Logo

Synopsis Caste in Life: Experiencing Inequalities brings together nineteen stories of real-life experiences of caste-based social practices in India. This book does not seek to complement the mountains of existing literature on the subject, which has already been studied from all conceivable angles. Instead, it engages with caste as a subjective category of how it is lived and experienced. Some of the contributors are internationally known scholars of caste as an academic subject, and others are eminent in their respective fields. But most of them have never before written an autobiographical sketch of their experiences with caste. Caste in Life ushers in a new genre of narratives that try to capture a complex social reality through the prism of first-hand experience. The contributors write here about the role caste has played in their lives: Was it a source of comfort? An obstacle? Or an irritant? As they write about their past experiences, they also reflect on how they now regard the events that happened in their lives thirty, forty or even fifty years ago. The reader will find in Caste in Life the everyday reality of caste in its resilience and also the way it is changing with an India that is changing faster than anybody can capture the change.