Event From Date
Event End Date
Event Title
CSSS is organizing a talk by Jenny Rowena
Event Details
Centre for the Study of Social Systems
School of Social Sciences
CSSS Colloquium
Jenny Rowena
(Assistant Professor, University of Delhi)
Will be presenting a paper on
"I was born a Hindu": Anti-Caste Discourses and the Nationalist Construction of Hinduism
Date & Time: February 21, 2018 (Thursday), 11.00 am
Venue: CSSS Committee Room (No: 13), SSS-II
Abstract: Anti-caste discourses today, though they have a complex and heterogeneous history, claim a predominantly political identity based on ideas of backwardness, resource sharing and exclusion. In such a scenario, the question of religion, which is so crucial to the formation of this nation is relegated to the background or vigorously denied as not being important, and the discussion is always brought back to the singular category of caste. In this paper, i want to argue against this trend by reexamining some of the anti-caste debates of the 20th century, which are inadvertently entangled in the articulation of the modern category of 'Hinduism.' The attempt here would be to show how Hindu social reform and anti-caste discourses are caught in a close, combative and complicated relationship, with which they make each other viable, embedded as they are in the larger framework of colonial modernity.
Bio: Dr. Jenny Rowena works as Assistant Professor, Dept of English, Miranda House College, University of Delhi. She has worked on caste and gender issues in popular Malayalam Cinema, Her PhD thesis is entitles Reading Laughter :The Popular Malayalam Comedy Films of the Late 80s and Early 90s, EFLU, Hyderabad, 2003. She is the author of “Themmadikalum Thampurakkanmarum: Malayalam Cinemayum Aanathangalum” (Rowdies and Lords: Malayalam Cinema and Masculinities), Subject and Language Press: Kottayam, 2011.