RTB x The Caste Pod: a Crossover episode with Ajantha Subramanian

Summary

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Podcast Summary: RTB x The Caste Pod — A Crossover Episode with Ajantha Subramanian

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: John Plotz
Guest: Ajantha Subramanian, Professor of Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center
Date: July 16, 2026

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Episode Overview

This crossover episode brings together "Recall This Book" and "The Caste Pod," led by anthropologist Ajantha Subramanian. The conversation moves fluidly between the resurgence and transformation of caste politics in India and its transnational echoes, especially in the United States. The episode delves into how older forms of inequality (caste) are repurposed within capitalist democracies, the evolving nature of diaspora identity and activism, the rise of the Hindu right in America, and the role of new media—especially podcasting—as a crucial venue for bridging scholarship, activism, and public discourse.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Persistence and Transformation of Caste

• Caste in Contemporary Contexts
  • Despite being seen as archaic, caste systems have not only survived but have "flourished—arguably even strengthened—in South Asia" by being repurposed for new forms of social and political life. (Ajantha Subramanian, 02:19)
  • Caste markers and meanings have shifted; e.g., Brahmins were once tied to ritual authority and land ownership, now associated more with hyper-urban, diasporic professionalism, but still maintain their elite status. (03:39)
• Structural vs. Agentic Forces
  • The transformation of caste is due to both structural forces and the direct agency of individuals and groups who leverage caste categories in governance.

2. Caste in the Diaspora: U.S. vs. U.K. Contexts

• Migration Streams Shape Caste Expression
  • U.S.: Post-1960s immigration led to a predominantly upper-caste Indian professional class, fitting the "model minority" narrative but concurrently erasing or denying caste oppression.
  • U.K.: More religiously and class-mixed migration created different caste dynamics.
  • “Caste is integral to both transnational mobility and professional success in the US, [yet] has to be negated.” (07:40)
• Rhetoric and Identity Politics
  • Caste is often marked as a sign of "cultural difference," leading some diaspora defenders to claim that critiquing caste is "racism" or anti-Hindu—a contradictory stance that serves to shut down anti-caste advocacy. (08:06)
  • “They want to say both things: Caste is culture...and there’s nothing to see here because caste has not characterized [Hinduism].” (Ajanta Subramanian, 08:23)

3. Podcasting as Praxis: Why “The Caste Pod”?

• Democratizing Discussion & Access
  • Podcasting breaks academic silos, offers immediacy, and expands reach. It emerged as a lifeline during COVID-19, and its conversational format effectively straddles university and public/intellectual spheres. (09:48)
  • The topic of caste is only recently breaking into public discourse in the U.S., especially post-2020 after events like the Cisco discrimination case and Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste book. (10:46)
• Podcast Structure and Guests
  • The show deliberately brings together "scholars and activists or community organizers," often creating episodes that are collaborations between the two—positioning activists as legitimate knowledge producers as well as scholars. (12:34, 14:02)

4. The Three Phases of the “American Sangh” (Rise of the Hindu Right in the Diaspora)

[Segment begins ~16:02]

Phase 1: 1970s–1990s

• First-generation, predominantly upper-caste/class, closely tied to India's RSS; U.S. activities were extensions of homeland concerns ("Karma Bhoomi" serving "Janmabhoomi").

Phase 2: 2000s—Rise of "Hindu American" Identity

• Second-generation focus shifts toward building Hindu American identity, orienting as a U.S. minority while continuing right-wing homeland politics.
• The founding of the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) in 2003 marked a key turning point: It branded itself as a U.S. civil rights organization, legitimizing representation in multicultural America.
  • “They sort of anointed themselves and then had that...accepted by the rest of the civil rights world as...the representative of not just the Hindu American, but the Indian American community.” (Prachi, 30:45)

Phase 3: 2014–Present—Open Alliance with the Far Right

• The rise of Modi (2014) and Trump (2016) catalyzed a more explicit alignment with the U.S. far right. This led to the collapse of the "Modi Democrat" identity and a mushrooming of Hindu Republican groups.
• “After...the honorary chairmanship of the Republican Hindu Coalition by Steve Bannon, it sends a signal to the Hindu right that...white nationalists are willing to build a multiracial coalition and work with you.” (Prachi, 35:58)

5. The Politics of “Civil Rights” and the Question of Caste

• Language as a Weapon
  • The HAF and affiliated groups have shifted language strategically—sometimes acknowledging caste discrimination (e.g., a 2010 report), but quickly retracting or revising under pressure from their right-wing networks. (40:55, 44:11)
  • “Acknowledging the existence of caste would have meant to existentially disturb the edifice upon which the entire project of US Hindutva is based.” (Unspecified Speaker, 44:11)
  • Activists document a clear and sustained pattern: Instrumentalizing civil rights language to defend RSS/BJP interests, weaponizing minority status to shield the Hindu right from scrutiny. (33:23)

6. Caste, Anti-caste, and the Dangers of Organicism

• Organicism as Ideological Glue
  • The Hindu right frames the community as an “organic whole” where caste hierarchies are naturalized. Anti-caste politics is thus seen as an existential internal threat, while Muslims, Christians, etc. are seen as external threats. (Ajanta Subramanian, 47:29)
  • The roots of this ideology trace directly to the 1920s “forging of Hindu unity,” explicitly devised to counter anti-caste and minority claims in colonial electoral politics. (49:07)
  • “From the very outset, the forging of Hindu unity was seen as a necessary counterweight to the fracturing of the Hindu polity.” (Ajanta Subramanian, 49:07)

7. The Gandhi/Ambedkar Divide and the Politics of Representation

• Missed Connections in Transnational Solidarities
  • Dr. B.R. Ambedkar—leader of the anti-caste movement—remains less globally celebrated than Gandhi, despite being a profound thinker of equality and emancipation. His international influence is rising now, especially as more Dalits and marginalized castes join the U.S. diaspora and assert political visibility. (50:28–53:27)
  • “It’s interesting...Not just why Gandhi then, but also why Ambedkar now, because [Ambedkar] does have traction now in a way he didn’t then.” (Ajanta Subramanian, 52:37)

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Notable Quotes

• “I’ve always been really interested in how older forms of inequality get reconstituted under conditions of capitalist democracy.”
  — Ajanta Subramanian (02:19)

• “The model minority status is so dependent on the caste inheritances that allowed [Indians] to migrate...Caste is integral to both transnational mobility and professional success in the US.”
  — Ajanta Subramanian (07:40)

• “Caste is seen as paradigmatic of the subcontinent...which feeds the assumption that caste gets left behind, but it’s a social institution that moves with the people who subscribe to it.”
  — Ajanta Subramanian (05:47)

• “They want to say both things: Caste is culture...and there’s nothing to see here because caste has not characterized [Hinduism].”
  — Ajanta Subramanian (08:23)

• “It’s been so fun to just come up with an ideal list of guests...and no one has said no yet.”
  — Ajanta Subramanian (13:29)

• “The episode that we’re going to listen to today is a collaboration between these two category people [scholars and activists]...the ideological orientation of the podcast is, is a kind of transnational anti-caste approach.”
  — Ajanta Subramanian (14:10)

• “It’s taking my cues from Gramsci; you need these blocs that cross-cut what could be these siloed spaces.”
  — Ajanta Subramanian (56:22)

• “Activists have a more capacious and catholic approach to knowledge than scholars do...this is about forcing scholar listeners to pay heed to this intellectual labor.”
  — Ajanta Subramanian (55:29)

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Memorable Moments & Meta-reflection

• On Podcasting’s Power
  • The hosts and guest reflect on how podcasting has enabled broader, more horizontal dialogue, erasing (at least temporarily) the hierarchy between scholar and activist:
    • “There’s something about the format that levels some of these differences. Someone can be a scholar...but they’re talking about their work [in] similar ways to a group...that produces these [activist] reports.” (Ajanta Subramanian, 54:52)
• On Activism as Intellectual Project
  • “The distinctive intellectual project of activism, and that this is a way to make it visible. That’s such an important angle for thinking about what this new medium can do.”
    — John Plotz (56:00)
• On Transnationalism and “Organic” Nationalism
  • The conversation’s arc, especially in the excerpted “Diaspora Can-Do” episode, masterfully traces how right-wing ethno-nationalist movements (Hindutva, Zionism) mobilize the diaspora to forge transnational alliances, particularly when political climates at “home” and “host” countries become aligned.

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Selected Timestamps for Important Segments

• 02:19–05:04 Ajantha Subramanian explains her interest in the persistence and transformation of caste.
• 07:15–08:57 Discussion of the “model minority,” migration, the denial and rhetorical reshaping of caste in diaspora.
• 09:25–12:20 Why a podcast? The shift from academic fora to broader public discourse and the fusion of scholarship and activism.
• 14:33–15:59 Setup and summary of the Savera reports on the Hindu right’s transnational growth.
• 16:02–30:45 Breakdown of the three phases in the evolution of the “American Sangh” and the rise of the Hindu American Foundation.
• 35:32–40:55 How the HAF publicly oscillated between progressive posturing and defending right-wing interests.
• 44:11–47:12 Strategic erasure of caste issues and the internal policing within diaspora organizations.
• 47:29–49:42 The ideology of organicism and its roots in 1920s counter-anti-caste politics.
• 50:00–53:27 The overlooked legacy of Ambedkar and the changing demographics/politics of South Asian America.
• 54:06–56:44 Meta-reflection on the podcast format, how it bridges scholar–activist divides, and the future direction of “The Caste Pod.”

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Conclusion

This episode richly explores how caste, diaspora identity, and ethno-nationalist politics intersect and transform in transnational contexts, and how new forms of media—like podcasting—can democratize critical discourse and make activist knowledge visible. Ajantha Subramanian’s “The Caste Pod” embodies a scholarly–activist hybridity that pushes conversations beyond the academy, fostering urgently needed dialogue about persistent, shape-shifting structures of inequality.

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Transcript

[John Plotz]

Welcome to the new books network. Hello and welcome to the second ever Recall this book presents today with the creator of a brand new podcast, the Cast Pod. We're going to hear a tempting highlight from a recent episode that brings cast politics into conversation with the ever timely topic of rising ethno nationalism. And we're going to do that with my dear old friend and recall this book stalwart Ajanta Subramanian, professor of Anthropology at CUNY Graduate Center. So Ajanta, thanks for coming. Okay, so I'm just gonna say a little bit about you before we talk about your podcast. So as listeners who probably eagerly devoured her six part series on violent majorities will remember, or even her early Recall this book episode on the Cast of Merit, that was back in the days when we were still hanging up blankets in order to get the perfect sound, you will remember that she is a gimlet eyed anatomist not only of Indian caste politics and how they are internationalized, but also how spaces of international solidarity are up for grabs between what seems to be a waning left internationalism and a waxing set of far right wing politics that somehow find ways to make a nefarious common cause. So I could talk about her for a long time. I could talk about the accomplishments of her first book, Shorelines, Space and Rights in South India, and her current scholarly work in progress, which includes a study of Dalit politics in a gold mining company town in South India, and also on the transnationalization of caste in the United States. But instead, I'm going to pivot back here to the thing we're going to talk about today, which is the Cast Pod. So, Ajenta, you know it's standard to ask you to introduce your project to us, but I thought since we're doing something a little bit unusual here, I would break that up into two different questions and first ask you to just tell us about the current work in progress. What is it that interests you about cast and cast in an international context and so how you came to that. And then we'll move from there to the more specific question of that. Why a podcast? As a way of understanding and exploring that topic.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

Okay, great. My entire kind of scholarly arc as involved caste in one way or the other. And the way I explain that is that I'm. I've always been really interested in how older forms of inequality get reconstituted under conditions of capitalist democracy. So how do, how does something like caste, which is commonly thought of as an archaic social institution whose power is supposed to erode, is Flourishing and. And even arguably getting stronger in South Asia as it gets repurposed for new forms of social life, for new forms of political life. I think for me, what's really fascinating about caste is that it's old and new in that way. It's like raced, which is also old and new.

[John Plotz]

Forgive me, you know, I'm an interrupter. But. So let me, let me. Can I ask about the word repurposed? Just because, as we've frequently discussed in previous episodes, you and Elizabeth are anthropologists and you have a nuanced understanding of social forces. I'm coming from it a little bit as an outsider, as a literary person, but when I hear repurposed, I hear specific agency. Like a somebody is out to do this. Is it. Do you understand it that way or do you understand it more in terms of impersonal structural forces? Yeah. Are there black hats and white hats in your account or how do you.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

I would. I would say it's both. I'm really interested in how caste becomes a category of governance. And when you think about governance, it is both a sort of impersonal structural process. But. But it's also driven by people. Right. I mean, states are populated and a lot of these kinds of initiatives of recruiting caste for projects of governance are interested. Right. There are people behind them that are aiming for certain outcomes. So I would say it's a bit of both. For me, the sort of modern iteration of caste is really attributable to colonial governance. So that's really what I'm interested in. And what that means is that even if caste as a kind of mechanism of social stratification has remained in place, often it's the markers of difference change. Right. That's something that really interests me. Right. Just to give an example, like Brahmins. Right. So Brahmins used to be associated pretty tightly with ritual authority or land ownership. People rarely think of Brahmins in those terms anymore. Right now Brahmins are thought of as like a hyper urban professional class, often diasporic in. In their reach. So these are. And yet they remain in some ways at the top of the totem pole. What Brahman ness means has changed over time, but not so much so that Brahmins have lost their kind of footing.

[John Plotz]

Yeah. So I've listened to every episode with great interest and a couple of huge topics that come up here. Maybe just to throw it out there, you're interested in this as a problem on the Indian subcontinent and you're also interested in its portability in a couple of different Ways in the story that people tell about India, looking at it from afar like this is a foreign problem, but also as a story of diasporic communities and what gets replicated in diasporic communities. Honestly, I remember somebody telling me when I was a kid that caste didn't carry beyond the Indian subcontinent, that it. It was disappeared by diaspora. But obviously that's not the case. And that's part of what your story, you know.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think these two things coexist in a really interesting way that the. The cast is seen as almost like paradigmatic of the subcontinent, stands in for India, right, For the sort of. For Indian cultural difference, which is partly what feeds this sort of assumption that once you leave that territory, caste gets left behind, but it's a social institution, Right. That moves with the people who subscribe to it. And it has. It's come to different parts of the South Asian diaspora. It's taken different forms. I wouldn't say that caste in the US looks exactly the same way that it does either in South Asia or, say, the uk, Partly because the migrant streams have varied. Right. So in the us, the South Asian community is overwhelmingly upper caste, and so that has meant that caste looks a certain way. The migration streams to the UK were quite different. Right. They were working class, they were more religiously mixed, et cetera. Right. So it looks different there.

[John Plotz]

So there's a model of what it means to be, I don't know, a hyphenated Indian American, say, or Anglo Indian, respecting that difference between the UK and the US uptake, which is. Which is partly structured by how race politics work, or like diasporic integration politics work in that country, but also partly shaped by, as you said, the sort of. The cultural apparatus that people are bringing with them and developing it.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

Yeah, yeah. So the fact that the floodgates really opened in the United states in the mid-60s.

[John Plotz]

Right.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

Plays a huge part in the sort of construction of Indian Americans as a model minority. Because the first significant wave was largely professional. Right. So it was a professional class migration that allowed Indians a certain class positioning.

[Prachi]

Right.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

In the us which fit very well with liberal multicultural. Yeah, yeah. The funny thing is the model minority status is so dependent on the forms of the. On the caste inheritances that allowed to migrate. Right. So caste is integral to both transnational mobility and professional success in the US has to be negated.

[John Plotz]

Isn't there a rhetorical move that you talk about in which cast gets marked as a sign of cultural difference so that to criticize cast becomes. Can be Accused as being a form of racism because you're not tolerating the cultural diversity which is expressed through cast. Isn't that a. Yeah.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

So it's funny because I think the people who are very nervous about the cast conversation want to have it both ways, Right? They both want to say caste is culture. Right? And so to criticize caste is to criticize Hinduism. And they want to say there is no caste in Hinduism, that Hindus are this sort of homogeneous, organic whole that don't suffer from these forms of internal stratification. So they want to say both things. Caste is culture. And there's nothing to see here because caste has not characterized so that you

[John Plotz]

just identified why things make for a great intellectual project, which is that when something that people desperately want to hold on to, but they also want to say there's nothing to see here. That's where academics do our best work, I think. Okay, so this is incredibly helpful, and we've already touched on a lot of the topics that come up in many of the episodes of your podcast. So now can we pivot to the how question, which is you've identified a topic that is immensely interesting to you. Why did you decide that a podcast would be a good way of getting at it?

[Ajanta Subramanian]

I'm trying to remember when I first started listening to podcasts. I think it was during COVID My

[John Plotz]

brother's family had a whole thing called the Podcast Walk. It took me a long time to understand it. Four of them would go out, and they would each listen to their own podcast separately. During the pandemic, they would just be walking down the street in four different worlds.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

I was like, wow, that's hilarious.

[John Plotz]

Yeah.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

Yeah. But I think it became, like, a bit of a lifeline. Right. And so I started listening to podcasts. I listened to Recall this book all the time on my walks, and I just. I think it's a really great medium for curating conversations on contemporary issues that straddle the divide between the university and its outsides. There's an immediacy to it. There's a reach, which to me, was very attractive. And I. It's not that cast has not been a topic of debate in the academy. It very much has been, but it's only recently that it became part of public debate in the U.S. i would say 2020 was a real moment when it broke through. And it was partly because of Isabel Wilkerson's book, which sort of brought a lot of these older conversations about how to understand caste and race as comparative and connected forms of stratification.

[John Plotz]

Would you say caste, race and class? Is that a triad or would you just say caste and race?

[Ajanta Subramanian]

So for me, caste, race and class are necessarily interlinked. Yeah, I would say that for Wilkerson, the class piece drops away.

[John Plotz]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

She's much more interested in the kind of psychosocial dimensions of caste and race. She's not really interested in political economy. Right. For me, political economy is key to the whole thing. Right. So there was her book, and then there was this case against Cisco Systems that was brought by the California Department of Civil Rights on behalf of this Dalit employees. But I think these two events converged and caste broke into public consciousness in the US and so it seemed. So I was following that. And I was also part of this movement to make caste a protected category in U.S. anti discrimination law. In fact, Brandeis was the first university to adopt caste as a protected character.

[John Plotz]

I had no idea. Wow.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

Brandeis was the first.

[John Plotz]

Good for us. Good for us. Was it good for us? Did they? Well. Oh, good.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

Absolutely. Absolutely. And then there are a bunch of other universities that followed suit. And then Seattle was the first city to outlaw Cast Detroit Nation. It just seemed like a good time for a podcast.

[John Plotz]

Yeah. And can I follow up on a point about that, which is that actually helps me understand. You made the decision in your episodes. In fact, the episode we're going to listen to is an example of this. You often focused on groups of people and not necessarily scholars, but more, I guess I would call them scholar activists, skactivists. Is that. I don't. They're more political. Political collectives.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

Yeah.

[John Plotz]

So was that a podcast related decision for you too? This is a good way to give voice to people. I don't know. A little bit on the edge of the scholarly conversation.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

Yeah. I would say that those are the two main groups represented.

[John Plotz]

Yeah.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

On the podcast it's scholars and activists or community organizers.

[John Plotz]

Yeah.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

And often the. The episode that we're going to listen to today is a collaboration between these two category people. Right. But sometimes some of the episodes have been just with scholars and others have been just with activists. Yeah. But I would say that sort of the Orient, the kind of ideological orientation of the podcast is, is a kind of transnational anti caste approach. Right. To thinking about society, politics, history, et cetera.

[Prachi]

Great.

[John Plotz]

And okay, so we're. I think we're like a minute away from listening, but maybe a final question would be like, is there something about the decision to turn to podcasts that surprised you? Ideally in a good way, but maybe in a Bad way. Is there some dimension that it opened up that was not available to you in your previous scholarly practice?

[Ajanta Subramanian]

It's been so fun to just come up with the, with a kind of an ideal list of guests and have it happen. I've been able to bring people on who I had imagined talking to, but had never figured out a way to access. And no one has said no yet. From my own sort of understanding of this incredibly complex phenomenon, it's just been so revelatory to talk to folks who are not scholars.

[John Plotz]

But as an anthropologist, you've already learned how to talk to non scholars about your topics. Right.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

But yeah, not always as experts.

[John Plotz]

Right.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

And here it's. I'm talking to non scholars as knowledge producers in their own right.

[John Plotz]

Yeah, right.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

Who are making sort of consequential interventions in the kind of sociopolitical spaces that they inhabit. So it's been pretty amazing.

[John Plotz]

Yeah, that's very cool. Okay, so we're going to now listen to a substantial chunk of episode 10, which is called the Diaspora can do. Right. So maybe you want to just set it up for us a little bit and then we'll listen to about half an hour of that conversation.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

Okay, so this is a, this is an episode with Severa, which is this multi religion, religious, anti caste, multiracial coalition of people who are dedicated to combating the rise of what they call the transnational far right. Sibera has produced these three remarkable reports which look at the growth of the Hindu right in the US from about the 1970s on. And you can see these distinct phases of growth. What happens with the shift from the migrant to the US born generation? Right. How does the politics of the diaspora change over time?

[John Plotz]

And in a part that we don't hear in the excerpt, but I'll just mention it now, you also bring up the direct parallel to Zionism and to the question of the Jewish diasporic experience and how we've seen a drift among. In the Jewish in Jewish immigrant politics as well, like what it means to be defined as the Diaspora. And that of course, is totally familiar to people who listen to the your Violent Majorities episodes with Lori Allen. You've been thinking about what we learn by basically putting Modi and Netanyahu next to one another. Okay, so with that, we're just going to step back here and we're going to join that episode in progress.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

That's great. Of course, all of this is part of remaking the Indian state and remaking Indian society. So how does this project then link up to the Other term, right, which is American Sung. What is the American sunglasses?

[Prachi]

Yeah, I can try and take that on. And I think in one word or in one sentence, the American Sung is the sort of segment or offshoot of this movement operating in the US And I think in these reports, we use these terms, while drawing on a lot of both new and old work on the song that identifies it as a networked entity rather than a single organization or a single ideology, in that the RSS has consistently written about how it understands itself as sort of diffuse and variegated, but ultimately a singular network, in that its basic purpose is not just, I would say, to bring together all Hindus into a commitment to Hindutva, nor is it simply to achieve state power in India, but something a lot deeper, I think, which is to sort of cure Hindus from the effects of what it sees as millennia of weakness and emasculation. The RSS uses sort of sort of immunological language quite often to describe Hindus as a nation that requires organization to be unified and quote, unquote, harmonized. And a lot of this is what we could call a sort of organicist ideology in that they see the Hindu nation as a single organism. And in that sense, this is sort of where ideology and material organization actually overlap in that the network is sort of envisioned as pre. Figurative for the ideology. And so the network is something that will touch each organ within this organism, including if those organs leave the sort of motherland. And I think organicism is really. I find it a really useful way to think of the Hindu far right because you actually see that both caste and Islamophobia are prefigured in the idea of organicism, because the idea of organicism proposes that society is a sort of natural, integral and systemic unit. And that inevitably implies a sort of binary of people who are natural or unnatural to that society, people who are internal and external to it. And so the Muslim, the Christian, and often the Sikh, when they don't conform to that organicist idea, are seen as foreign and seen as worthy of expulsion. But I think we also know that the sort of history of Hindu society being imagined as a body has a long history, and that history is fundamentally rooted in caste. And with the rss, this becomes a sort of material, ecological organizing principle, in that the RSS consistently talks of harmony and unity. But what they mean by harmony and unity, I think are really key to understand where they see any conflict within Hindu society, including what I would say is a sort of just conflict of fighting caste oppression as aberrations. And if they understand Hindu society, with its fundamentally caste nature, as natural and sort of divine. Any attempts to fight caste are seen as aberrations, and most often not just as aberrations. They have to be described as the conspiratorial projects of these outsiders. And so very often you'll hear the VHPA or the Hindu American foundation describe anti caste work as colonial projects, as floyers to divide Hindus. And in that sense, the American Sangh is an extension of this work where this sort of concept of organicism extends into the diaspora, because they see the Hindu nation as having extended beyond the boundaries of India itself. And I think Kratchie mentioned the ways in which they're not particularly committed to sort of 1947 Borders of India in the first place. I think in seeing this also, the one point or the one clarification we would also want to make is that when we use the word American sung, we don't mean that every entity in this network is sort of remote controlled by some RSS executive sitting in Nagpur or Delhi, but that it emerges very clearly, genealogically from this network has the same, not just commitment to ideology, but the same commitment to this sort of ecosystem, this idea that we are all different nodes of a network, that we all have different purposes within this broader organizing project. And in that sense, I would say even more than an ideological commitment, there is a certain organizational commitment to this network. And in many ways it follows not conspiratorially, but actually from the social networks that are produced by sort of concerted organizing. And many of those social networks, I think, map on very closely to caste, and we can get into that as well.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

Great. So what I'd like to do now is walk us through the elaboration of this network and how it has shifted over time, both in terms of its composite parts, but also its tactics. Yeah. So from the reports, I. I got a clear sense of three distinct phases of the development of the American song. Right. And the first phase is the period from the 1970s through the end of the 20th century, when, yes, it's not remote controlled, as you put it, jam, by the Sung in. In India, but in some ways it is in its kind of organizational structures, it is a kind of direct extension of the way the Sung in India is organized. Right. There's a kind of mimicry of institutions and also the use of organizational diffusion as a strategy. Right. So can you just say more about how this strategy played out in the US in that first phase? And also, if there were some early goals of the movement in the diaspora that are worthy of note.

[Prachi]

Yeah, I can get us started. And I think your three phases is really on point as a division. And they actually sort of map on quite well to a generational understanding of our diaspora more broadly, in the sense that the first generation are some of the first immigrants after the 1965 Immigration Act. They are predominantly upper class and upper caste, as you pointed out. They are quite directly, genealogically, and materially and organizationally connected to the rss. It is in fact, on the instructions of the second RSS Supreme Leader Gulwalkar, that Aprachara Mahesh Mehta made his way to the US to basically birth the sort of American version of the Hispanian tree. And I think what's interesting is that for the first two and a half, three decades, this movement is quite fundamentally apathetic to politics in the US it's very concerned about politics in India. And almost all of its work is in that sense, it's the work in the organizing of a first generation immigrant that still sees themselves far more tied to their motherland than to their new territory. And the way some actors would rationalize this was that they have left their Janmabhoomi or their homeland and they found a new karma Bhoomi, or sort of land of work. But that karma Bhoomi is fundamentally or their work in that Karma Bhoomi is fundamentally in service of the motherland. A lot of that changes with the second generation. And I think Prachi can speak a bit more about that. In some sense. Prachi is of that generation as well.

[Unspecified Speaker (likely another activist or scholar involved in the discussion)]

That's right. I mean, yeah, I think. I think the 2002 Gujarat programs and the visa ban, which many of some of the groups that are maybe.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

Can you say more about both for the listeners? Oh, yeah.

[Unspecified Speaker (likely another activist or scholar involved in the discussion)]

Oh, yes.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

Yeah.

[Unspecified Speaker (likely another activist or scholar involved in the discussion)]

So in 2002, in the state of Gujarat, which Modi at the time was a chief minister, there were programs that really targeted an extreme violence against Muslim communities, communities, and in many ways can be held accountable both for allowing the violence to happen. And so a lot of the diaspora at the time that was in the United States was trying to call attention to what was happening and what had happened in Gujarat. And so the first time, when as a chief minister, Modi was coming to the U.S. people mobilized many of these groups who are part of Saveda, were part of different formations then to get the visa banned, and it succeeded. Right. And then the diaspora also entered the second generation that Ram just mentioned. That's the chicken during generation that many of us were Part of, I mean, I came from India, I was born there. But many of the other ones who were actually born in the United States and were part of progressive kind of South Asian organizing were getting attuned to what was happening because of Gujarat. So while the American song mobilized to kind of defend Modi and then also attacked his critiques in the United States, the younger generation of leaders began maybe just pushing for a more sophisticated domestic strategy on behalf of that ideology because they also recognize that the overt Hindu supremacy was not going to fly in the United States. It was a public relations liability. So they had to engage also with the US Politics. Right. Because the second generation was concerned about the US politics, what was happening to them as Hindus in the United States, given that in some ways they're also facing racism or xenophobia in the United States. And so the failure to acknowledge that for the U.S. sung or American song was preventing them informing that distinct Hindu American identity in the US and so among the second generation of Indian diaspora, that kind of establishing this Hindu American identity was very important and I think is a conscious strategic choice which was designed to appeal to these US race generation and also deflect kind of this growing criticism that the entire network was just a foreign operation or foreign proxy operation to support Modi and Hindutva and its agenda. So this kind of transition from an extremely focused support system only to support the work and the politics of the Janmabhoomi in India to now domestically embedded political force in the United States, which was also given that the wealth and the growing kind of wealth of the Indian and Hindu community in the US There was a lot of opportunities there to become that political force. So during that period is when organizations like Hindu America foundation are formed and they are offering a way for second generation communities to come into their fold. So these groups established this unique Hindu American identity by appealing to this second generation of Indian Americans who, you know, who are seeking really a cultural connection of Hinduism there. They want to know about what this religion that their parents are part of, they want to connect with that and have pride in that.

[John Plotz]

Right.

[Unspecified Speaker (likely another activist or scholar involved in the discussion)]

So this wasn't just kind of a cynical ploy, it was also an attempt to really genuinely construct this fusion of milquetoast American liberalism and right wing homeland conservatism as well.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

It seems like the Hindu American foundation is a kind of key marker of this transition. Right. So HAF is founded in 2003. It identifies as a US civil rights organization and that seems that self definition seems critically important. So what is significant about this claim to being a US Civil rights organization and how is it different from the public stances of, you know, of the predecessors, you know, whether it's the Hindu swine Sevak Sangh, which is modeled after the rss, or the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, which is modeled after the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of India, or the Hindu Students Council, which is also modeled after the kind of student wing of the movement in India. So what, what is it that the HAF is signaling through this claim to being a civil rights organization and why is it significant?

[Prachi]

Yeah, I can try and take that. I think the starting point is just that the VHPA or HSS did not see themselves making representational claims to start. They didn't see themselves as an American constituency in this sort of multicultural fabric that we thought she was emerging. Obviously, I think the Hindu American foundation describing itself as a civil rights group was something that they could do and have that self definition received with a degree of deference, as Prachi described, because there was no one else on the table, so to speak. And so by default, they sort of anointed themselves and then had that anointing sort of accepted by the sort of rest of the civil rights world as sort of the representative of not just the Hindu American, in fact, but the Indian American community or the, even the South Asian American community more broadly.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

So, I mean, one thing that's quite striking is that the cracks in the Hindu American Foundation's facade, I'm going to go ahead and call it a facade of progressive advocacy, emerge very soon after the organization is founded. One of the co founders of the haf, Asim Shukla, comes out against Human Rights Watch report on the Gujarat Pogram accuses Human Rights Watch of character assassination, blames Muslims for the violence. So it seems like, yes, they're sort of projecting themselves as this kind of civil rights group that is principally about, you know, minority religious and cultural rights, that they're very much aligned with sort of progressive American values. Uh, but, you know, very soon after they start taking these public positions that seem antithetical to progressivism. My sense is that that double speak doesn't really sort of explode into the open and become consequential until the 2010s when there's a more overt alignment with, with the far right. So tell us a little bit more about this kind of middle period. Right, the, the. From 2003 to the 2010s, when they're trying to have it both ways.

[Prachi]

Yeah, I think one way to put it is that this facade or the reality behind that facade was always visible, internal to the community. I would say my elders and mentors have always seen HAF for what it is. And I think along multiple axes, whether that's caste, whether that's the way in which groups like HEF understood the relationship between the Hindu community and sort of sibling communities like the Muslim or Sikh American communities, and indeed their relationship with sort of foreign politics and their continued defense of the Hindu right in India on all of those axes, I think HAF made its colors quite clear. We've documented a pretty extensive record of anti Muslim speech, of hosting or defending or collaborating with anti Muslim actors, and a sort of continuous attempt to influence policy in Washington D.C. in a way that cannot really be justified as protecting the interests of a domestic minority. The only consistent pattern we found in that research, and we documented quite extensively in the report, was its fidelity, I would say, to the RSS BJP project and its need to defend them by instrumentalizing this sort of language of civil rights and minority representation. To say, and it's quite powerful, I think, when you are able to claim this defense in the language of the rights of your constituents as Hindu Americans. And I think that sort of connection is quite pernicious. It sort of weaponizes the genuine need for Hindu Americans in all minorities to have representation and sort of weaponizes it for this quite pernicious purpose.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

So this third phase, 2014, Modi becomes Prime Minister. 2016, Donald Trump becomes president. So would you say that this is the period when the true face of the Hindu American foundation comes to be seen not just for internal critics, but also to the larger landscape of progressive organizations in the United States?

[Prachi]

Yeah, and I think this accelerates, especially after 2019, I would say. And what I think is quite a landmark moment is the co or the honorary chairmanship of the Republican Hindu Coalition by Steve Bannon. And it sort of sends a signal, I think, to the Hindu right that the sort of most avowed white nationalist is willing to build a multiracial coalition and willing to work with you. And so I think what you see then is the category of the Modi Democrat that I think had been quite active and live for the decade before 2019. Let's say you see that start to collapse and you see that start to collapse out of both the push and a pull in that. There is this push pull coming from segments of the American far right and the MAGA coalition that are trying to bring in non white groups. And this is really accelerated by the two events with Modi and Trump that you have in September 2019 and then February 2020 in Houston and Ahmedabad respectively. But I also think it's important to mention that there is a push as well in that within the Democratic Party and then within the sort of progressive landscape and then within the Indian American community, there is more and more opposition to ATF and less and less of an ability for it to walk into those sorts of spaces and be accepted as the sole representative of the community. And so more and more Eichir's position in these spaces is challenged. I think that's visible, for example, in the way the Hindu right responded to quite limited mentions of the abrogation of Article 370 in Joe Biden's manifesto or his concern over the CANRC. Those are the types of things that make the Hindu right feel more and more that if Joe Biden is saying this, and if all of these progressive actors are critiquing us or showing our true face in these spaces, why not go to the right who's really welcoming us in an unprecedented manner? And after that, Republican Hindu coalition. I think the number of groups that fuse a Republican and a Hindu identity really mushroom. And I think where we are today, it's obviously much more difficult to be analytical when moments are so, when the moment we're in is so crazy. But it does feel like the sort of Modi Democrat has cracked in a way that is probably likely to be irreplaceable. I don't think we're going to come back to a type of liberalism that can hold that right wing coalition. And this is even though there are pretty deep contradictions that have emerged between the MAGA coalition and the Hindu right. But I don't think the people who are finding discomfort with MAGA are necessarily going to fall comfortably into being progressives or Democrats. And so for a lot of us, I think the question of what happens is still unknown. But I don't think we're just going to return back to where we were 20 years ago.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

I want to talk about Hindutva and Zionism because I think that there's very similar processes underway in terms of the increasing inability to hold that contradiction right between claiming a progressivism in the United States and defending the emergence of a kind of ethno nationalist far right in one's putative homeland. I want to get to that a little bit later, but I want us to focus just a little bit more closely on the role of caste. So in 2010, the Hindu American foundation published this report, right, entitled Hinduism Not Caste in Caste not cast in caste. Right. And that report acknowledged caste based discrimination as a serious issue, one that needed to be addressed. Etc. A year later it reissued the report with major revisions. I wonder if you can say something about what these revisions were and what they suggested about the organization's shifting stance on the relationship between Hinduism and caste.

[Unspecified Speaker (likely another activist or scholar involved in the discussion)]

Yeah, it's a really good question. And I think it gets to the heart of HIF's kind of evolving of caste positions and also the limits of its ideological flexibility within the Hindu far right. 2005, two years after its founding, HAF first teamed up with other groups and other Hindu supremacist groups in California to aggressively push for public school textbook revisions. And the central demand then was deleting the references to caste or benignly reframing it as mere kind of social classes or this innocuous division of communities. And they tried to remove the term Dalits, which is a term that's a chosen political self definition of groups. That's previously called untouchables. Right. This is important term that comes from the community. So they wanted to remove the term. They also made attempts to frame Hinduism as the single monotheistic religion religion, or overlooking its kind of diverse and non standard interpretations and effort to depict Christians and Muslims as foreigners. So that was part of what they tried to do within that too. And this established their initial goal to systematically kind of erase and whitewash caste based discrimination and understanding of what caste looks like from the public narrative in the United States. And then you go to 2010 ha publishes this not cast and cast report. And on the surface it was an outlier. It acknowledged, like you said, caste discrimination is a serious civil rights and human rights issue. So this document perhaps existed at the peak of HF's attempt to present itself as this liberal alongside the effort on kind of queer rights, environmental justice, as you know, be standing with these issues as well. So then 2011 haf, I think because it got serious pushback from Hindu far right siblings or the organizations they were truly connected to, then they capitulated and then produced this kind of update. So I think really it shows that acknowledging the existence of caste would have meant to existentially disturb the edifice upon which the entire project of US Hindutva is based. Right. So claim to a homogeneous kind of ethnic identity without talking about the internal differentiations. I think in short, the 2010 report was an intellectual engagement that angered its political base. And then 2011 revision is kind of a political corrective that maintained their broader project, which is to secure a Sanitized, monolithic, historically oppression free narrative of Hinduism of, you know, cast as these benign division of different people existing, you know, equally within the communities. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's. It's strategic, really.

[Prachi]

Yeah. The one thing I would add is that this whole incident, I think also speaks to the ability of the SUNG to sort of discipline the groups within it, that if HAF was as committed to civil rights as it was to its partners in the American Song, it would have perhaps been able to stand by the 2010 report, but it was not. It was embedded in these networks and it were their donors and their fellow Hindutva organizations that spoke out against it. And I think the other quite interesting parallel, I think, is that if you look at sort of reform or Hindutva's emergence from 19th century reform movements, many of these reform movements emerge from a similar encounter with the West. And at least a minority of these movements in moments sought to dismantle caste. But a majority of them did precisely what Prachi mentioned, which was were more interested in protecting Hinduism and Hindu pride and the image of Hinduism than actually addressing the scourge of caste within them. And the RSS and the Hindu right, we know, emerges from that specific strand of, I don't think you can call it reformism anymore, of a sort of wounded chauvinism. And it added onto it this sort of militant outlook and a desire for organized power. And so I think what you see is that, and I think in thinking about Hindutva and caste, I wouldn't say that the Hindutva movement is always the most explicitly casteist force around. There are more casteist forces out there, I think. But the way in which, as Prachi mentioned, the Hindu right has this sort of reactionary response to anti caste activism through the organs and the appendages of the RSS is I think, quite unparalleled. And I think it goes back to understanding the ways in which their ideas of harmony and unity, that lower caste oppressed caste groups have to stay within the hold of Hinduism. I think that's sort of core to this. And if anything, it's more. It's sort of especially virulent in the diaspora simply because of the sort of demographic dominance of upper caste groups where, if you looked at the Hindu right today, the Hindu right in India is much more wary and seeks much more to appear conciliatory along lines of caste. And that's really not the case. And both this incident and the type of politics we have in 2026 speak to that.

[John Plotz]

Okay. That is great. Unpack and contextualize it for us a little. How do you think about what we heard there? Can you say more about the specificity of caste? So there's all these complexities of caste's sedimentation. So how does that. Yeah, how does that play into this politics?

[Ajanta Subramanian]

I. One of the things that John says in the episode, which I think is super interesting is he talks about how this ideology of organicism is really key to Hindu. Right. And so this is this notion that all Hindus have this kind of like blood tie, Right. This sort of familial connection to one another. And within that framing of the Hindu anti caste politics. So any sort of challenge to the caste order is seen as this grave threat. Right. To this kind of. To this organic integrity. Right. Of the Hindu community. So anti caste politics is in some ways seen as an internal threat to this organic integrity. And non Hindus, sort of Christians and Muslims in particular, are seen as an external threat. So it's really important for the Hindu nationalist movement to respond to the threat of anti caste politics by both incorporating oppressed caste groups and suppressing dissent. This is really key. And one of the things that Prachi says in the episode, that the very origins of the Hindu right in India, which is the 1920s, this movement emerged in Nagpur, which is the city in western India. And it was intended to be a counterweight to forms of anti caste politics that were gaining ground. Right. So from the very outset, the forging of Hindu unity was seen as a necessary counterweight.

[John Plotz]

Yeah.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

To the fracturing of the Hindu polity. And the reason why this becomes so important in the 1920s is not just because they're picking up on growing fascism in Europe, of ethnostates that emerge out of European fascism, but they're also dealing with an emerging electoral politics, a politics of representation within colonial India. Right. In which a Hindu majority has to be both conceptualized and forged and bear to caste becomes this incredibly threatening source of. What do you call it? Disintegration.

[John Plotz]

Yeah. So that's incredibly helpful. And I think, I imagine we have a lot of listeners here who probably need to get educated on some of the subtleties of this. But one topic that you brought up in an earlier episode, one of your two California episodes, but it was about, is there a King Ambedkar reading group, is that right, that you were talking about?

[Ajanta Subramanian]

The Embedkar King Study Circle.

[John Plotz]

Ambedkar King Study Circle, yeah. So I was wondering if you could say a little bit about Ambedkar as a potential revolutionary pathway in India. That which was like right alongside Gandhi. And I think it's so easy. Gandhi had this migratory possibility for Western uptake that Ambedkar never quite had. And it feels like it might be bound up in the point you're making there about the electoral politics of the late colonial era.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

Yeah. One of the things that has come out in several of the episodes is this tension between anti caste and anti colonial politics that actually for a lot of caste oppressed communities and especially for Dalits, colonial modernity was a site of promise. Right. It promised an escape from certain forms of caste, labor, caste, disability.

[John Plotz]

And there's a story of conversion as well to Buddhism or I imagine to Christianity as well as a way of

[Ajanta Subramanian]

like there were these mass conversions to what were seen as more universalist faiths that held out the promise of equality in a way that Hinduism never could.

[John Plotz]

Yeah.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

So. Yeah. And Gandhi of course becomes the kind of icon of anti colonial nationalism. And. And as you said, John, Gandhianism as a philosophy travels and it's carried to places well beyond the subcontinent.

[John Plotz]

Yeah.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

In a way that Ambedkar ism doesn't.

[John Plotz]

Yeah.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

Which is interesting because Ambedkar himself came to Columbia University. He got his PhD at Columbia, he worked with Dewey. So he's a fascinating figure, but for reasons that should be obvious, he didn't have the kind of leverage.

[John Plotz]

Yeah.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

That a Gandhi did. Right. And in fact, for anti colonial nationalists, his unwillingness to accept kind of caste Hindu leadership as inherently emancipatory was a real problem.

[John Plotz]

Just to bring this back to what I think of as the agenda take on it, which is that you're always looking for moments where people have clocked what other people are doing elsewhere in the globe. And it does feel like a sad missed connection of history that Gandhi got taken up for, as you're saying, because of the anti colonial politics, but that the full implications of the anti caste politics of Ambedkar were missing. I think people were, I don't know, people outside India didn't know how to read it in a way. Yeah.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

And I think now there's a. It's interesting. One of the episodes is with this historian, Nico Slate.

[John Plotz]

Yes.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

Sort of tracked in actions these movements in India and the United States. And part of what we puzzled through in that episode was. Yeah. Not just why Gandhi then, but also why Ambedkar now, because it does have traction now in a way he didn't then. Right. And now it's more sort of bi directional. So in the 1970s in India, you had the formation of the Black of the Dalit Panthers. Right. Who took their cues from the Black Panther. So the American, American black power, American civil rights had traction among kind of Dalit movements in India as far back as the 1870s. They were writers in India who were talk. Who were talking about touchability as a form of slavery then. But today, if you look at the way Ambekar is circulating, it's amazing.

[John Plotz]

Right.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

And I think it has to do in part with the changing demographics of the South Asian population in the US you have more oppressed caste communities who have made their way over here. They have become much more politically visible.

[John Plotz]

So I think it's a tribute to the success of your podcast that we've just kind of dived into the subject matter. But can we conclude by just stepping out and reflect, doing a meta reflection on what it has been like for you to do this as a podcast? So you have an arc. You have 10 episodes already. I know from talking to. You've got a music episode coming. You have other things coming. Tell me about the trajectory of deciding to do it as a series, a series of podcasts.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

Yeah. It's again, it's been really fun to just brainstorm guests and reach out to them and create a platform for these conversations. I am going to try to maintain this kind of dual focus on scholarship and activism. I think it's important to place the kind of knowledge production that comes out of organizing labor on par with knowledge production in the academy. I want us to be able to think of these as different genres of knowledge production about cast. Right. And to think about what we gain from one or the other.

[John Plotz]

Right? Yeah.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

Yeah.

[John Plotz]

Can I just say that's an amazing argument in favor, which I'd never thought of before, in favor of the genre of the podcast.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

There's something about the format that. That levels some of these differences. So somebody can be a scholar who's published 10 monographs, but they're talking about their work in similar ways to a group like S that produces these reports. And I want to take the report as a kind of. As a sort of intellectual artifact as I take them on the graph.

[John Plotz]

Yeah, that's great. Footnotes matter so much. Show notes are basically just foot footnotes, and we. We shouldn't denigrate that. That's a great thing. The foot. The show notes are for people who want to go further. For me, it was great to have a link to those reports.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And in some ways, I think activists have a more capacious and catholic approach to knowledge than scholars do. Most activists are Voracious. They read everything. Scholars tend to be much more tied back in what. So in a way, this is about forcing scholar listeners to, you know, to pay heed to these.

[John Plotz]

Yeah.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

Electrical labor.

[John Plotz]

Yeah.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

To return the favor, in a sense.

[John Plotz]

Dude, again, I just have to say I really think what you have done, even just in these 10 episodes, is super inspiring, and I hope you will continue because it seems to me you have a really. You've tapped into a really rich vein here and the point you're making there about the. This kind of activism. Yeah. The distinctive intellectual project of activism, and that this is a way to make it visible. That's. I just think that's such an important angle for thinking about what this new medium can do.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

Yeah. It's taking my cues from Gramsci, for whom you need these blocks that. That cross cut what could be these siloed spaces. Right. And I want. I want the podcast to do its part in trying to illuminate existing blocks and maybe even contribute to making new connections.

[John Plotz]

So we. What you're saying is we need transnational podcast walks. Is that crossing borders with the podcast? Yeah. Okay, cool. Thank you. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Is the Cast Pod. Yes. Who do you give credit to for coming up with the title of the Cast Pod? Is that Vince? Is it?

[Ajanta Subramanian]

I think that was Vince. I think that was my partner who comes up with all of my titles because I love those titles.

[John Plotz]

Oh, good. Okay. Well, yeah, keep up the good work. Yeah.

[Ajanta Subramanian]

It has been really fun. And I have to say, you are the one who pushed me to do this. The first time I ever hosted a podcast was on Recall this book, and I got a taste for it. And you are the one who's, like, the first.

[John Plotz]

The first sample. The first sample is free, so. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Keep up the good work. We're going to be admiring you from afar. And Jensen, thank you so much. And to everybody out there, thanks for listening. Recall, this book is the creation of John Plotz and Elizabeth Ferry. Sound editing is by Nawal Irfani, and music comes from a song by Eric Cheslow and Barbara Cassidy. We gratefully acknowledge support from Brandeis University and its Mandel center for the Humanities. We always want to hear from you, our listeners, with your comments, criticisms, or suggestions for future episodes. Finally, if you enjoyed today's show, please forward it to five people a write a review and rate us wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.