Buddhism and Caste Seminar

The current historical moment poses unique challenges and opportunities for scholars of South Asia and the South Asian diaspora. In recent years, scholars and activists have been sounding alarms over threats and calls for violence made by increasingly powerful ultra-nationalist Hindu forces (Hindutva) against marginalized communities, including Muslims, Dalits, Ādivāsi, LGBTQIA communities, and groups seeking equality and justice for women. Calls for violence are supported by a public discourse of historical distortion that presents Brahmins (the highest caste) as the primary agents of historical transformation and position subaltern communities as peripheral at best and at worst enemies of Indian civilization. This ultra-nationalist model presumes the inevitable triumph of Brahmanical imperial hegemony over the diverse regional cultures of premodern South Asia. As Dalit civil rights organizations like Equality Labs illustrate, caste is not isolated to South Asia but moves with the diaspora, where it intersects with gender, racial, and religious discourses in other countries.

With the recent rise of the interdisciplinary field of critical caste studies, scholars of South Asian religion have come together to examine how caste hierarchies are created and maintained in India and how these structures are resisted by caste-oppressed and anti-caste actors. In recognition that, like South Asian studies, mainstream Buddhist Studies has lacked a sustained engagement with the construction of caste and counter-hegemonic anti-caste worldviews, this seminar seeks to bring together scholars of premodern and modern Buddhism who approach the field from the areas of history, anthropology, philosophy, literary, and decolonial studies. Our goal is to provide a collaborative environment to investigate how caste has structured the history of Buddhism and Buddhist Studies, as well as the tools that Buddhism has offered for anti-caste, anti-racist, and postcolonial movements.

We aim to generate scholarship around five interconnected themes across the five years of the seminar. We wish to gain a better understanding of (1) caste-centered focuses of Buddhist history; (2) the role of caste in Buddhist communities outside of India; (3) the enduring legacy of B.R. Ambedkar and Ambedkarite Buddhism; (4) the intersection of caste with other forms of inequality, including gender, sexuality, and race; (5) methodological reflections on how a focus on caste changes Buddhist Studies scholarship and pedagogy.

We seek diverse perspectives and welcome applicants working in various regions, religious traditions, disciplines, and time periods. We also encourage innovative proposals that allow specialists of different fields to present on shared or connected themes. We are especially interested in proposals from underrepresented groups, including graduate students, contingent faculty, scholars from caste-oppressed backgrounds, scholars of color, scholars of LGBTQ communities, and scholars with disabilities.