Beyond barriers

In Caste Matters (2019), Suraj Yengde introduced himself as a fearless interlocutor of caste injustice — combining the lived experience of a Dalit scholar with the global gaze of a public intellectual. That work was deeply rooted in the Indian experience, both urgent and intimate in its critique of caste as the architecture of social suffering in modern India. With Caste: A Global Story, Yengde takes a bolder leap: he transposes caste from the narrow lanes of Indian society to the global boulevards of structural inequality, asking us to rethink caste not merely as a South Asian aberration but as a worldwide problem.

The central thesis of Caste: A Global Story is audacious: caste is not just India’s moral failure, but a universal phenomenon, manifesting across societies under different guises — race, class, ethnicity, and tribe. Through a comparative framework that spans Japan’s Burakumin, America’s Black experience, Rwanda’s genocide, Europe’s Roma communities, and South Africa’s apartheid regime, Yengde compels the reader to reckon with caste as a global modality of social exclusion and inherited hierarchy. At a time when India is mired in the paradox of being the world’s largest democracy and simultaneously a nation wrestling with deepening caste differentiation and the growing sanitisation of caste politics, Yengde’s global reframing is timely and urgent. It also sharply critiques triumphalist right-wing narratives across the globe that gloss over centuries of embedded discrimination. His call is clear: unless caste is confronted as a structural, not just cultural, issue — akin to race in the US or anti-Semitism in Europe — it will persist as the foundational violence of the modern Republic.

The strength of this new book lies in its capacious ambition. Yengde is as comfortable citing BR Ambedkar, Malcolm X, and Frantz Fanon as he is parsing the implications of neoliberal multiculturalism or interrogating the tokenism in global academia. This is not merely a comparative politics exercise — it is an epistemological intervention. He challenges the intellectual silos that isolate caste studies within South Asian studies departments and demands a reckoning within global anti-racism discourse that often invisibilises caste-based suffering. In that sense, Caste: A Global Story is a natural sequel to Caste Matters. Where the earlier work was polemical and sharply autobiographical — mapping the contours of Dalit assertion, internal contestations, and intellectual marginalisation — this book is more panoramic. It is less confessional, more archival. If Caste Matters felt like an explosion, Caste: A Global Story is the echo that lingers, deepening the philosophical and political terrain of the argument.

Not without drawbacks

Yet, the book is not without its drawbacks. Yengde walks a tightrope between academic analysis and activist rhetoric, sometimes favouring sweep over nuance. Although the comparative framework on occasion offers interesting insights, it often conflates historically distinct forms of subjugation under an overarching rubric of caste, resulting in analytical overreach.

Extrapolating the specificity of experiences into a universal theory of caste-like oppressions appears like retrofitting: the author takes the idea of caste — as developed in the Indian context — and applies it forcibly, I might add, overlooking important differences. Is every hierarchy a form of caste? What distinguishes caste from other forms of inequality? These are questions that surface but are not always resolved. Critics might argue that such globalisation of caste risks diluting its particular genealogies in Hindu society, especially the Brahminical order that Ambedkar so forcefully critiqued.

However, to fault the book for its ambition would be to miss the point. Yengde’s project is not to provide neat answers, but to provoke new frameworks. In doing so, he disrupts the academic comfort zones that have historically siloed discussions of caste as ‘India’s problem’ or ghettoised Dalit discourse into identity politics. He also critiques the Western academy’s selective inclusion of marginalised voices, often limited to performative gestures rather than substantive institutional change.

What distinguishes Yengde’s work from others in this genre is his ability to synthesise biography, theory, and politics with an orator’s flair. His writing, though dense with references, retains an accessible cadence, animated by moral urgency and intellectual courage. His reflections on “Dalit Diplomacy” and “Dalit Internationalism” are particularly noteworthy, suggesting a new political vocabulary that connects subaltern struggles across borders — without erasing their difference.

Caste: A Global Story is an unapologetically polemical work — its strength lies in its ability to unsettle settled ideas, and in provoking a necessary reckoning within global social thought. For readers who engaged with Caste Matters as a declaration of resistance, this new volume reads like a manifesto for transnational solidarity. Even for the well-meaning but disengaged observer, it offers a compelling case for why caste, like race, must be named, resisted, and dismantled wherever it operates. It is worth reading; if only to be reminded that the most consequential battles against discrimination are not fought in the polished corridors of academia or conferences, but in the overlooked alleys and invisible interstices of everyday life — both rural and urban, in India and beyond.

The reviewer is a retired IAS officer and Director, School of Social Sciences, Ramaiah University of Applied Sciences.