Is There A Buddhism Without Caste?: An Interdisciplinary Conversation

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. In both popular and scholarly idioms, Buddhism has commonly been thought of as an antidote to the authoritarianism of caste social structures. Both popular and academic presentations frequently approach the relationship of Buddhism and caste in too facile a manner, vacillating between portraying Buddhism as either completely egalitarian, in which the Buddha and his early community rejected the caste system, or as Brahminized, such that Buddhists accepted and maintained the varṇa and caste system. Drawing upon upon philosophical, political, legal, and anthropological disciplinary approaches, this roundtable brings together scholars of South Asia and the diaspora in order to address the question of how caste has structured Buddhist Studies and Buddhist communities in the past and present.