Caste, Knowledge, and Power: Ways of Knowing in Twentieth Century Malabar

Sunandan K. N.

Feb 2023 · Cambridge University Press

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Caste, Knowledge, and Power investigates the transformations of caste practices in twentieth century India and the role of knowledge in this transformation and in the continuing of these oppressive practices. The author situates the domination and subordination in the domain of knowledge production in India not just in the emergence of colonial modernity but in the formation of colonial–Brahminical modernity. It engages less with the marginalization of the oppressed castes in the modern institutions of knowledge production which has already been discussed widely in the scholarship. Rather, the author focuses on how the modern colonial–Brahminical concept of knowledge invalidated many other forms of knowing practices and how historically caste domination transformed from the claims of superiority in acharam (ritual hierarchy) to the claims of superiority in possession of knowledge.

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K. N. Sunandan is Assistant Professor in the School of Liberal Studies at Azim Premji University (APU), Bengaluru. Prior to joining APU, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre of Developing Societies, New Delhi, as part of the Transnational Research Group project funded by the Max Weber Foundation, Germany. He has also taught at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Tulajapur. Besides his academic pursuits, he writes in Malayalam and has authored several articles and short stories.