Daring to Imagine Caste’s Antithesis

At a historical moment when the project of Hindu rashtra tears into the project of bourgeois liberal democracy in India, how can we think of equality? Anand Teltumbde’s book Republic of Caste: Thinking Equality in the Time of Neoliberal Hindutva combines sober analysis with relentless critique to seek a way out of this moment. While the title is a reminder of how caste is central to what India means today, the subtitle dares to imagine caste’s antithesis—an India shorn off its deep roots and long shadows of inequality. It represents what Gayatri Spivak (1996) calls a “storying” for the “clearing of a space from where to create a perspective.” Verily, Teltumbde’s storying is an interpretation of the world (of India) for the task of changing it fundamentally.

As a successful corporate management executive, even while resisting capitalism as a scholar–activist on the street, Teltumbde identifies the problem: