Ajantha Subramanian is an anthropologist who specializes in social stratification, political economy, and citizenship. She is Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies at Harvard University and the author of Shorelines: Space and Rights in South India.
The Caste of Merit is a brilliant contribution to the study of both
privilege and meritocracy in contemporary India. It is a powerful
intervention in our ongoing debates about diasporic mobility and a
genuinely novel treatment of caste as an enduring reality for those
struggling to make their way in today’s world of competitive
high-tech career trajectories. A distinguished and innovative work,
both ethnographically and theoretically.
*Susan Bayly, author of Caste, Society and Politics in
India*
Subramanian’s book is profoundly historical, with a broad focus on
the evolution of technical education and social life since the
colonial period, as well as the ways caste continues to shape power
and hierarchies in contemporary India. A valuable contribution to
the growing literature on caste and its reproduction in modern
times.
*Surinder S. Jodhka, author of Caste in Contemporary
India*
India’s legendary IITs deserve close study by an anthropologist,
and Ajantha Subramanian has produced a remarkable work that lets us
see behind the curtain.
*Ross Bassett, author of The Technological Indian*
The Caste of Merit depicts how upper-caste Indians remade
themselves through the ideology of meritocracy. Through her richly
detailed ethnography, Ajantha Subramanian sheds new light on the
troubling relationship between meritocracy and the reproduction of
inequality. A must-read for anyone interested in how meritocracy
works in contemporary societies.
*Shamus Khan, author of Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent
Elite at St. Paul’s School*
With a rare combination of originality and intellectual rigor,
Subramanian provides a masterful and disturbing analysis of
democratic ideals, meritocracy, and the endurance of caste at the
paramount higher education institutions of modern India. A timely
and impressive achievement.
*Assa Doron, coauthor of Waste of a Nation*
A critique of casteism and growing inequality, this book also
doubles as a fascinating history of IIT. Best read in Straussian
fashion as a sympathetic story of origins.
*Marginal Revolution*
In India—as in the United States and elsewhere—academic advancement
rarely occurs without a foundation of family privilege. Focusing on
the IIT in Madras, Subramanian shows how upper-caste Tamil
graduates have converted their caste privilege into professional
prestige and resisted attempts to increase the enrollment of
lower-caste groups.
*Foreign Affairs*
An original, incisive, and scrupulous work of historical
anthropology…With a particular focus on IIT Madras and Tamil Nadu,
Subramanian explores the psychology and the demographics of India’s
new engineers, and the politics of caste, class, and
reservations.
*The Caravan*
Provides interesting insights into the colonial history of
engineering education and associated racialization of caste, and
the making of IITs in postcolonial India as an Brahmin-upper caste
space…An excellent book that those interested in sociology of
education and meritocracy in India cannot ignore.
*Scroll*
What does ‘merit’—which is often posed as the ideal criterion for
university admissions—really mean in a context where caste pervades
public life? Drawing on a rich ethnography focused on the IIT
Madras, in the South Indian city of Chennai, Subramanian argues
that in ‘merit,’ upper-caste Indians find a liberal and secular
rendering of caste…In both India and America, Subramanian argues, a
fantasy of having transcended identity politics has allowed for the
entrenchment of power.
*Public Books*
Provides interesting insights into the colonial history of
engineering education and associated racialization of caste and the
making of IITs in postcolonial India as a Brahmin–upper caste
space…An excellent book that those interested in sociology of
education and meritocracy in India cannot ignore.
*Economic and Political Weekly*
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