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A
Hello everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
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B
Hello, I'm Nicholas Gordon, host of the Asian Review of Books podcast, done in partnership with the New Books Nowhere. In this podcast we interview fiction and non fiction authors working in around and about the Asia Pacific region. Caste is a huge topic of conversation in modern India, yet debates about crass discrimination have spread beyond South Asia. CAST activists looked to African American literature and leaders to connect their fight with the fight against racism in the US and as Indians moved around the world to America, to elsewhere in Asia and to the Middle east, the way they thought about caste changed. Siraj Millingyengda tackles this global angle in his latest book, Cast a Global Story out earlier this year from Hearst. Suraj is a Professor of History in Africana Studies and a Ford Foundation Presidential Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. His Prior appointments were W.E.B. dubois Fellow at Harvard University, Senior Fellow and Postdoc at the Harvard Kennedy School, and a non resident Fellow at the Hutton center for African and African American Research. He is also the author of Cast Matters. So Siraj, thank you so much for coming on the show today to talk about your book. What motivated you to write this book, Cast a Global Story? What's missing from how we discuss CAST that you felt like you needed to bring in this global angle?
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C
Thank you so much Nicholas for having me. I know We've been going back and forth for a couple of months now. But I really appreciate you reaching out and I'm really excited for our conversation at arb. The premise of the book was, you know, as a writing the book, it kind of begins with my own story. Growing up in a small town district headquartered in Nanded, which is like middle of nowhere. And you almost don't go there for, you know, for extreme reasons, for example, apart from religious purposes. So it's not really a town that one would want to visit or one would even know. It's like there, but right there, there was this entire global movement of anti caste people who were fighting against the injustices of caste, but they were also someone who were rooted in politics of internationalism. So the Dalits there didn't see themselves as merely victims of the Indian caste system. They looked at themselves as a broader condition that they contributed to, to kind of a new world politics, if you will, the global picture in that, in that sense. And so when I, I kind of. My father was someone who kind of initiated me into this.
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B
He.
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C
I remember him, you know, we had a black and white television, TV, 14 inch, small one. And one day, I think it was in the 90s or early 2000s, when Kofi Annan was, you know, inducted as the U.S. secretary general. That's when. That's when he kind of showed me. So he was very insistent that he said, come here, look at that. You know, a black man, you know, is now the Secretary General. And I think it was, you know, the late 90s when that kind of etched. But that just remained with me. It's like, okay, whatever. So, you know, as my career took too many places, you know, things kind of keep meeting you. So sometimes things we do in our life as a person, as an individual, it keeps coming back to you in various ways. And so this is how it came back. I went to then, you know, study overseas. And then when I. That's when I went to America when I realized that I was part of an active anti caste Ambedkarai movement and I was seeing that it is shaping itself, but I was just not sure where it's going to land. And you know, because I had already had a PhD and I was doing archival research and also ethnography in South Africa, now here I was and I knew that would do something. I was just not sure. This was 2015, not until 2010, or rather 2018, when 2017, rather. Somebody, an activist who's featured here, Dr. Lakshmi Verwa, he sent me his box of his life's work. And I was like, wow, this is great. I was living, you know, in a rented kind of apartment in an attic in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And I was like, I don't know, I don't even have a place for these many boxes. So that's how it kind of came about in 2000s when, you know, Covid happened and I was invited to write an article for one of India's very reputed magazines. That's when I dig into the archives. Friends read it and this is originally, you should write more on solidarity. I remember in New York, after this was published, I was having a chat with friends and then I'm like, you know what? Let me just do that. And you know, I mean, I think it may have happened with you. And many of us, you know, we were, we were sort of, sort of part of this thinking that Covid and its apocalyptic nature was really weighing on us. And, and so then I went to, you know, that's how I kind of took along. So I wrote this book as I went to uk, I moved out of Cambridge, Massachusetts. I went to the UK to pursue my second doctorate. And then I did simultaneously. And I don't recommend people to do two projects at the same time. It was just too different and too difficult rather.
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B
So how does the anti caste struggle kind of begin in India? How did the politics develop over time?
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C
I mean, the anti caste struggle is, if you look at, in the modern era, it kind of begins during the colonial times in 19th century. Then it takes, you know, it has a more formidable, more organized structure in the 20th century, early 20th century, when, you know, the British are still kind of negotiating, engaging with the diverse constituency of their colony. They're opening up sort of a little bit of opportunities. I mean, they have a, they have a bigger plan, they want to have this tight control. The colonial regime is extremely, as it goes elsewhere, very penal in their approach. But also, you know, they're kind of, you know, this is the, this is the time of exploration. They're exploring spirituality, they're exploring all kinds of traditions and manifestations and that are showing up. And so this is the time also when, you know, by accident, the Antichrist movement also gets the wind of it. And so as it develops itself, it finds more, more spread in various quarters. So it starts with kind of being an urban, mostly military retirees who are Dalits. They kind of take, you know, on the responsibility of fighting against the system, the indiscriminate system of caste. And that's the time when, you know, In South India they've been already in Tamil speaking region. They're already kind of leading a movement. In Kerala we have so North India, we have, I mean Bengal and so forth. So there are clusters of amazingly diverse and you know, focused movements led by very charismatic leaders in all parts of India. But then there comes this time when one singular person becomes the kind of center of attention and he assumes the national role of being the leader of the dalits. Who is Dr. BR Ambedkar has, you know, higher education studies abroad degrees in finance and economics, you know, hands streaks and anthropology. He's basically a bookish guy at Columbia. In three years, I think I was recording, I think he took 58 courses in three years. Which is crazy, right? I mean we think about ourselves and it's like, wow, this is amazing, this is fascinating. And so he comes back and then he gets also a barrister degree because you know, being barrister lawyer helps you also. He on the side has a, because he has a degree in finance and he's an expert in tax, but he think that he maybe he will start a consulting firm for investment in trades and stocks, you know. But all while he's been faced with this big wall of caste and the entire community is dependent on him and you know, he can't really focus on his many other problems. You know, individual, personal, financial, familial and at the same time it's caste. So the anti caste movement sort of takes shape under that kind of absence or lack of resources to then really putting itself at the center of India's nationalist freedom struggle. And the British start to pay attention to it because we get this extremely eloquent person who went to Columbia University, went to London School of Economics. So he has all those credentials that the empire would necessarily pay attention to. And then there we go, you know, he kind of earns that pedigree and within that he doesn't assimilate. His focus remains very anti caste. He writes in English, he also writes in Marathi and he is polyglot. But then that's the kind of movement centers around him. And then he kind of gets all other branches of the Dalits from various states to kind of align and leads this massive, massive civil rights struggle that the region had seen.
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B
So you know, it can be easy to kind of compare caste discrimination with other forms of prejudice and I think particularly, particularly racial prejudice, which, which is, which is a kind of a common comparison you make in your book. And we'll get into that specific, in some specific examples of how people tried to draw inspiration from from other forms of kind of anti prejudice movements. But you know, in, in your mind, I mean, what are these parallels between racism and casteism? You know, how are these dynamics of pers and how are they different?
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C
I mean, to begin with, race and caste. And this is my PhD thesis where I can investigate the itinerary, what Dumont called itinerary in this case, this kind of intellectual journey of race and caste. What are the registers that they come through? What are the manifestations and how they really show up? Right. And, and, and, and then we see in that they pretty much have similar kind of origin in modern ways. You know, the, the etymology they kind of originate, the purpose and the existence may be different. Right. I mean race in this sense is not really race as a proto race argument. Many people in antiquity or the medieval era put forward, right. They really advance and advantage a dialogue on looking at possibilities of having a capitalist intervention to make this modern manifestation of race. So race in that sense is not as old though scholars have kind of tried to examine it through looking at various kind of artworks and so forth. But Dr. Ambedkar and many other scholars have refuted that argument because race cannot really individually silo itself. It has to exist as parallel. And it is not like just the binaries that race has created. Like today we understand white versus the rest, which is an incorrect way of looking at race, especially in certain centers. America is an example. But however, the parallels between race and caste, on the other hand become far too prominent for one to not register their equivalence. And the first is it's, you know, it's a systemic hierarchy that has been created. It is also kind of a given identity that one is trying to wrestle against. It's also how one is marked into a census register. And also the social dynamics around distribution of state resources are defined by these anchors. Their origins, modern origins are similar, but the kind of historical long journey they have are very, very. Caste comes across as like the deciding factor in this way and therefore cast, we notice, is much more applicable because you know, convolutes us or it pits the society structure against capitalist structure. And then you see that the outcome of that is what we have various hyphenated like hierarchies where one doesn't have escape. That's why, you know, within the native communities, Elvic as well, like in American, Native American communities like Jack defores had understood the situation as caste because there's no escape. So that's kind of perma structure. The parallel here are also about the modern avatar of this, where the Dalits and the black people are unlike anti colonial forces in the sense that they are not fighting to create a new state or against the hegemonic order of state, to have their own kind of secessionist movement. They are trying to create more space from within the existing structure of constitution and state that they belong to. Right? And so that's the kind of commonality and that's why their struggles kind of are related. Because both of them are fighting for civil, political and economic justice within the framework of the state and constitution. They're not asking to blow up the state or structure like many other revolutionary groups are. And then there are also kind of cultural negotiations that they do through their own effective policies and politics that they usher. So we notice this happening across the board within the parallels of race. And here I'm specifically talking about when I say race, the American black people vis a vis Dalit people in India. And I think that's the kind of cast race comparison I would like to kind of confine my discussion and argument to.
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B
So one thing you study in your book are kind of the connections between or the inspiration that they kind of some anti caste. So some anti caste activists took from black literature, black discussions of racism in America. And I wonder if you might talk a little bit more about those influences and those inspiration.
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C
That's right. As you read in the book, there's an entire chapter dedicated. And so what I did also Nicholas here is we have heard within, it's kind of a well known fact among the Dalit circles, among the some black intellectual circles about these connections. But there was nothing enough. Much of it was either hearsay or a fragmented evidence of, you know, some communication to boys writing to Ambedkar Jyotira Phuler dedicating his thing to the abolitionists in the 19th century, his book Slavery, comparing that kind of struggles identical to, you know, to the end of caste slavery that he saw, which he called the thraldom of Ramanik or Brahmins. And that's the kind of anchor that we can exercise as a methodological inquiry. Now what I mean by that, simply put, is as follows, that the registers of black resistance was well known because. And again the book kind of goes into it that there was an active African American media, which is, which was, you know, pretty active. And there's so many newspapers. In fact, I had written this article for Public Culture called Dalit in Black America. And I was looking at this African American archives and how they assumed it represented the Dalit struggle. And that was kind of a very Interesting point of departure. Right. And why we see that, why we notice that, is because the black struggle at this point, and I'm Talking about the 19th, late 19th, early 20th century, is really creating its own space. It's carving its niche. Not just Harlem Renaissance, but also black political leaders, especially the ones who do what the outcome of the great migration that happens from south to north in big cities like Chicago, New York, Boston, you know, they are now, they are now becoming the. Becoming an active citizen of the politics, but also the public imagination. And so they are aligning and so forth. So that's how we see, that's the kind of reason where the Dalits here then are reading about it in magazines like the Dalit panthers of the 1970s, are reading about the struggle in Time magazine and so forth. So, so you see this huge leap from the beginning of 20th century to the second half of the 20th century, that phase is clouded with movements like decolonization, anti colonial kind of revolutions, nationalisms, a third world nationalism and so forth taking place in that the Dalits find a kind of a sibling ness among, within the black people. And that's why you will see especially the literary field, the Dalit intellectuals who primarily wrote in Marathi, took on that and expanded that. However they were articulating from their very unique rural or urban caste point of view as a Dalit person. The black situation, on the other hand, was having a very different approach to the topic when it came to understanding revolutions. I mean, you know, because black as a figure, like we see the invisible man that we notice, you know, with the famous title of, of the book where, where. Where we, where we, where we see, where we see this happening. Right? And that's how the Dalit literature sort of takes on, you know, not just this kind of, you know, within this paradox of, you know, looking at oneself as an outcast, as a body which is marked, but also experiencing on daily basis. And that's how the literature connections kind of continue very actively. And you will see that me kind of alerting some of those archives because some of these really belong to the region I come from, you know, so it was like four or five hours drive or train journey from my town to Aurangabad. And I could kind of, you know, pick this up and write about it. This episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels and music are made for each other. They share a rhythm in the craft of making something timeless while being a part of legendary nights. From backyard jams to sold out arenas There's a song in every toast please drink responsibly. Responsibility.org Jack Daniels and Old no. 7 are registered trademarks. Tennessee Whiskey 40% alcohol by volume. Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee At New.
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D
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- [22:34]
B
Did you kind of learn or observe as you were, as you were doing kind of your, your field work on Cast in, in Trinidad, I think, you.
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C
Know, the Trinidadian part was kind of came to me naturally, right Because I was in this state of. So see when I went to South Africa first time I had read a lot of literature and you know, many doctoral students, graduate students will be able to kind of endorse that, you know, the earlier years are, you know, kind of great years because they're exploring the new topic, right? So you're reading widely, you're reading diagonally, you're little latitude. I mean it's across reading, reading, reading. And so this is where I discovered my love for this history because the history literature was just fascinating. It gave so much and you know, this is the history writing of the, you know, 1970s, 80s that I was accessing and this is where I kind of got a hint of Trinidad caste system. And I was like, huh, this is great, let me try to explore. And that's when I went to, you know, that's how I decided to go to Trinidad. And I was going there to really because there were a few work, there was one work done, you know, edited by Barry Shorts, Barton shorts in the 1960s and he had collected edition. He himself was a Tinder Din Scholar and, you know, I was really putting myself into his shoes. Like, imagine, you know, going 1960s, it's summer, tropical summer, you know, and, you know, one of those kind of beautiful nostalgic images he paints, but he then talks about caste, you know, and I was like, well, that's interesting. And so I literally set myself to kind of follow into his footsteps, to see what is the situation. Now he argues then that in his research he didn't. I mean, he notices various castes. He also registers the cast of the Dalits and how they have kind of, you know, evolved out of their kind of lower identity. But yet 1960s caste register and Dalit identity was still present. But when I went now, that Dalit identity sort of was absent. Like I couldn't find anyone who would identify him or herself as a Dalit, though I found one who could find himself as one of the lower caste because he was a pandit, as in a priest, and he was a non Brahmin priest. And so the story kind of works through him as to why he's pandit, but he's a non Brahmin. So that's his tryst with his sort of fate where he looks at his own enigma of being a pandit who is a trained man, who is extremely handsome in his ways of commanding the Sunday gathering. But majority, or rather significant portion of people who come, there are people from non Brahmin background. So there is caste, but there is not a Dalit. And that's the kind of story I was kind of investigating. Like, you know, so I was thinking if it's. But in. In its true sense, if you look at archives, which is where I went in, In. In. In port, in. In. In. In. Not just in. In Trinidad, but also I, I went to the archives in other regions to, To. To really see that, you know, where, where can I find this, this, this, this specific location of Dalit? And so then, you know, Port of Spain became a kind of a point of contact because inadvertently there were the registers of the earlier boats that had come and they have very nicely preserved it. Very kindly done this kind of. And so out of that. But also other scholars who have researched that, like Peter van der Wer, Stephen Vertowoerk, these are like earlier scholars who are amazingly placed in their own research. They've done this 1970s, 80s, 90s kind of era. And their research also says the percentage. So majority of the indentures laborer who had come to Trinidad was from the Dalit background. The second were the lower caste background, the Shudras So Dalit Republic of Trinidad becomes the title of this chapter. Yet we don't see a person who will identify him or herself as a Dalit except one which is Sadhu Ji Chamar. Even him, he is like, I think his 70s, 80s was going away. So this really tells us that migration after many years erases this kind of Dalit identity of the lower person in the hierarchy, but retails the hierarchy of the person who is on the upper end, which is the Brahmin or Kshatriya and so forth.
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B
But you look at, you look at kind of other regions too and, and, and maybe let's talk about the US because there's a lot of kind of competing dynamics there when it comes to kind of caste and, but also racism and all that stuff. So kind of what were your observations kind of concerning kind of cast politics and caste activism in the United States?
- [27:37]
C
That's interesting. Right. So I had read about US kind of movement and because you know, it's kind of the anti caste movement is kind of a closely tight knit group. Earlier era they would organize our own emails. You know, that was the time and I was part of the few groups and you know, now we look at WhatsApp and social media but when it was not, you would access the world through your emails. Right? You are part of this very dedicated curated groups by admins. And so I was part of them. And so I was already kind of part of it. Right. I was already looking at these dimensions and dynamics very closely. And so the anti caste struggle that I am talking about here is, is the older anti caste struggle of the 1960s and 70s. That's where you will meet many of the protagonists here. And one of the protagonists is Mr. Berwa who is very defiant activist but alongside him you meet Yogesh Varade, many other people, Raju Kamle. These are the people who really give a shape in North America, Canada as well as the US and these are the earlier migration, post civil rights era migrants. So they are like highly educated people, they are doctors, they are Engineer, they are PhD holders, you know. And one of them who comes to study around the same time, he returns to India and he is the one who kind of, he writes a thesis on Walt Whitworth down in Florida University, you know, and he comes and has a very distinguished career back in India and he's very committed to the Amit K. Anti caste movement. So he's someone who kind of encourages the young scholars in India to pursue this Dalit black kind of scholarship. And this is More literary kind of, you know, work. The American politics, you know, is taking shape, but it's still seen as Indian politics. It only, you know, in recent years and as early as I could count my past 10 years in America on and off, that it has started to become more, so to speak, mainstream. It has started to register as something that people need to reckon. Earlier, it was brushed aside as, or considered as Indian activism and so forth. However, we see the evidences in 1970s when MLK and Ambedkar are celebrated together at Harvard University. So the first Ambedkar kind of conference and seminar celebrating his birthday and working out his politics was at the historically black college and university, which is Howard. And we see that there's a flyer and I was interviewing the student leader, who was their student leader. I kind of contacted him. Now tell me what's going on. And you see during the 90s, this is getting registered and they're inviting the Indian ambassador. And so there is somehow kind of support and interest to this kind of politics. But then, you know, then I'm also part of this narrative. So then I talk about this kind of work that happens. Me being at Harvard, being at the African American Studies department, being with the Hutchins center, the Du Bois Fellow, Cornel West Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, and then Isabel Wilkerson, then the movie Eva DuVernay. And so this kind of continues within the black sphere. And the first major work done on caste in America was done by Philip Morton, a serial investigative reporter down in Boston, who is a very charismatic man. And he kind of convinces Pulitzer center in D.C. to sponsor this project. And so this comes about in 2018, 19. He comes with me to India, to my hometown, and really kind of sort of brings that story to America, which, which, which is kind of fascinating if you think about it. And so that's how this kind of anti caste movement and struggle kind of takes shape.
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B
And then finally you, you, you kind of look at the Middle east where, where this takes on kind of an economic dimension in some ways. You know, the fact that it's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of kind of, there's a big Indian diaspora in the Middle east, obviously, but it kind of runs, runs the gamut from the very wealthy to a lot of kind of poor migrant workers. I mean, how do those two things kind of intersect in the Middle East?
- [32:23]
C
So the Middle east is very apparent because, see, I wanted to write a global story of caste. And I said to myself, there's no way. I want to prioritize just west and, and talk about South Asia. I've got to go into regions that I'm, I, that I personally have not been before. Like I've not done enough work there. And that's, that's what took me to the Middle East. And I had this network of people I contacted and I said, listen, I want to write about it. They were curious. But you see in Middle east you can't really have any movement, any kind of organization based on this kind of, you know, affiliation. So most, or rather everybody, if I know, are not registered. They work on a very ad hoc basis, if you know what I mean. And so the middle situation starts basically with how it kind of came about. And it really starts in the 1990s when one of the bigger major leaders who is a very respected, who is no longer alive, Mr. Raju Kamble, who came from the kind of a center of Ambedkarit movement. His hometown wasn't where Dr. Ambedkar had a big mass following and he had also converted to Buddhism, relinquishing the Hindu Identity 1956. So he was this very charismatic guy, highly educated, you know, went on to pursue his engineering in chemical discipline from the top science institute, Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and then gets a job with the government. You know, so these are the earlier, so to speak, elites. And then, you know, chemical, petrochemical industry is in boom. He gets job in Middle east, so he goes to Malaysia and so forth. So, you know, my last stop, which I did last year, around at the time, as we are talking now, you know, that's where they meet the Malaysian indenture people who are kind of, also kind of parallel to the indenture movement there. Here they are mostly Tamilians and also they have this caste identity. So one of the bigger leaders, Malaysian leader was Adalit man who was part of this Indian Congress party, but he was discriminated against. And his associate Dattu Panyamurthy, who is alive. So these are the people who organized the first Dalit conference in the 1990s. That's when all major leaders come to Kuala Lumpur. They descended, they discuss it's amazing conference. So from that kind of, you know, also around that time, major organizer is one guy called Raju Kable. He primarily works with the laborers because he's an officer, he's an engineer. So the laborers and the engineers, you know, they, they really have a different kind of class and they have a very different kind of structure they operate into. But however what they do, this guy, because of his activism. He had worked in India with an anti caste movement called Bamsif where he, he told me that, you know, they would go into this colony of people who clean the night soil, the manual scavengers, the bhangis, and he would knock the door and people would look like, you know what this big guy coming. But that was the way you organized. And so he had that training in Bamsaf. So he goes and he connects with the laborers. And it turns out one of the very active persons of the Middle east and especially Dubai region was a laborer from Bombay who was very active, not these engineers and so forth. So that's when they both meet and the movement sort of kind of takes shape today. It's today we see the Ambedkar International movement as being like a very active body. There are so many organizations, more than 250 anti caste, kind of Dalit, religious, political, rather political social organizations who work in many countries. So that's how the kind of story of America kind of comes about, which is the older migration and the newer migration. And then we have what we have now with Gen Z migration, mostly students or young professionals who are much more assertive because obviously they have had much more time span to assess the situation. They also have had access to quality education in India, given that their parents were like working and so forth. So this is where which is happening at the moment. And much of the movement you see now more active on social media and in media is this kind of Gen Z movement.
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B
No, I want to end that. I know we're ending by going back to the United States, but I kind of want to end with. Because there were some debates in 2022 and 2023 about caste discrimination. I know there were debates in the US tech sector around whether or not employees of lower caste were being discriminated. I know several US universities adopted language kind of about caste discrimination as part of their policies. California got pretty close to passing a bill that would outlaw caste discrimination only for the governor, I think Newsom to veto it. And there was a debate and I know the debate about this. Many opponents kind of were worried that focusing, having exclusive language on caste would either, you know, would, would, would, would paint India in a bad light or was even just anti India as a whole. Since then, it does seem like there is, there is more, you know, putting it, putting it bluntly, like prejudice language against those of Indian origin on social media now, particularly in the US and other countries in the West. So it was kind of just, it was like kind of like, like there really is this kind of. It's, it's when you kind of again see all these competing pressures, particularly as we kind of move into, move into a time when I think talking about anti discrimination is less visible now, given, given, given where politics have gone. I mean, how do you kind of see kind of navigating these, these different pressures when it comes to kind of talking about caste discrimination?
- [38:25]
C
I think it's interesting, right? And what you have pointed out is also real. And, and I think it's a very difficult position that activists like myself and many others have been put into. Do you really want to pent up this issue now or do you want to wait and I'm not sure, Nicholas, how long or I don't have an answer to that. While there are genuine concerns on both hands because there may be a racist kind of stereotyping of Indians and stuff like that, but then the response to that is though we are sympathetic to that and in Indians also constitutes me as an Indian, you know, as an Indian person living in America, working in America, having a career there and so forth. So don't I also qualify as fellow Indian? Right? Because what they assume is like if I am raising a point of my own dignity and my position of as a person who is claiming equality in a supposedly equal America, then I should also be hurt. But the, but the condition that has been applied is, you know, just be careful because time is not right because we have all these kinds of movements going around. And while one is sympathetic and one may agree with that, which is true, we're when will be the right time come for me to then express right? And we've been waiting for so long. And the Indian people, especially the people who understand this problem, feel it good that somebody is raising this cus. But the people who are insistent on continuing the hierarchy under the principle of Hindu superiority or the greatness of Hindu Vedic civilization. Now that may be the case and they may have, they, they have in every right to exercise and express that. No doubt about it. But then there is a problem of caste that people like me and many like us are facing. What do we do with that? And the response, usual response is, you know, there is not acknowledgment and it's a sniding remarks that are pass against. There's no kind of careful understanding of the problem. The people who are grown up in India or people who grew up in America, they have difference. But the caste problem comes in. So when they say there's no caste problem, it's not true. The organizations are around caste lines. The priests of temples are around caste lines. The way we look at the people from within communities are across class lines. So it's not really something that we are creating as a fiction. It's just that we are articulating it. Initially we were trying to, you know, give them a chance to really listen to us. But that was. That really did not go well down by the, you know, on them. And they never really gave opportunity. So this is the time when people are expressing. So having seen that the anti Indian prejudice is rising, which is true, that also impacts people like us. But the people who are making this anti Indian prejudice, they are not talking about caste. The people who are hating on Indians or calling about some certain attributes or attitudes of Indians they are doing based on the habits of these people or their presence in the country. It's not for practicing caste because that's not the sensitivity these people have. So they are just hating on Indians for the reason of whatever they had been doing with other groups not exclusively tied to India. And I think that's the kind of difference we have to understand. It's not going to reduce your Indian identity to, or your experience in America as Indian American or any other person, Nepali American and Pakistani American, to a certain grouping. But it's just to see that let's address this problem at the same time. And it's going to happen. It's going to happen. There's going to be some resistance. But our struggle is not for taking something away from you. It's about creating more parity. And there is a noble cause in that. It's spiritual, it's more devotional. And there is a kind of a freedom in doing this at this time. And the wise person understands that and supports that and realizes that one has to go over this because if you are able to resolve this cast tension in America, then we can have a much more solid group that can act in unison and convey to the policymakers and the society at large that this is something we have resolved. But I don't see that happening. If that happens, it's a good news.
- [43:10]
B
So I think with that, that's a great place to end our conversation with Siraj Milanyengda, author of Cast a Global Story. Siraj, I actually have two final questions for you, which are where can people find your work? Not just this book, but all of your work? And what's next for you? What do you think the next project might be?
- [43:31]
C
Thank you so much, Nicholas. You can go on my website. It's surajingle.com I mean, there's latest articles and it's updated to the best of my knowledge.
- [43:44]
B
Next work.
- [43:45]
C
You know, I'm sure many authors would relate to, to me when I say this. You know, when we are working on something of a book project, it really takes you away from your own sort of responsibilities that you may have overlooked because you just want to finish the book or you just want to get it done because it's a heavy kind of work. You're writing a big manuscript. The whole ideas are there. You've been working for many, many years. So now my task is to just, you know, go into teaching and pay attention to kind of personal development. Look at, look around, take some time. I don't think I'll publish my next book, which is academic book, in some years. I'll take some time. I'll. I'll. Now I'm. I'm moving to Philly. I'll be going there to. I'll be teaching there. So students in and around Philadelphia, we are welcome to attend. I'll be teaching a seminar course on race and another course on caste. And then we'll have a mix of few. So it's going to be an exciting time and I'm really looking forward to that phase of life and, you know, simultaneously exploring some of the sensitivities and vulnerabilities that we are living in current time. You know, people are going. You know, it's. People are going. There's lots of insecurity, there's a lot of anxiety, there's a lot of pain. That's kind of coming up to the level that Covid had really opened up, that. That sort of tap of the flow of those repressed emotions. And so one has to now pay attention to where are we going to take these. These ideas and these emotions that are coming up. And hopefully we can create something. And I think it's across the world that the economy has brought us closer to our own insecurities and vulnerabilities. And I think we ought to now pay attention to that. And so my focus also is now to learn more. It's not easy. It's very difficult. It's something you don't get easily. You have to fight for it, be it your individual relationship, be it your society relationship, be it. Be your parents, be your state and society. Excuse me. It's all on a different level, and I hope to develop more in this direction. Hopefully there's a positive result and one can only hope and keep striving for it.
- [46:10]
B
So you can follow me Nicholas Gordon on Twitter Ick R I Gordon. That's N I C K R I G O R D O n. You can go to Asia reviewbooks.com and other reviews, essays, interviews and excerpts. Follow them on Twitter ookReviewsAsia. That's Reviews plural and you can find many more author reviews at the New books network. At newbooksnetwork.com we're on all your favorite podcast apps, Apple Podcasts, Spotify rate us, recommend us, share us with your friends of course entering those running in around and about Asia. Stay tuned for more news. Who's coming up on the show but before then, Siraj, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
- [46:41]
C
Thank you so much. I love this conversation. This is really heartfelt conversation. Thank you for taking time out and being so gracious. Foreign.
- [47:02]
D
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