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About Ajantha Subramanian
Ajantha Subramanian is a historical anthropologist whose work addresses the historicity and political economy of caste. She is particularly interested in the incorporation of caste into projects of governance and capitalist transformation, and how these projects in turn have shaped the social relations of caste. Her work also considers caste as an instrument of classification and management that has been imagined and deployed in relation to other categories of class, religion, and race. Her first book, Shorelines: Space and Rights in South India (Stanford University Press, 2009; Yoda Press, 2013), chronicles the struggles for resource rights by Catholic fishers on India’s southwestern coast, with a focus on how they have used spatial imaginaries and practices to constitute themselves as political subjects. Her second book, The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India (Harvard University Press, 2019), analyzes meritocracy as a terrain of caste struggle in India and its implications for democratic transformation. She is currently working on two projects, the first on Dalit politics in a gold mining company town in South India and the second on the transnationalization of caste in the United States.
Ajantha Subramanian is Professor of Anthropology at CUNY Graduate Center and host of The Caste Pod.
NBN Episodes hosted by Ajantha:
March 16, 2026
Upper Caste Liberalism
This episode features a conversation with Ravikant Kisana, Dean of the School of Liberal Education and Languages at Galgotias University in India, abo…
March 2, 2026
Coming Out as Dalit
This episode features Yashica Dutt, journalist and author of Coming Out as Dalit. We began with a discussion of her choice to write a memoir, the sign…
February 16, 2026
Feminism and Critical Hindu Studies
This episode features a conversation with the founding members of the Feminist Critical Hindu Studies Collective, also known as the Auntylectuals. We …
February 1, 2026
The Caste Question
TCP’s inaugural episode features Suraj Yengde and Anupama Rao, two scholars whose academic work and activism have helped to set the parameters of the …