School of Social and Political Science

Description

How can we understand the contradictions inherent in egalitarian claims within societies deeply structured by hierarchies? What is at stake in the competing narratives of development models—such as those of Kerala, the Tamil Nadu, and the Gujarat—that often serve as sub-nationalistic frameworks? To what extent do these populist narratives of development genuinely engage with and address the lived realities of Dalits, one of the most marginalized and oppressed communities in the world? 

Anchored in Dr. Ambedkar’s influential framework ‘social encompassing the political,’ this lecture critically examines these questions. It seeks to unpack the paradoxes within egalitarian claims, demonstrating how such claims often reinforce casteist state structures and perpetuate caste-based inequalities.

Jayaseelan Raj is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and Development at King’s College London and a Fellow of the GRNPP at SOAS, University of London. He is the author of Plantation Crisis: Ruptures of Dalit Life in the Indian Tea Belt (UCL Press, 2022) and co-author of Ground Down by Growth: Tribe, Caste, Class and Inequality in Twenty-First Century India (Pluto Press, 2017). His research and writings examine themes such as the plantation system and labour, caste, class, gender, and ethnicity, agrarian capitalism and migration, as well as the state and Dalit question in India.