Caste: A Global Story

Transcript

[Sandro Galea]
Welcome to Ideas Matter, a podcast hosted by WashU. I’m Sandro Galea, vice provost of Interdisciplinary Initiatives and Dean of the School of Public Health at WashU. There are about 170 million people in India known as Dalits, the name for the population deemed untouchable by the caste system. Yet, caste and caste-based discrimination are not just challenges for India. They are global problems, including in Dalit diaspora communities in the U.S., UK, Canada, and elsewhere.
The challenge of addressing racism and historic injustice has been core to the public conversation in recent years. However, the specific issue of caste and its lessons for other justice-oriented movements can often be overlooked. How can the lessons of caste-related movements in India inform efforts to address racism and injustice globally? How can solidarity between these movements help shape a better future for all who face marginalization?
How does the global history of caste intersect with the broader history of racism, colonialism, and economic exploitation? I can think of no one better to shed light on these questions than today’s guest. Suraj Yengde is one of India’s leading scholars and public intellectuals and an expert in the global history of caste and race. He is a visiting assistant professor of history and Africana studies and the Ford Foundation Presidential Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. He has written nearly 200 articles across academic and public scholarship.
He has two doctorates, from Oxford in history and Johannesburg in anthropology. He is trained as an international human rights attorney from the UK and India. He is a consulting editor at Outlook magazine and a columnist with Art Review. He is also the author of the bestselling book, Caste Matters. His most recent book is Caste: A Global Story. I’m delighted to be speaking with him today. Suraj, welcome.

[Suraj Yengde]
Thank you so much Sandro, it’s such an honor. I’m personally very happy and excited to be speaking to you, also publicly, because when our paths crossed in Geneva, there was a little spark, at least for me, the intellectual enthusiasm found in allyship and comradeship in you. And so I’m very honored to be speaking to you, and congratulations on taking up this task in the middle of nowhere as they say in St. Louis.

[Sandro Galea]
Thank you, Suraj. So let’s start with you. Tell us a little bit about you. Tell us about your background. How did you come to be doing the work you’re doing?

[Suraj Yengde]
I grew up in a very small hinterland town called Nanded, which is like, if I have to tell you, you could always imagine St. Louis of India, but shrunk it to a size of one of the most disadvantaged districts. So if you have to reach my hometown, you have to come to either Bombay and take overnight train, 12 hours of train, and you’re lucky if you get a reservation confirmed ticket on that, because there’s just so many.
And that place is something which is really cut off from the world in the sense of there is no commerce. It’s mostly a gradient society. And so when you have a drought, we are the most hit. When there is a rainfall, the flood kind of takes over the crops. And so my family were the migrants who came from a nearby village because they were not landowners. They were sharecroppers. And so they went to urban cities.
My great grandfather had come to this city called Nanded. And he came and worked doing odd jobs. And then his son, my grandfather, worked in a factory as a mill worker. And his son, my father, could educate himself until ninth grade and got a job first working in a lodge, just cleaning the floors and stuff, and then started to work in a bank as a peon, what we call the person who works, who is the subaltern in the category of banks. Somehow he gave, he was very inspired by this Dalit movement, which was focusing on sending our children to good schools.
And so I grew up in a segregated sort of neighborhood, which was not officially segregated, but that’s where the neighborhoods are, the zoning of Dalit neighborhood. I grew up there, and always knew about this kind of, we are different in the sense of we are in that neighborhood. So people kind of made it aware, you know, you’re that.
So I went to school, ended up an average student and then got into, you know, usually when you grew up in neighborhoods like that, the exposure is very limiting to the world and more to the what you call anti-social elements. So there were gangs, people running with police in prison, people who were thieves, people who were into violence and stuff. And also, there was a little bit of kind of intellectual community. But I was more attracted to this kind of young age, adrenaline sort of, I want to become the gangster. So I joined, had my little own gang and would do gang fights and stuff like that.
Somehow, I don’t know what happened. My father and mother kind of pursued and made me go through the school and then I went to law school. That’s when I became a student leader. That changed. Then I got government scholarships to go to study in UK. I worked in the UN briefly in human rights office. Then went to South Africa, had a stint at Harvard and Oxford and now I’m here in Philly. Oh, that’s a long story.

[Sandro Galea]
Well, you do have a good story, so it’s okay. Tell us about Caste: A Global Story. So what was writing it like? You researched 15 countries, right? From Caribbean to Gulf, North America, South Asia. How did you do this research? Talk us through the process.

[Suraj Yengde]
Actually, this book was something that I did not know because I told you as I grew up, I did not know the implication of the world. And I did not even know the difference between London and America. That was the same for me because they spoke English and the English movies. That’s the kind of access I had. So when I left India in 2011, I started to see this kind of anti-caste activism among Dalits who went as immigrants to UK in the 1950s and 60s. India gets independent in 1947. Post-World War, there’s a shortage of labor, so South Asian labor is going. Of that South Asian labor, there are many Dalits, specifically from Punjab region.
And so it does happen that the migration of Dalits to different parts of the world within colonial patronage is happening since 1840s. This is what we call indenture migration. When slavery was legally abolished, the empire needed workers to tend the agrarian fields that they were colonizing as often we saw. So one group that went to Trinidad, 90% of them were lower castes. And this is where I also did my research to really understand what happens to the question of caste.
So in Trinidad, I’m interviewing people who are descendants of indentures. They are from Dalit or lower caste backgrounds, but they don’t have that memory because it’s either intentionally forgotten or it is just you reinvented yourself in far away land where there is no strict enforcement of hierarchy.
In the Middle East, I was looking at contemporary because that’s where Middle East workers like you and I, if we go across different parts of the world and if you fly one of the Middle Eastern Airlines, it’s most likely either in your lounge or even if you step out you’ll see an Indian or South Asian worker. And the question is, what caste does he belong to? It’s mostly he. And that led me to investigate in Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE, and few other kind of neighboring countries where I was, Oman, Qatar.
I try to understand their profile and when you go and talk to them, it’s the caste story as well. And that aspect is really not appreciated. So one thing led to another and I went to Malaysia looking at this kind of Tamilian, which is South Indian migrants who went to Southeast Asia. So we see this kind of colonial era and post-colonial era kind of migration happens within this kind of archetype of past 150 to 200 years. And that’s what kind of led me to, you know, indulge into this kind of geographies.

[Sandro Galea]
Tell us what you mean when you make caste global. How do you define, I think most people listening to this understand caste in the Indian context, but I know you think of it more broadly than that. How do you think of caste beyond the Indian context?

[Suraj Yengde]
That’s right. See, I mean, this is again a theory that really needs to be refined and understood. Unfortunately, caste, the way it has been presented, is often within the canon of a legion. And we understand it’s the Hindu caste system, which is true. But also the character of caste changes. Like, how do you appreciate the caste existing among Muslims or Sikh? So in this book in particular, the focus was on immigrants or heritage, people with the heritage of South Asian descent.
So, as you know, subtitles always have their own funny way to do it. So the kind of thing was to say it’s a global story, which it is, which is to look at the kind of major part of the world, Anglophone, Francophone kind of diaspora. But the global story also I am kind of thinking about is a parallel project, which is called Global Caste, which is itself understanding caste as a secular term that organizes society based on birth-based hierarchies. And it’s almost semi-fixed, the vocation you do, the relations and marriage, commensality, determines based on the caste you come from.
And this is across the world. We may not see it as cast but there are exist hierarchies and there are certain regulated forms of this kind of animated thinking. And that’s the kind of framework which will be not the next book, but the book after, which condenses the world to look through this lens. Because, my intention is why do I left out a person a group of groups who are marginalized in their own societies?
But they are not recognized as such, because we what do we do? We call them ethnic groups because for the lack of term, We call them something else, or tribal and stuff like that. So caste in a way is trying to invite us to think of it as a hierarchy. And that idea was very prevalent in the 19th century and the 20th century. In fact, American society was appreciated as a caste-based society because as you would know the earlier people who were brought to America to tend on the plantations were not slaves, they were actually people from Europe.
These were what you call today white people. The idea of whiteness didn’t exist then these were what they were called indentured laborers and these were the outcasts of their society, especially in England. They were tinkers, they were children of prostitutes, some of them are criminals some of the convicts, some of them were just vagabonds.
So we see a group of people that were unwanted by the local city council or by the state and that’s why they were expelled. And expelled where? So that’s why you will see you many times convicts are expelled outside, like Papillon, the famous book, is talking about this kind of French expelled. And so this kind of migration also for example we look at West African people who were brought as not initially slaves, they were brought as indentures. And only eventually the idea of race becomes more hardened.
But for many lengths, and the idea of race becomes hardened A) because of color line, but color on its own cannot stand, because color is changing phenomenon, you can’t just describe color, so they created what became color caste hierarchy where one drop rule changed the program of how we organize society.
And that’s where blackness was given suddenly this kind of new life, if you will, where if you have even a percentage of black blood, one percent rule, you become a black person. And so, when you maintain this endogamous relationships, you really want to create a society based on purity. So there is no impurity. This is essentially this phenomenal idea of caste that existed. And that’s how we need to understand because it kind of connotes us and conveys this kind of class based gendered notions of identities that exist in our societies.

[Sandro Galea]
Let me anchor this in the issue of race, which is something we talk about a lot. Guide us through how this global caste framework helps us better understand race, particularly anti-black racism in the U.S., but also places like Brazil or South Africa.

[Suraj Yengde]
That’s right. You know, this program of race, for example, again, is not settled. It’s still evolving. Even if you go to Brazil, for example, it’s the other way around. The one drop rule makes one person white instead of being a black. So the category is there. There was research done in 1970s in Brazil where people were asked to identify their race or what color or group they identify and they came up with 320 something categories of what you call race.
So it’s not just one. Some people are like, you know, we are a cocoa, one say I’m burnt yellow. They say I’m sea blue. They say white but tuscan honey colored white and you know, the list is chestnut colored Galician snow white, you know, and people and this was just trying to understand how people look at it, the demographic institute attempted to do that.
Caste zeros in on the kind of communities that you emanate your identity from. And usually any society, wherever you go, community becomes kind of a representation. Your last name, my last name, represents certain form of kind of natal roots, certain identity, certain vocation, generally speaking.
And that’s something caste does is to really give us a more sophisticated, refined understanding of how to perceive the world and how to really learn about this kind of hierarchies. So when you talk about anti-black racism, it’s essentially to maintain the caste supremacy used under the garb of colorized racism. Outcome of racism does exist, there’s no problem.
But why is that victim targeted for being a black person? Because it is again the whole idea of caste to maintain purity. If race as an idea doesn’t exist to maintain purity, race as an idea is there to maintain mixture because that’s where you create more categories of race. We’re caste in the sense it’s like we’re going to exclusivize ourselves. That’s why the victims, black people in America and many other societies, we see that’s happening because there is an intrinsic belief in the idea of white supremacy and whiteness here again is an aspirational caste. There are certain groups of people who identify as white, but then it remains something that people draw legitimacy from. And this legitimacy, by the way, is coming by the kind of your own localized privilege. Now you may be a white person in your society and you may go somewhere else and there are more whiter than you. You are certainly not a white person.
That’s why this global angle is so important because unless and until we do that, we will think of the world through localized atomic experiences, and through that vision, if you look at world, it may not just be as viable. Look at Lebanese people, for example, if you look at Lebanese people, they are as light skin whiter as you can think of, right?
But then the identity changes if you go to small Balkan nations, they could be also categorized as white. But what does that do in a conversation where hierarchies are framed? And that’s the kind of question I’m interested in attending.

[Sandro Galea]
We all bring our lenses, our histories, our biases to our work, right? But you’re very explicit about it. You’re a Dalit scholar. You’ve moved through India, Africa, Europe, North America. How does you, your experience, shape your scholarship?

[Suraj Yengde]
Oh, that’s true. You know, it kind of features at first, early years I was looking at the world the way I was taught to look. And I was humble enough to recognize that this is not the end game. So I had to kind of revise my own thinking. I had to revise my own political positions.
And so as a Dalit scholar, and obviously I’m interested in looking at the most vulnerable person because I know what it means for the other person to be vulnerable, to be put into position of having to prove your existence and presence in the space of power, what it means to be told that you’re not meritorious enough, you’re not smart enough to be in the space. I know what it kind of means for a person who’s trying to get by despite the kind of odds that the society and situation has put you against.
So, I look at the world through that lens because I’m also looking at other people who are in my situation. And that’s the kind of sensibility I think we need also. And this is not for me to just say, I see you. This is really a lived experience and lived experience is much more visceral when you start to articulate it. And when I hear this articulation, they sound like melodies to me and this kind of rhythmic balance that happens to me in my scholarship is what I think is lyrical.
That’s why the scholarship comes out across as more direct, more upfront, because I’m looking for people who needs the care that I also have. And so I’m looking for that companionship and comradeship. And I don’t mean to essentialize this group of people or individual. This could be individual person. You could also be a person from a category that has a dominant power, but that power you can only exercise.
For example, you are a Brahmin or you are a feudal caste in India and you have power in that space. But if you leave that space, your fiefdom, what power do you have? Unless there are people who can reciprocate or acknowledge that. That’s what happens to how we see various recognitions of colorized hierarchies. Unfortunately, the world is very centric on color based theories.
And that’s why Du Bois’ idea of color caste becomes so important that we have to understand there is a colorized supremacy that exists and that needs to be understood through a sociological lens of caste. That’s how I kind of approach it to make sense of the world.

[Sandro Galea]
Tie this into empire and colonialism. So what role did empire and colonialism play in, let’s say, reconfiguring caste-based hierarchies beyond South Asia?

[Suraj Yengde]
We have to go back, Sandro, for this history of early colonization, and a little history lesson for those enthusiasts listening to us. We have to look at Europe in the sense of, you know, Venetian capital and it’s very much centric around church and the kind of original sort of modern birth of capitalism really happens here, because this is a feudal society, mind you, and feudal society has feudal lord.
And lord is capital L also which is the wholesome, the everything, and you are a serf or a fief to this feudal lord. So essentially you are dependent on feudal lord and that feudal lord owns land. And in this case, they were churches and they were nobilities and so forth. Only when in the 16th century when the king of England decides we don’t need you, establishes the Church of England, this kind of nationalism starts to spur.
And when nationalism is spurring, that’s when mercantilism takes place. As in people are already engaging with various merchandises across the world. They are bringing timber, they are bringing ivory, exchanging for all kinds of stuff, right? Iberia in the 16th century really recognizes that we ought to invest in these expeditions.
And these travelogues that people go, Marco Polo, Vasco da Gama, all of these people are enthusiasts who really want to make riches. This is like this enthusiastic kind of thing, ‘hey, what are you doing? I’m going to, I don’t know, some island which takes five months to go, you know, and I’m a sailor. I’m going to come back,’ and stuff like that.
That kind of colonial story of expansionism really gets kind of kicked off when the reports are sent back to the king to say, you know what, this is a great place for you to make trade and possibly take over and make a kind of a good business here. That led to kind of formation of colonialism where one country decided to kind of take over another country’s absolute resources. Sometimes it was co-opted with local elites and not sometimes, many times that’s what happened.
And many times it was just in direct aggression people took over. That notion of caste that I talk about is actually a Portuguese word. It’s called casta or casta and there’s a very beautiful essay that talks about casta or caste like words existing within Europe, as far as Sweden, where this called kastane with the K and so what we see is this is not new to Europe.
So when Portuguese come to India again in the 16th century and 17th century basically at this point, they are looking at societies and primary people who went abroad on the boats were two kinds generally speaking. A) the sailors and all that’s certainly that’s part of the job but the two kinds were the first was merchant who was going there to kind of and second was Jesuit priest or the the clergy and so when they went there in the mission of kind of proselytizing, they noticed that there was this essential kind of fundamental gap that they could feel, right?
And that’s where they saw various hierarchies. Portuguese already had their own casta system. There were Moors, there were Jews, there were people who were Catholics, there were people who were non-Catholics, and so forth. I mean non-Catholic in the sense of the Reformation was kind of still kind of taking shape. And within that existed various hierarchies.
So when they saw India, they say, oh, this is the caste system. In India, the term is Jati. But this idea is kind of coming from Portuguese of looking at hierarchies. So colonialism kind of came with this idea of hierarchy. And you know why? Any enterprise and industry needs that fixed hierarchy. And they created it. So they used this. And by the 19th century, when the British Empire kind of took over, they exported it to around the world.
And that’s how we saw also in America, slave hierarchies. We also saw artisanal hierarchies. We also saw in the plantations, people from for example Congo were considered good at sugar boiling. People from Senegal were considered good in production of sugar cane. So we see those kind of relations tied to one’s kind of descent base. That essentially is caste.
Your descent equals work equals caste. So this whole modern formation of societies comes from this fixity of how we appreciate the labor of other person based on their descent and background. Even today, you know, we kind of look at people, oh, where do you come from or this, oh, people are very good in farming or people are good in plumbing and stuff like that. So that idea continues.

[Sandro Galea]
So we’ve talked about empire, colonialism, now let’s talk about capitalism. The relationship between caste and capitalism. So is global capitalism adapting to caste hierarchies, or is it actually producing caste hierarchies?

[Suraj Yengde]
Global capitalism is learning from caste and I think they don’t have to do much in this day as in it’s again a specter. You and I can keep talking about the specter. But essentially global capitalism in today’s context is really not capitalism in its traditional sense. It is global nevertheless and every time capitalism has had its own zones.
It had let’s say, a zone of British Empire. It had a zone of French Empire. It was always tied to Empire because it needed state patronage, always. America is the kind of avatar of modern capitalism. It is attempting to globalize but you see what’s happening in Iran war and all the evidences of pushback that you see. The global capitalism is receiving strong pushback.
However, with the technological interface and again I was listening to a few of your podcasts. You also had someone recently who spoke about AI and creativity, and I was paying attention to you know, this new kind of AI ways. Or also for example some professor of Chicago on your podcast talking about how this new order of relations are kind of you know shifting and so, that itself is a pessimism of global capitalism right because it was essentially meant to be a market based rule of more alliances and agreements.
Now those agreements are getting nullified, they are getting discarded, or sometimes they are getting challenged. The royal hegemony of one group or one caste is still kind of being presented and somehow, it takes a very weird anti-semitic shape in today’s time for various reasons. So we see this kind of, the view of global capitalism is great.
But I think the globe is becoming more Balkanized if you will. It’s becoming more regional, more zonal, and that initially what you needed was if I have to go to Malta or India or Ethiopia, I’ll get the mercantile caste of that community of that region and I’ll kind of ally and create a McDonald franchise for example, or I have to expand the trade.
Now that class itself has gotten into a certain, of course for various reasons and scandals and stuff like that, gotten into political power and stuff like that, that mercantile class that you exchanged your relation primarily were, has actually become political class. Now the politicians are themselves, which is going back to this Royal patronage, they themselves think of themselves as sort of royalty and so they themselves are kind of involved in this kind of trade relations. And so when you go to Davos or other places, you’re essentially trying to engage on that.
So that’s why I’m very suspicious of this. But if you look at how caste works, how global capital learning through caste is to really create its own siloed chamber of a specific group of individuals who still want to regulate the world. And in that sense there is a hegemony. But as to horizontal capitalism globally, I’m suspicious of that.

[Sandro Galea]
So we’re on a roll. We’ve talked about colonialism, now capitalism, now let’s talk about religion. So how do you understand the role of religion in sustaining or challenging global caste?

[Suraj Yengde]
Religion is a very powerful force. I grew up thinking that religion because of its own experiences, that I thought religion, as a force, has to go. But the more I see, I’ve been to 60 countries now and I spent time in many of these countries that I’ve been to, and I saw, it was very interesting. I was in Lithuania, former Soviet Republic, right? And it was a winter evening.
And in one of those centers people were just going in one direction and that kind of gave me, like why are people going somewhere? And so I followed them and there was like a some two or three hundred year old, kind of one of those city gates. And they were praying and there was a photo of Mary. And I say how often you all come, and they were saying quite frequently.
And I looked at that picture and I would think of myself, this is Soviet or post-Soviet society where religion is really, you know, kind of existing but for its own purpose. And now there are people really revising and reclaiming. So there is something to do with this memory of history, your heritage or ancestry. So people are finding various ways to kind of hold on to that and religion is really one of the, I don’t want to say artifacts, but one of the important mediators for realization.
And so caste essentially organizes. Religion essentially organizes caste. Because you need this certain hierarchy to exist and that hierarchy needs to be kind of validated, and there has to be a validation through certain prescription. And you always in any religion, you will see this demonstration of this fact. The only difference we saw earlier it was still that the priest class would only come from specific caste group.
That has really democratized in India. It has not yet because the scriptures themselves kind of have a hold on that. But the potential of religion is going to be more and more important and more and more urgent because people have not gone to the stage of exporting their cognition to a machine where AI is able to do.
And so the human emotions, the sensitivity, the insecurity, the anxiety that is coming by the nature of your birth is needing an outsourcing. And religion in this case is providing that space of solace. So people are still kind of, you know, of course there’s also another school of thought where people are like to hell with this. Let me go do my own thing. But there’s still an appetite for religion and almost every religion, especially in the South Asian context, practices caste-like hierarchies, which really betrays the idea that religion can be a unifying force. It is actually dividing force.

[Sandro Galea]
You know, the topic you study is so interesting. Any topic that can intersect with colonialism, capitalism, and religion is intellectually a very interesting topic. Looking ahead, what are the most urgent research questions or political interventions needed to deepen our understanding of caste as a global structure?

[Suraj Yengde]
First of all, we really need an institutional infrastructure to build this. And unless and until we do that, we will just be talking about it on a level that will be theoretical, but not really actualized. The development world, for example, spends so much time, so much of their dollars trying to provide services. Your field, medical and public health, has been trying to do that.
But we understand, and who better than a person like you from that public health background with that kind of intellectual acumen to know that the social structures regulate whatever we see operates in this. And so to really create a potential paradigm for a program like this, my idea is to have this kind of global caste center to think about societies and worlds. And, for example, Mexico, the Mexican castas are a kind of great example that still function.
And people want to forget about it, but the ramifications of that hierarchies continue and there is scholarships people doing all kinds of work and caste has become a European issue. How? Immigration becomes a new caste. The immigrant who cannot access basic resources cannot access the language, is not integrated in society for two generations even is still an outcast of the society.
Or a person may not be outcast, but forming itself as a separate caste. There is very little relations, familial relations. There is very little so kind of relations of exogamy. It’s not really forming as a whole, and we are talking about immigration happening since post-world war. So we can comfortably say three generations have seen that, right? And still we see that kind of problematic.
So we need to understand this not just as this is an ethnic issue. Well, it is an ethnic issue. It’s just one of the racism issue. Well, it is. Or is it’s just one of this class issue. Well, it is. Well, why are you not solving it? Well, because the approaches taken in a very sort of earlier modern concepts of race or ethnicity and stuff, and if nothing makes sense, let’s call it class. But still the solution is not reaching.
So unless and until we recognize that there is a kind of a group what Weber would call a group of party, the parties that operated as units as opposed to system. And the difference here is systems are various kinds of structures, hierarchy, stuff like that, whereas the unit is where you exist as a unit as a community as a group and you feel strongly about it – that’s a problem you don’t want to integrate or probably just don’t feel the need to, whatever the reason may be.
We have these pressing problems and it cuts across in the health discipline as well. If you look at the world and unless and until we have this framework set into it, all the development initiatives and the practices of charity and the practices of care, as well as the ideas of capital inflow and so forth, these inequality hierarchies need a fresh and newer treatment, which is integrated with race and ethnicity and class and other forms of modalities.
But it needs to be appreciated. If we just work with these pre-existing paradigms and we still have a catastrophe, a rise of the global right, we still have to really ask a serious question. Was that adequate? Or perhaps we need a newer framework to also understand ourselves as self-reflexive and caste does a very interesting thing.
Race externalizes it or makes it a part of bigger national question. Caste individualizes it and brings it home by looking at what this subunit or sub caste category does and that accountability can come. That’s why in U.S. you can talk about white supremacy and white person will be yeah that’s right they’re talking about white supremacy, right.
But in if in India you talk about caste supremacy or a Brahmin supremacy, the person who is saying that and the person who listening that immediately feels the internal tension directed because you carry it very intentionally, very personally and this is why we need a program of caste action. That’s why people like Isabel Wilkerson, Michelle Alexander — I mean the scholarship especially within the African-American sphere as well as American sociology.
I wrote this paper called The Making of American Sociology and the Debate of Race and Caste 1930s 40s 50s, the American Journal of Sociology was debating this. So these are not like ideas that one is drawing out of thin air. They are in the society. And that’s how we need to kind of recognize that the historical aristocratic elite — for example, you were in Boston the famous clique of Boston Brahmins. You can’t get access to it.
Doesn’t matter you are a Dean or you may as well be the President, the doors are closed and why is that so? That’s because that’s a caste prestige. They might as well be economically or academically incompetent, but you will still not be given access to it. Why? Because this old idea of that’s what, you know in American South the researchers like Alison Davison, they wrote a book called Deep South. They identified six classes.
Upper upper, lower upper, upper middle, lower middle, upper lower, and lower lower. And what does this distinction do? And they did this in Mississippi in a small town. The upper upper thinks of him or herself — no doesn’t even think of him or herself. It’s assumed that we are the feudal lords you know the lords the erstwhile European feudal lords.
The lower upper has to, is already like new elite but still not upper upper, so you have to still kind of rely on certain modes of what upper upper means so you take up memberships and stuff like that. You have economic privilege but you are still not that higher caste. So the middle does the same when it comes to lower lower, and the lowest just doesn’t think about the world.
And then the argument is the people in lower medium and upper lower — as in people — they are the ones who have majority of stake because they are the majority numbers in the world. Because they are what we call middle class, but they are really lower middle, and the people who are upper lower, who have access to vote, they send their children to education, there’s a certain sense of civil belonging.
This is the group that we need to focus on, and listen, until we do a thorough examination and just tell them that this is just a complete group, we miss out. And the book Deep South was an examination of America’s caste system.

[Sandro Galea]
Hm. My last question: what gives you hope in this moment?

[Suraj Yengde]
I think everything is going to end. Doesn’t matter. If you are going through some difficulties, it’s going to end. If you’re going through goodness, it’s still going to end. This classic Buddhist idea of Anicca, Buddha was saying always, it’s impermanence. And we all know that but we just don’t foreground it, because when it’s good, I don’t want it to end and when it’s bad, I want it to end. So the hope is that it’s going to end.
You’re going to end, I’m going to end, this is going to end. And that is a positive hope for me.

[Sandro Galea]
I’m Sandro Galea. I have been having this very interesting conversation with Suraj Yengde about reckoning with caste in a global context. Thank you, Suraj.

[Suraj Yengde]
Thank you, Sandro.

[Sandro Galea]
And thank you to everybody who has joined us for Ideas Matter. I look forward to continuing the conversation.