G. Sampath reviews The Shudras: Vision for a New Path, edited by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd & Karthik Raja Karuppasamy
The HinduThe term ‘Other Backward Classes’, or OBCs, is an administrative category. Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd and Karthik Raja Karupusamy, political theorists and the editors of The Shudras: Vision for a New Path, seem to think so. From a Shudra perspective, the suggestion that they should support one Brahminical national party instead of another Brahminical national party because the former is ‘secular’ and the latter is not, makes little sense. Shudras in other regions have their own versions of Baliraja, which brings us to the final contradiction: Should the regionally fragmented Shudras take on a homogenising national force by building an alternative homogenous politics around ‘Shudra’ identity? The Shudras: Vision for a New Path ; Edited by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd & Karthik Raja Karuppasamy, Penguin Random House, ₹699.
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