The Shudras Vision for a New Path

The Shudras echoes Dr Ambedkar's question in Who Were the Shudras? that he asked in 1946. More than 70 years later Kancha Ilaiah and his team of authors revisit this issue to give Shudras a voice again' -CHRISTOPHE JAFFRELOTThe Shudras Vision for a New Path weaves together multiple dimensions of the predicament of India's productive castes-in the spiritual social political economic philosophical and historical spheres. It reformulates their current position as well as future pathways. It strives to provoke Shudras-including regional political party leaders-all over India to realize their unique historical role in fighting unequal caste structures. And it gives a call to resist Hindutva in which they have no liberated equal space with the Dwija castes. At a juncture when the Shudra castes are regionalized and the Dwijas have become 'national' the fifth volume of the Rethinking India series in collaboration with the Samruddha Bharat Foundation seeks to bring home the real picture of their marginalized status in all key structures of the nation. It posits that the emancipation and progress of the Shudras are vital to sustain Ambedkar's constitutional democracy and move towards socio-spiritual equality. Review The Shudras echoes Dr Ambedkar's question inWho Were the Shudras? that he asked in 1946. More than 70 years later Kancha Ilaiah and his team of authors revisit this issue to give Shudras a voice again... The Shudras explore the roots of Shudra identity the reasons for its subjugation and the routes to emancipation and political consciousness. ―Christophe JaffrelotWhat India holds for the future of Shudras A book of essays explores new paths for the 'caste' -- ScrollFittingly the book is dedicated 'to the great Phules Mahatma Jyotirao and Savitribai who initiated the Shudra revolutionary movement of Read Write and Fight for the first time in Indian history. -- The CitizenThis anthology brings the spotlight on challenges facing a people who form not only the majority of India's population but also the majority among Hindus -- The HinduThe book initiates a dialogue towards the subjectivity identity politics of the Shudras and their relevance in India today. -- The News MinuteAfter seven decades Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd and his team try to give new meaning to investigate Shudra spiritual political identity and political consciousness to find questions of radical emancipation. -- Countercurrents About the Author KANCHA ILAIAH SHEPHERD is former director Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy Maulana Azad National Urdu University and former head of the department of political science at Osmania University Hyderabad. He is a social activist and political theorist and has been writing in English and Telugu for forty years. His well-known books Why I Am Not a Hindu God as a Political Philosopher Post-Hindu India and Buffalo Nationalism have played a critical role in shaping Shudra/OBC/Dalit discourse in India and abroad.KARTHIK RAJA KARUPPUSAMY is a first generation graduate from a Shudra family. Currently a doctoral candidate and senior research fellow at the Centre for Political Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University his research focuses on the political legal and socio-economic interface between Dalits and OBCs in the Kongunad region of Tamil Nadu. His MPhil dissertation 'The Nation in Historical Imagination' theorizes how secular and communal conceptions of the 'nation' are constructed operationalized and disseminated through state-sponsored NCERT history textbooks post-Independence.