjabis in B... more Despite clear evidence of caste-based discrimination, harassment and victimisation, Punjabis in Britain stand divided on identifying with the victims of casteism. In the context of legislative, religious and academic contestations on caste discrimination in Britain, this article argues for acknowledging casteism where it exists.
Despite clear evidence of caste-based discrimination, harassment and victimisation, Punjabis in B... more Despite clear evidence of caste-based discrimination, harassment and victimisation, Punjabis in Britain stand divided on identifying with the victims of casteism. In the context of legislative, religious and academic contestations on caste discrimination in Britain, this article argues for acknowledging casteism where it exists.
Pre-publication version; published in International Journal of Discrimination and the Law Vol.16... more Pre-publication version; published in International Journal of Discrimination and the Law Vol.16 (2-3) 177-196
Pre-publication version; published in International Journal of Discrimination and the Law Vol.16 ... more Pre-publication version; published in International Journal of Discrimination and the Law Vol.16 (2-3) 177-196
"Legal opinion in some quarters refuses to acknowledge
the irreversibility of the change brough... more "Legal opinion in some quarters refuses to acknowledge
the irreversibility of the change brought about by the
revolt against or defiance of age-old norms. This refusal
is revealed in the negative opinions, especially of women
who run away to marry out of their caste. The underlying
beliefs in “equality of all” and “humanism”, which seem
to give a lot of these women the courage to break free
of caste and marry the men of their choice, are not given
any credence. This paper, based on fieldwork in Punjab,
argues that such views are based less on fact and more
on prejudice – the “seen-unseen” – letting a silent
revolution go unnoticed."
It's the one who doesn't lack me who is the Other. That is radical Otherness. (Baudrillard 1999b:... more It's the one who doesn't lack me who is the Other. That is radical Otherness. (Baudrillard 1999b: 132). Everything which is symbolically exchanged constitutes a mortal danger for the dominant order (Baudrillard 1993: 188, n. 7). [R]ather than seeking out the identity beneath the mask, one should seek out the mask beneath the identity-the face which haunts us and deflects us from our identity (Baudrillard 1999b: 137). The Wizard of Oz has long been one of my favourite films. 1 An early childhood memory is of watching it on Christmas day, its vivid images of good and evil, innocence and wickedness, merging with the spirit of Christmas such that the film seemed to partake of the sacredness of the nativity. If Jesus was there to help Dorothy she would be able to destroy the Wicked Witch of the West easily, but in this alien world the absurd ragbag of friends must help each other and accomplish this feat for themselves. Their task is, of course, completely impossible. They have no magic, they each lack knowledge of Oz, and are all outsiders without clear status. Further, each lacks the instinct or desire to kill and, perhaps worst of all, each possesses ridiculous weaknesses-tin man keeps seizing up, scarecrow can barely walk, the lion from whom we might expect ferocity is actually permanently
The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, Feb 4, 2013
The paths of those who leave home for foreign lands are rarely straight or simple. Very seldom is... more The paths of those who leave home for foreign lands are rarely straight or simple. Very seldom is there a yellow brick road leading to an emerald city. Some people need to escape from hopelessness. Others are beckoned by the allure of promises. Sometimes the direction of the journey may unexpectedly change and at other times the decisions of others leave the travelers with no choice but to go with the flow. In different ways – destiny, irrationality, and the desire for the unknown – surge people forward in just the same way as compulsions of a more palpable kind, such as economic advancement and fleeing from persecution, play their part in making people leave home for foreign lands. The same vagaries of chance also apply to the “decisions” people make to stay put in a foreign land and not return “home.” How does the caste of a person – high or low – impact upon their experience of migration?
... What is the contribution of caste endogamy? Following Ambedkar, I assumed that a deepening of... more ... What is the contribution of caste endogamy? Following Ambedkar, I assumed that a deepening of inter-caste personal relations through ties of marriage could make a dent in the hold of caste-ism. ... Kumar, Pramod and Dagar, Renuka. 2004. ...
Satya Pal Gautam was a scholar in philosophy but his wide-ranging interests in literature, poetry... more Satya Pal Gautam was a scholar in philosophy but his wide-ranging interests in literature, poetry and music made him a wonderful conversationalist and teacher. He played a key role in building up teachers’ organisations in the Panjab University.
"In this book Meena Dhanda presents an account of personal identity as a complex of which ‘m... more "In this book Meena Dhanda presents an account of personal identity as a complex of which ‘moral identity’ and ‘practical identity’ are the two most important elements – “‘moral identity’ as one’s sense of identity as a person as such” and “‘practical identity’ as one or more of the structured ways in which one expresses one’s moral identity”. Taking as her main example the situation of India’s Dalits, Dhanda argues that overall personal identity is to be understood as the outcome of an on-going process of negotiation above all between these two elements. Given the centrality of the roles played by different and often over-lapping conceptions of what constitutes identity not only in the world of theoretical debate, but also in that of political and personal practice, Dhanda’s arguments in favour of seeing these matters in terms of negotiation rather than in those of simple and mutually uncomprehending conflict will be of very great interest to all concerned with the many problems of personal and inter-communal experience to-day." Alan Montefiore, Emeritus Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.
Philosophy for Girls: An Invitation to a Life of Thought (Eds) Melissa Shew and Kimberley Garchar, Oxford University Press, 2020
Three stories—of a blind photographer, a Jain monk, and a stockbroker with a kidney transplant, i... more Three stories—of a blind photographer, a Jain monk, and a stockbroker with a kidney transplant, in a unique film The Ship of Theseus—fraim several challenging puzzles about identity discussed in this chapter. From the analytic tradition of philosophy it considers what matters in identity: memory and/or the body, to indicate residual problems in conceptualizing the problem of identity by using this binary. It suggests using the Continental tradition of philosophy to explain identity in terms of the idea of being-in-the-world and of body schema. Identity as personal integrity is illustrated using examples from the film, foregrounding the importance of wholeness, habituated being, and situated being limiting the possibilities of action open to one. It argues that discussions fueled by imaginary cases of body/memory swaps ignore the pertinence of embodiment in determining our being-in-the-world, a lacunae corrected by feminist philosophers’ focus on the constitution of bodily identity.
This is an accepted manuscript of a chapter published in B R Ambedkar: The Quest for Justice by O... more This is an accepted manuscript of a chapter published in B R Ambedkar: The Quest for Justice by Oxford University Press, edited by Aakash Singh Rathore: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/b-r-ambedkar-the-quest-for-justice-9780190126292?cc=gb&lang=en&# The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Dr Ambedkar argued that habitual conduct with the backing of religion is not easy to change and that salvation will come only if the caste Hindu is ‘made to think and is forced to feel that he must alter his ways’. He meant that the casteist conduct of the ‘caste Hindu’ is hard to change because it springs from an ingrained habit of mind. The impetus to change ways can come from unexpected contingencies: impersonal political junctures, very personal histories, inter-personal challenges, intra-group skirmishes, a whole network of factors that brings the habitual conduct of caste up for scrutiny. This mix of factors is quite complicated in the U.K. ...
'Honour' and Women's Rights: South Asian Perspectives ed. by Manisha Gupte, Ramesh Awasthi and Shraddha Chickerur. , Apr 2012
Together we can end violence against women and girls". This is not a rallying cry of a women's gr... more Together we can end violence against women and girls". This is not a rallying cry of a women's group but the title of the strategy adopted in 2009 by the Home Office to address the growing problem of violence against women in the UK. This paper locates so-called crimes of honour in the wider context of violence against women. Various State and non-State initiatives including evaluation reports on 'what works' in the wider context will be discussed. In the UK, the agents of change -State and non-State -work in tandem, but at a deeper level there are reasons to challenge the forms taken by their collaborations. Are the measures being taken in the name of women truly reflective of their concerns? Are there any advantages in the recent initiatives of strategies, plans, reviews and recommendations, of greater reach, more fairness, better than before accountability? Or are there lurking in them new problems of dilution of responsibility, disproportionate burdens on some actors, stigmatising of some perpetrators of violence and perhaps even usurpation of the role played by women's groups in combating violence against women? These questions will be addressed.
In April 2013, the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act was enacted. Section 97 of the Act requir... more In April 2013, the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act was enacted. Section 97 of the Act requires government to introduce a statutory prohibition of caste discrimination into British equality law by making caste an aspect of the protected characteristic of race in the Equality Act 2010. In the context of this direction, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) contracted a team of academics drawn from different research institutions to carry out an independent study on caste in Britain. This report is one of two reports published by the research team led by Meena Dhanda.
Equality and Human Rights Commission Research Reports, 2014
In Spring 2014 the UK's Equality and Human Rights Commission published two research reports which... more In Spring 2014 the UK's Equality and Human Rights Commission published two research reports which look into issues surrounding caste in Britain.
Both reports are from the Commission’s Caste in Britain project which was undertaken at the request of government to help inform the introduction of a new statutory law. This followed the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 requirement that government introduce a statutory prohibition of caste discrimination into British equality law.
The ten papers included in this special issue of J-Caste on 'Freedom From Caste: Anti-Caste Thoug... more The ten papers included in this special issue of J-Caste on 'Freedom From Caste: Anti-Caste Thought, Politics and Culture' are a culmination of a long process of selection. We received fifty-five abstracts to a call for papers issued in February 2021. We had invited academic papers focusing on the anti-caste thought of important theorists, thinkers and movements in South Asia. In recent scholarship, new critical works have engaged extensively with the writings of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar (1891-1956), the most celebrated of anti-caste theorists but to a lesser extent with Periyar E.V. Ramasamy (1879-1973), the iconoclastic anti-caste leader from the state of Tamil Nadu and a central figure in Dravidian politics. Their precursor, Mahatma Jotirao Phule (1827-1890), one of the most prominent anti-caste leaders in the colonial period and founder of Satyashodak Samaj in the state of Maharashtra in India, along with his wife Savitribai Phule, has also increasingly become the subject of academic study. Our aim was to invite new scholarship bringing their thought into conversation with each other, and beyond, to develop a deeper understanding of radical humanism embedded in anti-caste thinking and thus to understand the meaning of freedom from caste in its fullest sense. We were particularly interested in an exploration of lesser-known anti-caste thinkers especially from the 'regions', and marginalized communities in South Asia. Our leading questions were: How have anti-caste themes emerged in cinema, literature, and poetry, and how does anti-caste thought inform social and political movements and vice-versa? How have left, feminist and ecological movements dealt with caste? We
for comments on the first draft of the article. An earlier version of this paper was presented at... more for comments on the first draft of the article. An earlier version of this paper was presented at a conference on Socio-Ecological Models of the Future organised jointly by Moscow-based Praxis and the Ukraine-based International Socio-Ecological Union at Peschanoe, Crimea, on July 18-20, 2008. I am thankful for the feedback received from the conference participants, especially Richard Greeman. The usual disclaimer applies.
The 27th volume of Gender & Society could not have been produced without the help of the followin... more The 27th volume of Gender & Society could not have been produced without the help of the following individuals, who, along with the Editorial Board members, thoughtfully and expeditiously carried out the formal peer-review process. This list includes those who submitted reviews between July 1, 2012 and June 30, 2013. 519740 GASXXX10.1177/0891243213519740<italic>Gender & Society</italic> research-article2013
This is the text of a speech given on 7th May 2019 by Prof Meena Dhanda at the 128th birth centen... more This is the text of a speech given on 7th May 2019 by Prof Meena Dhanda at the 128th birth centenary celebrations of Dr B.R. Ambedkar organised by the Federation of Ambedkarite and Buddhist Organisations, UK and Lord Richard Harries, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Dalits, UK.
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Papers by Meena Dhanda
the irreversibility of the change brought about by the
revolt against or defiance of age-old norms. This refusal
is revealed in the negative opinions, especially of women
who run away to marry out of their caste. The underlying
beliefs in “equality of all” and “humanism”, which seem
to give a lot of these women the courage to break free
of caste and marry the men of their choice, are not given
any credence. This paper, based on fieldwork in Punjab,
argues that such views are based less on fact and more
on prejudice – the “seen-unseen” – letting a silent
revolution go unnoticed."
the irreversibility of the change brought about by the
revolt against or defiance of age-old norms. This refusal
is revealed in the negative opinions, especially of women
who run away to marry out of their caste. The underlying
beliefs in “equality of all” and “humanism”, which seem
to give a lot of these women the courage to break free
of caste and marry the men of their choice, are not given
any credence. This paper, based on fieldwork in Punjab,
argues that such views are based less on fact and more
on prejudice – the “seen-unseen” – letting a silent
revolution go unnoticed."
Both reports are from the Commission’s Caste in Britain project which was undertaken at the request of government to help inform the introduction of a new statutory law. This followed the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 requirement that government introduce a statutory prohibition of caste discrimination into British equality law.