Edited by A.R. Venkatachalapathy and Karthick Ram Manoharan

Alagirisamy shows how Tamil reform organizations drew on existing traditions of Tamil devotionalism to articulate a caste-transcendent, progressive Tamil identity, distinct from the politicization of caste in Tamil Nadu. Despite upper-caste resistance to Periyar’s visit, he found support among working-class and lower-caste migrants. However, the claim that Tamil identity politics produced a distinct Malayan national consciousness among Tamils remains underdeveloped. The political emergence of pan-Malayan identity appears abrupt and largely driven by Periyar’s exhortations to adopt Malayan citizenship.


Reviewed by: Kiran Keshavamurthy
By Sushila Takbhaure. Translated by Deeba Zafir and Preeti Dewan

The idea underestimates the inflexibility of its stranglehold on everyone who is subject to it, including the ‘upper’ castes. I wish to affirm that there are at least three major differences between caste discrimination and racial discrimination (in the American context) which need to be kept in mind while making this comparison. Firstly, the logic of racial discrimination is the colour bar, i.e.,


Reviewed by: Tapan Basu
By Tapan Basu

Having renounced his Brahminical heritage, he founded the Navratan Committee, an anti-caste rainbow coalition, aimed at challenging entrenched caste hierarchies. While he wrote two books on Buddhism, his book Mool Bharatvasi aur Arya (1930) is his most significant work, where he reiterated the argument about the indigenous inhabitants having been dispossessed by the Aryan invaders—a thesis already advanced by Phule and Acchutanand.


Reviewed by: Preeti Gupta Dewan

Historical Antecedents and Contemporary Trends’ describe the history of election studies and voting behaviour analysis in India post 1990. They claim that the ‘coming together of a plethora of Hindu castes and communities under the political banner of BJP forces us to rethink existing theories of caste-class cleavages’ used to explain Indian electoral politics (p. 235).


Reviewed by: Pratip Chattopadhyay
Edited by Yatindra Singh Sisodia, Ashutosh Kumar & Pratip Chattopadhyay

Second, it offers a nuanced account of federalism by examining the dynamic interplay between central authority and regional autonomy. While acknowledging the rise of centralizing tendencies in recent years, the contributors demonstrate that States continue to remain critical arenas shaping political discourse and governance practices. The volume also shows how regional parties have challenged the dominance of national formations, reshaping the competitive landscape of State politics.


Reviewed by: Shashikant Pandey
By Gitanjali Surendran

Surendran underscores the importance of Dharmapala to this project of universalizing Buddhism by decoupling him from the nation-state frame. Dharmapala is even today popularly remembered as a Sinhala nationalist. However, Surendran argues that we ought to understand his role in making Buddhism the first non-semitic religion to be named and placed in the category of a ‘world religion’.


Reviewed by: Suraj Thube