Our Presidential Event on ‘Caste and its Implications for Sociologies of Inequality’ was held at the London School of Economics on Friday, 6 October 2023 and over 40 people attended across the day.

The keynote speaker was Dr Suraj Yengde, one of India’s leading scholars and public intellectuals. He spoke on the concepts of caste and race and located the discussion within broader sociologies of inequality. His talk was followed by comments from colleagues from across the disciplines of History, Philosophy, and Sociology – Faisal Devji, Professor of Indian History and Fellow of St. Antony’s College, Oxford, Meena Dhanda, Professor of Philosophy and Cultural Politics at the University of Wolverhampton, and John Holmwood, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Nottingham.

Listen to the first panel below.

The second panel consisted of early career scholars working on the intersections of caste. Simple Rajrah, a DPhil student in Politics at the University of Oxford, spoke on ‘History of Dalit-Bahujan Women’s Activism 1924-1956: One Historic Conference, Dr Ambedkar, and a Text’. Kumud Ranjan, an Assistant Professor in Sociology at O. P. Jindal University in India, gave a paper on ‘Reading Caste with Secularization Thesis’. This was followed by a talk on ‘Working Women: Gender, Caste, and Economic Agency’ by Urvi Khaitan, a recently completed DPhil student in Economic and Social History at the University of Oxford.

Listen to the second panel below.