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Dalit, Bahujan, Adivasi, Vimukta, and other anti-caste communities in South Asia, have long-standing histories of fighting against caste oppression. In their efforts, these diverse communities have envisioned democratic futures, futures free of caste, be it in the form of the utopia of Begumpura (city without sorrows) or by converting into other egalitarian faiths or imagining collective identities. For long, these communities have fostered solidarities that have been in the making, at times contested, other times fragile, and yet other times strong and emancipatory. Through oral histories, these knowledge communities have passed on equally emancipatory ideologies. With each passing generation, they have reimagined and redefined themselves. To commemorate this rich past and to continue the contemporary dialectics, ‘Dalit Bahujan Adivasi Vimukta Women, Trans, Non-binary People’s Collective’ and ‘South Asian Scholars and Activists Solidarity’ bring forth this ‘Anti-caste Histories and Solidarities’ lecture series in collaboration with Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung.
In this series, some contemporary intellectuals, writers, artists, and activists from diverse anti-caste locations will reflect on pertinent questions: how do historically oppressed diverse communities with emancipatory movement histories investigate, imagine, and build anti-caste solidarities? Why is engagement with these histories and solidarities critical? How caste still dominates and shapes the lived realities of Dalits and many other marginalized groups in India? How do the state and its system as it exists fails and yet remain the only source for the oppressed castes and minorities to seek justice? These are some of the challenging questions scholars and activists of anti-caste scholarship and movements have engaged with for several decades. Yet many questions remain unanswered, get distorted, or remain sidelined due to their complexities. This lecture series attempts to engage with these complex questions in the spirit of continuing the knowledge exchange.
Zainab Amal
Anti Caste Anti Islamophobic Positionality: Contemporary Reflections of a Hijabi
28/04/2022 at 17.00 CET
Moderated by Rupali Bansode
Registration link: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_d7zJi70vTz2GI3EcfzL6Jg
The discussion will be held as an online seminar in English. Preregistration is necessary
Zainab’s address will broadly cover her experiences of researching anti-caste violence in history(mainly the Marichjhapi Massacre of 1979), the Hijab being politicised and the unforgiving experience
of being visibly Muslim, and her journey of finding anti-Islamophobic and anti-caste solidarities coexisting in same spaces further leading to understanding Bahujan positionality
Rupali Bansode holds a PhD in Sociology from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. She will soon join the Department of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Here, she will be spearheading the department’s new initiative entitled “Caste and Race: Past and Present.”