Suraj Yengde on his book ‘Caste Matters’, Dalit representation, and caste deniers | NL Interview
Dr Suraj Yengde is a scholar, writer, and the author of Caste Matters. He’s a Shorenstein Centre inaugural postdoctoral fellow at the Initiative for Institutional Anti-racism and Accountability, Harvard Kennedy School, and the editor of Caste: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion. In this conversation with Newslaundry’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Suraj says the response to his book has been “interesting”. He didn’t expect people to be this interested in caste issues, especially in India, he says, where people tend to consume mostly cheap thrillers and don’t invest too much in such thoughtful subjects. Suraj says he tried to overcome some of his own insecurities in his book by including personal vignettes on growing up in a Dalit community. He also reveals that his hesitance in sharing his personal angst is strongly tied to feeling that he was “exploiting” his own story, because of the way narratives are built around Dalit identities in India. Watch the full interview: http://bit.ly/NLInterviewSurajYengde See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
