You are viewing the chat in desktop mode. Click here to switch to mobile view.
X
Session 1: 'Understanding caste'
powered byJotCast
Prev Page View Full Chat
Tanushka Dutta
10:55
She adds: "Gender-neutral welfare policies might be able to help. Caste has been consolidating through other means"
Men have to control the lives of females which implies no freedom of female sexuality.
Prof. Anandhi points out that what we do notice is the insertion of females into informal sectors and the under-employment of young men has not been the focus of the state policies. There have to be gender-neutral policies"
10:57
Prof. Anandhi ends her speech by saying that what she has tried to uphold through her book on Dalit women was how exactly caste status and honour take place in Brahmanical patriarchal values.
10:58
Prof. S. Anandhi on intercaste marriages
11:05
Should intercaste marriages be encouraged?
Yes (100% | 5 votes)
 
No (0% | 0 votes)
 
Total Votes: 5
With that, Prof. Anandhi concludes her speech and Dr. Nalini Rajan opens the floor for the Question and Answer session.
11:08
To a question from a member of the audience about the origins of the caste system and a solution to the same, Prof. Jodhka replies: "Caste is a social and historical construct. It is a 19th-century framing of caste which is very critical. We are giving it a particular name which has been there in India for centuries."
He adds: "We must recognise the idea of caste should be understood in terms of the nation-state. Caste has been unchanged for centuries in India. The idea of caste was older than even in some cases before the idea of India. Brahmans are in some cases not relevant at all in many societies but for the colonization system they are recognized with the title."
"Caste is the basement of giving some class some opportunities and ignoring others. That's how it grew. There is no one solution. People need to think empirically," says Prof. Jodhka.
11:09
Prof. Jodhka on caste system
11:11
He adds the fact that caste was used for this region by the Portuguese. It's a European word and they take this word here. Because it's a European word.
"Dalit is a recent category, it’s not a caste category. It's the concept that originated in a modern democratic society", says Prof. Jodhka.
"The solution is we need to have a society where people have respect for each other. Caste and gender wouldn’t be a problem if there were no discriminations," he says.
11:16
To a question on how the caste system affects the transgender community, Prof. Anandhi says that from all the field work particularly from research in Tamil Nadu, transgenders recognise themselves as the backward castes. There has been political mobilisation in the trans community along the caste line.

On patriarchy, she says that all kinds of texts on this issue have been created by Brahmins. Other castes don't follow these Brahmanic texts.
On honour killing, she says that Dalit women were not allowed to do jobs for a long time. Their jobs were limited within a certain area. She adds that honour killing does not carry any honour.
Prof. S. Anandhi states that 90% of brahmins are highly employed, unlike OBCs which transcends to a different kind of oppression in women. Since 2012 a large number of OBC women have not been allowed to travel far away for jobs.
11:20
11:24
On inter-caste marriage, Prof Anandhi says that the centrality of inter-caste marriage to subvert caste has been central to Tamil Nadu. "Inter-caste marriage has become a crisis because of the transformation because of the welfare politics of present times," she says.
She adds that state policy has not touched caste as a material reality. In Tamil Nadu, we don't have categories like OBCs.
She also talks about a new form of marriage: Self-respect marriage.
"We have to understand it’s totally different from other marriages. We can't put it in other categories of marriage," she concludes.
11:28
Adding on to this, Prof. Jodhka says that Dalit political agencies are at the national level. It's closed to Dalit middle class. They want to be focused and demand their rights.
"Dalit politics in times of increasing right-wing politics has a very different scenario in Tamil Nadu. The Kashi Ram phenomenon brought the Dalit middle class. Dalit politics is politics of representation," he concludes.
11:30
That brings the first session to an end. Thank you for being with us. Session 2 will commence soon.
Connecting…