Tuesday, April 18, 2023

12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Bunche Hall - Room 10383

Contemporary political life in South Asia is predicated on the categorization of Dalits as transhistorically Hindu. The very existence of a Hindu majority in postcolonial India rests on the representation of Dalits as a population for whom, whether they ‘leave’ Hinduism by means of conversion or ‘return’ by way of ‘ghar wapsi’ or similar procedures, Hinduness is somehow a primary or essential condition. Deceptive Majority: Dalits, Hinduism, and Underground Religion challenges presuppositions at the foundation of the study of caste and religion in South Asia. In this book talk, Joel Lee draws on archival and ethnographic research in Lucknow to throw light on the maneuvers by which majoritarian projects are both advanced and undermined.

Joel Lee is the author of Deceptive Majority: Dalits, Hinduism, and Underground Religion (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and co-editor, with K. Satyanarayana, of Concealing Caste: Passing and Personhood in Dalit Literature (Oxford University Press, 2023). He teaches anthropology at Williams College.

Sponsor(s): Center for India and South Asia