Pedagogical Strategies for Teaching Caste and Casteism in North American Contexts

This roundtable explores pedagogical strategies for teaching caste and casteism in North American higher education. Whereas in South Asian countries like India “caste” is a fairly ubiquitous social grammar that informs and constitutes many aspects of everyday life, in other countries like the United States students often come into classroom settings from a variety of racial, ethnic, and national backgrounds that may or may not have exposure to the subtleties and complex histories of caste and casteism. Similarly, students from South Asian backgrounds may be mixed race, mixed caste, and/or second- or third-generation savarna immigrants to the United States, and thus potentially unsure or unaware of how to understand their own positionality and legacy in the social realities of caste. This roundtable addresses these challenges, and critically examines the role higher education can take in addressing the historic and ongoing violence of casteism and caste-based discrimination.