LSE Hosts Book Launch of 'Caste: A Global Story' by Dr Suraj Yengde

LSE Hosts Book Launch of 'Caste: A Global Story' by Dr Suraj Yengde

London, October 29, 2025 — The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) South Asia Centre hosted the much-anticipated launch of Caste: A Global Story by Dr Suraj Yengde, Assistant Professor in History and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. The event drew a packed house of scholars, students, and community leaders who gathered to explore how caste operates beyond South Asia, shaping global hierarchies and solidarities.

The discussion was chaired by Dr Nilanjan Sarkar, Deputy Director of the South Asia Centre, who opened the evening by situating the conversation within LSE’s own historical link to Dr B.R. Ambedkar. He reminded attendees of LSE’s ongoing digital archive, Traces of South Asia, and its permanent online exhibition on Ambedkar’s time at the institution. This exhibit remains LSE’s most visited in its 130-year history.

“Dr Ambedkar’s student file, with over 60 pages of correspondence, is freely available online,” Dr Sarkar noted. “We bring it out for display three times a year as part of our effort to make South Asian intellectual history accessible to everyone.”

The Author’s Perspective: A Cosmopolitan Dalit Vision

Taking the podium, Dr Yengde spoke passionately about the intellectual and personal journey behind Caste: A Global Story, a work that tracks the migrations of caste across continents and centuries. Drawing on fieldwork, archives, and lived experience, he described the project as an attempt to view caste through a distinctly Dalit lens while connecting it to global systems of race and labour.

The book, he explained, spans many countries—from the plantations of Trinidad to the labour camps of the Middle East—revealing how caste-based discrimination and resistance have travelled with diasporic communities.

“I wanted to write this as a cosmopolitan Dalit project,” Dr Yengde said. “To study caste not as a relic of India but as a living structure that adapts and survives across borders.”

He recounted tracing indentured labour histories and meeting Dalit workers organising undercover Ambedkarite networks in Gulf nations. “Even in conditions of surveillance,” he said, “you find people gathering to read Ambedkar, distribute books, and speak of dignity. That is the Dalit republic I am trying to map.”

Dr Yengde described the book as an interdisciplinary endeavour that combines archival work, ethnography, and literary analysis to trace caste from its ancient roots to its contemporary manifestations. From the Dalit and Black Panther solidarity movements to the persistence of caste among descendants of indentured labour in Trinidad and the undercover organisation of Ambedkarite groups among migrant workers in the Middle East, Dr Yengde argued that caste is not a South Asian anomaly but a "global story."

"My focus here was, when I was analysing caste, I wanted to analyse from a Dalit perspective," Dr Yengde stated. "I was casting a lens of an untouchable victim of caste as to how he or she will read that text." He concluded by positioning the book as an announcement of a "Dalit worldview" that is "universalist in perspective" and "radical in its sense."

Academic Appraisal and a Call for Gender Inclusion

The first respondent, Ritu Kochar, a doctoral candidate in Social Policy at LSE, praised the book as an "ambitious theoretical intervention" and a "refreshing take on anti-caste history devoid of Savarna influence." She commended its "discursive and stylistic gymnastics" and its methodological innovation, highlighting the author’s link to "Charvaka rationalism," privileging lived experience.

Dr Kochar was particularly moved by the ethnographic accounts of Dalit organisations in the Middle East, noting that, despite heavy surveillance, workers formed support networks and distributed books. "It speaks volumes about how education is still crucial to our Dalit identity and its formation across borders," she said.

However, she delivered a pointed critique regarding the book's gender representation. "Where are the women in this global history, Dr Yengde?" she asked, describing the text as a "masculine global history of caste" where women appear as an "afterthought." She argued that this constituted an "epistemic erasure" of Dalit women's distinct contributions and leadership, urging future scholarship to ensure all experiences are centred in the narrative.

The Activist Response: Literature and Liberation

Following her remarks, Mr Sat Pal Muman, Secretary of the Ambedkar International Mission in London and Chair of Caste Watch UK, approached the book from an activist’s perspective. His address, both impassioned and reflective, contrasted the world of theory with the realities of activism.

He praised Caste: A Global Story for revealing caste as “a virus of hierarchy that has travelled with the Indian diaspora,” while challenging the author to push the work toward praxis.

“The book maps the prison of caste brilliantly,” Mr Muman said, quoting Dr Ambedkar, “but the blueprint for the escape remains unclear. Literature provokes thought, yes—but rebellion must translate into action.”

He commended the book’s parallels between Dalit and Black liberation movements. Still, he noted its limited engagement with anti-caste activism in the United Kingdom, which, he reminded the audience, “was foundational to the global anti-caste movement.”

Mr Muman posed critical questions about the path from analysis to action. "The book acts as a brilliant cartographer of the prison of caste," he observed, "but the blueprint for the escape remains unclear." He questioned whether the "literature of rebellion" could translate into meaningful change and expressed disappointment that the book was "disturbingly silent" about the vibrant anti-caste activism in the UK, which he described as a pioneer in the global movement.

Echoing Ambedkar’s conclusion, Mr Muman emphasised that the annihilation of caste requires confronting Brahminical Hindu dogma—an ideology that Dr Yengde rightly admits in the book. He ended with a powerful quote from Ambedkar on the destructive ethics of caste, underscoring the urgency of the problem Dr Yengde’s book so thoroughly maps.

Engaged Exchange and Critical Dialogue

Responding to both critiques, Dr Yengde acknowledged the challenges raised. “These are not disagreements; they’re necessary provocations,” he said, emphasising that his book was “part one” of a broader project that will explore gender and activism in greater depth.

“Gender erasure is real,” he conceded. “But archives themselves are male-dominated. When women’s experiences are absent from records, we must innovate as researchers, not invent.”

He also noted that Caste: A Global Story aimed to open doors rather than close arguments. “This is an invitation for others to extend the work,” he said. “We must build new epistemes—ones not dependent on the frameworks of others but rooted in our own Dalit and Ambedkarite experiences.”

Questions from the Floor

The audience engaged vigorously during the Q&A, raising questions about comparative frameworks between caste and race, the politics of solidarity, and the potential of digital archives to democratise anti-caste knowledge. One participant asked whether parallels between slavery and caste risked oversimplifying either history.

Dr Yengde replied that the comparison was not meant to flatten distinctions but to create “a grammar of shared pain and shared rebellion.”

Closing Reflections

In his closing remarks, Dr Sarkar praised the panel for its candour and depth, describing the evening as “a dialogue that mirrored the book’s global scope.” He reflected on the enduring relevance of Ambedkar’s vision at LSE and beyond.

As the session ended, guests gathered by the bust of Dr B R Ambedkar in LSE’s atrium, garlanded yet famously without spectacles.  In a light-hearted note, Dr Sarkar mentioned that “There are no spectacles, because we've had seven spectacles made, but someone or the other just comes and takes them, so we don't have spectacles for Doctor Ambedkar”.

(Unofficial third-person summary of event – not a transcript- by Mr Sat Pal Muman)  

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