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    Rights statement: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Contemporary South Asia on 16/07/2018, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09584935.2018.1498453

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‘So called caste’: S. N. Balagangadhara, the Ghent School and the Politics of grievance

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‘So called caste’: S. N. Balagangadhara, the Ghent School and the Politics of grievance. / Sutton, Deborah Ruth.
In: Contemporary South Asia, Vol. 26, No. 3, 2018, p. 336-349.

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

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Sutton DR. ‘So called caste’: S. N. Balagangadhara, the Ghent School and the Politics of grievance. Contemporary South Asia. 2018;26(3):336-349. Epub 2018 Jul 16. doi: 10.1080/09584935.2018.1498453

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Bibtex

@article{7f96ec569a8246f2a37bcc201013be36,
title = "{\textquoteleft}So called caste{\textquoteright}: S. N. Balagangadhara, the Ghent School and the Politics of grievance",
abstract = "This article is concerned with the small but coherent lobby of political scholarship has emerged from a lineage of research supervision which centres on the charisma and ideas of S. N. Balagangadhara, a philosopher from the Centre for the Comparative Science of Cultures (Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap) at the University of Ghent. In particular, it examines the deployment of his ideas in a spate of recent scholarly and social media declarations that reject the existence of caste and, by extension, caste discrimination. This scholarship - characterised by circular reasoning, self- referencing and a poverty of rigour - has established a modest, if contentious and poorly reviewed, presence in academic spheres of dissemination. The {\textquoteleft}Ghent School{\textquoteright} describes a group of scholars who rely conspicuously on Balagangadhara{\textquoteright}s concept of {\textquoteleft}colonial consciousness{\textquoteright}, a crude derivative of Said{\textquoteright}s thesis of Orientalism. The Ghent School maintain that all extant scholarship on Hinduism, secularism and caste represent an endurance of colonial distortions that act to defame India as a nation. This politics of affront finds considerable traction in diasporic contexts but has little, if any, resonance when mapped against the far more complex politics of caste in India.",
keywords = "S. N. Balagangadhara, Ghent School, caste, caste violence, Hindu nationalism",
author = "Sutton, {Deborah Ruth}",
note = "This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Contemporary South Asia on 16/07/2018, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09584935.2018.1498453",
year = "2018",
doi = "10.1080/09584935.2018.1498453",
language = "English",
volume = "26",
pages = "336--349",
journal = "Contemporary South Asia",
issn = "0958-4935",
publisher = "Routledge",
number = "3",

}

RIS

TY - JOUR

T1 - ‘So called caste’

T2 - S. N. Balagangadhara, the Ghent School and the Politics of grievance

AU - Sutton, Deborah Ruth

N1 - This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Contemporary South Asia on 16/07/2018, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09584935.2018.1498453

PY - 2018

Y1 - 2018

N2 - This article is concerned with the small but coherent lobby of political scholarship has emerged from a lineage of research supervision which centres on the charisma and ideas of S. N. Balagangadhara, a philosopher from the Centre for the Comparative Science of Cultures (Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap) at the University of Ghent. In particular, it examines the deployment of his ideas in a spate of recent scholarly and social media declarations that reject the existence of caste and, by extension, caste discrimination. This scholarship - characterised by circular reasoning, self- referencing and a poverty of rigour - has established a modest, if contentious and poorly reviewed, presence in academic spheres of dissemination. The ‘Ghent School’ describes a group of scholars who rely conspicuously on Balagangadhara’s concept of ‘colonial consciousness’, a crude derivative of Said’s thesis of Orientalism. The Ghent School maintain that all extant scholarship on Hinduism, secularism and caste represent an endurance of colonial distortions that act to defame India as a nation. This politics of affront finds considerable traction in diasporic contexts but has little, if any, resonance when mapped against the far more complex politics of caste in India.

AB - This article is concerned with the small but coherent lobby of political scholarship has emerged from a lineage of research supervision which centres on the charisma and ideas of S. N. Balagangadhara, a philosopher from the Centre for the Comparative Science of Cultures (Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap) at the University of Ghent. In particular, it examines the deployment of his ideas in a spate of recent scholarly and social media declarations that reject the existence of caste and, by extension, caste discrimination. This scholarship - characterised by circular reasoning, self- referencing and a poverty of rigour - has established a modest, if contentious and poorly reviewed, presence in academic spheres of dissemination. The ‘Ghent School’ describes a group of scholars who rely conspicuously on Balagangadhara’s concept of ‘colonial consciousness’, a crude derivative of Said’s thesis of Orientalism. The Ghent School maintain that all extant scholarship on Hinduism, secularism and caste represent an endurance of colonial distortions that act to defame India as a nation. This politics of affront finds considerable traction in diasporic contexts but has little, if any, resonance when mapped against the far more complex politics of caste in India.

KW - S. N. Balagangadhara

KW - Ghent School

KW - caste

KW - caste violence

KW - Hindu nationalism

U2 - 10.1080/09584935.2018.1498453

DO - 10.1080/09584935.2018.1498453

M3 - Journal article

VL - 26

SP - 336

EP - 349

JO - Contemporary South Asia

JF - Contemporary South Asia

SN - 0958-4935

IS - 3

ER -