C E N T E R F O R G L O B A L D E V E L O P M E N T + S U S T A I N A B I L I T Y T H E H E L L E R S C H O O L A T B R A N D E I S U N I V E R S I T Y CASTE A Global Journal on Social Exclusion Volume 3 :: Number 1 April 2022 ISSN 2639-4928 brandeis.edu/j-caste CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to our journal se a rc h in g ; i n k d ra w in g o n p a pe r; 2 7x 19 c m ; S a v i Sa w a rk a r Meena Dhanda and Karthick Ram Manoharan – Guest Editors E D ITO R I A L A N D I N T R O D U C TI O N A R TI C L E S ThoughtThought PoliticsPolitics CultureCulture Dalit Resistance during the Bengal Renaissance: Five Anti-Caste Thinkers from Colonial Bengal, India Mahitosh Mandal Between the Global and Regional: Asia in the Tamil Buddhist Imagination Shrinidhi Narasimhan The Dominant Post-constitutional Indian Feminist Discourse: A Critique of its Intersectional Reading of Caste and Gender Santvana Kumar and Ekata Bakshi Conceptions of Community, Nation and Politics: The Ezhavas of South Malabar, India and their Quest for Equality Anish KK Periyar’s Spatial Thought: Region as Non-Brahmin Discursive Space Ganeshwar Caste, then Class: Redistribution and Representation in the Dravidian Model Vignesh Karthik KR and Vishal Vasanthakumar Barishaler Jogen Mandal: Construal of the Undisputed Dalit Leader of Undivided Bengal through a Twenty-first Century Bengali Novel Suhasini Roy Struggling for Freedom from Caste in Colonial India: The Story of Rettaimalai Srinivasan Malarvizhi Jayanth Maadathy – An Unfairy Tale: Caste, Space, and Gaze Swarnavel Eswaran Pariyerum Perumal and a Periyarite Note on Political Engagement Antony Arul Valan FREEDOM FROM CASTE: ANTI-CASTE THOUGHT, POLITICS AND CULTURE P O L I C Y A R E N A B O O K R E V I E WS "When I tell them my caste, silence descends": Caste-based Discrimination among the Nepali Diaspora in the San Francisco Bay Area, USA Prem Pariyar, Bikash Gupta and Ruvani W. Fonseka Memory, Grief, and Agency: A Political Theological Account of Wrongs and Rites Helen Chukka Dalits and the Making of Modern India Gaurav J. Pathania Majority of the research papers in this issue were presented at the conference ‘Anti-Caste Thought: Theory, Politics and Culture’ convened by the guest editors at the University of Wolverhampton, UK on 29-30 October 2021, as a part of the project Freedom from Caste: The Political Thought of Periyar E.V. Ramasamy in a Global Context funded by the Euro- pean Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 895514. JOINT EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Laurence R. Simon Brandeis University, USA Sukhadeo Thorat (Emeritus) Jawaharlal Nehru University, India EDITOR Joseph K. Assan Brandeis University, USA REVIEWS EDITOR Jebaroja Singh St. John Fisher College, USA SENIOR EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Afia A. Adaboh Brandeis University, USA EDITORIAL ASSISTANT FOR PUBLIC OUTREACH & COMMUNICATIONS Jaspreet Mahal Brandeis University, USA PRODUCTION EDITOR Vinod Kumar Mishra Indian Institute of Dalit Studies, India UNIVERSITY LIBRARIAN Matthew Sheehy Brandeis University, USA OJS TECHNICAL MANAGER Brian Meuse Brandeis University Library, USA CASTE A G LO BAL J O U R NAL O N SOCIAL E XCLUS IO N FREEDOM FROM CASTE: ANTI- CASTE THOUGHT, POLITIC S AND CULTURE VOLUME 3, NUMBER 1 EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Kaushik Basu, C. Marks Professor of International Studies and Professor of Economics, Cornell University, USA; former Chief Economist of the World Bank; President, International Economics Association; former Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India Krishna Bhattachan, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Tribhuvan University, Nepal Kevin D. Brown, Professor of Law, Maurer School of Law, Indiana University, USA Ipsita Chatterjee, Associate Professor, Department of Geography and the Environment, University of North Texas, USA Ashwini Deshpande, Professor of Economics, Ashoka University, India Meena Dhanda, Professor in Philosophy and Cultural Politics, University of Wolverhampton, United Kingdom Jean Drèze, Honorary Professor, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India Ashok Gurung, Associate Professor, Julien J. Studley Graduate Program in International Affairs , The New School, New York, USA John Harriss, Professorial Research Associate, Department of Development Studies, SOAS, University of London, United Kingdom Eva-Maria Hardtmann, Associate Professor and Director of Studies, Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, Sweden Susan Holcombe, Professor Emerita of the Practice, Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University, USA Sushrut Jadhav, Clinical Associate Professor of Cross-cultural Psychiatry, University College London; Consultant Psychiatrist & Medical Lead, Focus Homeless Services, Camden & Islington NHS Foundation Trust; Clinical Lead, C & I Cultural Consultation Service; Founding Editor, Anthropol- ogy & Medicine journal (Taylor and Francis, United Kingdom); Research Associate, Department of Anthropology, SOAS, London, United Kingdom Chinnaiah Jangam, Assistant Professor of History, Carleton University, Canada S. Japhet, Vice Chancellor, Bengaluru Central University, Bengaluru, India Sangeeta Kamat, Professor of Education, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA Joel Lee, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Williams College, USA David Mosse, Professor of Social Anthropology, SOAS, University of London, United Kingdom Samuel L. Myers, Jr., Roy Wilkens Professor of Human Relations and Social Justice and Director, Roy Wilkins Center for Human Relations and Social Justice, Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, USA Balmurli Natrajan, Professor and Chair, Department of Anthropology, William Patterson University, USA Purna Nepali, Associate Professor, Kathmandu University, Nepal Katherine S. Newman, Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, University of Massachusetts system, Torrey Little Professor of Sociology, USA Martha C. Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Services Professor of Law and Ethics, Law School and Philosophy Department, University of Chicago, USA Devan Pillay, Associate Professor and Head, Depart- ment of Sociology, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa Thomas Pogge, Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs, Yale University, USA Christopher Queen, Lecturer on the Study of Religion, and Dean of Students for Continuing Education (Retired), Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, USA Jehan Raheem, Former Founding Director, Evaluation Office, United Nations Development Programme and Former UNDP Resident Representative, Burma (Myanmar) Anupama Rao, Associate Professor of History, Barnard and Columbia Universities, USA Amilcar Shabazz, Professor, W.E.B. Du Bois Department for Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA A.B. Shamsul, Distinguished Professor and Founding Director, Institute for Ethnic Studies, The National University of Malaysia Kalinga Tudor Silva, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka; Research Director, International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo, Sri Lanka Harleen Singh, Associate Professor of Literature, and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Brandeis University, USA Ajantha Subramanian, Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies, Social Anthropology Program Director, Harvard University, USA Abha Sur, Scientist in the Science, Technology and Society Program; Senior Lecturer, Program in Women and Gender Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA Goolam Vahed, Associate Professor, History, Society & Social Change Cluster, University of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa Gowri Vijayakumar, Assistant Professor of Sociology and South Asian Studies, Brandeis University, USA Annapurna Waughray, Reader in Human Rights Law, Manchester Law School, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK Cornel West, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice, Union Theological Seminary , USA Copyright © 2022 CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion ISSN 2639-4928 brandeis.edu/j-caste TABLE OF CONTENTS EDITORIAL AND INTRODUCTION Meena Dhanda and Karthick Ram Manoharan – Guest Editors ....... 01-10 ARTICLES ThoughtThought Dalit Resistance during the Bengal Renaissance: Five Anti-Caste Thinkers from Colonial Bengal, India Mahitosh Mandal ....... 11-30 Between the Global and Regional: Asia in the Tamil Buddhist Imagination Shrinidhi Narasimhan ....... 31-48 The Dominant Post-constitutional Indian Feminist Discourse: A Critique of its Intersectional Reading of Caste and Gender Santvana Kumar and Ekata Bakshi ....... 49-68 PoliticsPolitics Conceptions of Community, Nation and Politics: The Ezhavas of South Malabar, India and their Quest for Equality Anish KK ....... 69-88 Periyar’s Spatial Thought: Region as Non-Brahmin Discursive Space Ganeshwar ........ 89-106 Caste, then Class: Redistribution and Representation in the Dravidian Model Vignesh Karthik KR and Vishal Vasanthakumar ........ 107-122 Culture Culture Barishaler Jogen Mandal: Construal of the Undisputed Dalit Leader of Undivided Bengal through a Twenty-first Century Bengali Novel Suhasini Roy ........ 123-136 Struggling for Freedom from Caste in Colonial India: The Story of Rettaimalai Srinivasan Malarvizhi Jayanth ........ 137-152 Maadathy – An Unfairy Tale: Caste, Space, and Gaze Swarnavel Eswaran ........ 153-170 Pariyerum Perumal and a Periyarite Note on Political Engagement Antony Arul Valan ........ 171-188 POLICY ARENA "When I tell them my caste, silence descends": Caste-based Discrimination among the Nepali Diaspora in the San Francisco Bay Area, USA Prem Pariyar, Bikash Gupta and Ruvani W. Fonseka ........ 189-202 BOOK, ESSAY, FILM REVIEW Memory, Grief, and Agency: A Political Theological Account of Wrongs and Rites Helen Chukka ....... 203-206 Dalits and the Making of Modern India Gaurav J. Pathania ....... 207-210