Counting Caste: Census Politics, Bureaucratic Deflection, and Brahmanical Power in India - Couverture rigide

Vithayathil, Trina

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1009414119 ISBN 13 : 9781009414111

Editeur : Cambridge University Press, 2025

Synopsis

States periodically agree to social justice reforms in response to organized demands for change. Counting Caste examines how and why governments make such concessions but then fail to implement them. Vithayathil unlocks the secrets of bureaucratic deflection—a process whereby political leaders and bureaucrats stall policy changes—through an in-depth examination of a caste survey in India. Political leaders conceded to collect caste-wise data in Census 2011 for the first time in India's post-independence history. Yet, in the year that followed, bureaucrats blocked a caste count in the census and rerouted it to an inexperienced part of the government. This book uncovers the plan to gather caste-wise data in an alternative project with a history of producing poor-quality data. The case of the failed caste count highlights how state institutions evade the documentation of caste power, the continued institutionalization of castelessness—which frames caste as a problem of the oppressed and hides caste privilege and power—and ongoing efforts at resisting caste hierarchy and Hindutva domination.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Trina Vithayathil is a sociologist and associate professor of global studies and affiliated faculty in Asian studies and women's and gender studies at Providence College.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Cambridge University Press
• Date d'édition: 2025
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1009414119
• ISBN 13: 9781009414111
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 296
• Coordonnées du fabricant: Cambridge University Press; https://www.cambridge.org/; ; Via Honduras,15; Pomezia; Italia; 71; Italie