Comments on Suraj Yengde’s lecture

Emerging out of religious conflict in early modern Europe, the terms race and caste as we understand them today went on to define hierarchical relations in different parts of the globe. Yet, they have never completely parted ways and Suraj Yengde’s essay explores these hidden connections in the use that American sociologists made of both categories. They generally did so by setting one term against the other in the attempt to account for racial discrimination in the United States. Race and caste were mediated by class in these debates, a category seen as being more modern and progressive than either of them. The comments that follow argue that caste and race are not simply the precursors of class and continue to interact with each other without the latter’s mediation. Anti-race and anti-caste politics are also more connected to religious forms of universality.