[Reader-list] Proliferation of Caste: A Historical Explanation (Special Lecture by Rajan Gurukkal)

[Praveen Rai]

Centre for the Study of Developing Societies

invites you to a Special Lecture



*Proliferation of Caste: A Historical Explanation*

by *Rajan Gurukkal*



*Vijaya Ramaswamy* will Chair

Wednesday, 26 February 2014, 5 pm

CSDS Seminar Hall,

29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054





The lecture focuses on one of the fundamental concerns of history, of the
historical process of the formation and proliferation of castes in Kerala
region, as part of the formation of the temple-centred agrarian society. It
starts with the earliest identifiable social formation in the region, which
was a combination of several simple unevenly evolved economies largely
incapable of generating division and specialization of labour leading to
the divergence of kinship and the formation of castes. The system of
service-tenure under the king and the local rulers also gave rise to
hereditary offices, generating castes and sub-castes with economy and
royalty as determinants of status hierarchy. Its extension into
non-brahmana villages, and even to market towns, attested by records,
suggests caste appeared as an institutional manifestation in the
hierarchically structured agrarian society in which services were paid for
in the form of land rights.



*Rajan Gurrukal* is one of the eminent historians whose exceptional range
of work is greatly acclaimed. He is currently Soundararajan Chair Visiting
Professor, Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science,
Malleswaram, Bangalore. His areas of specialisation range from the
socio-economics of the Kerala temple and advanced through the study of the
land system and socio-political organisation in the Tamil South to 'forms
of production and forces of change in ancient Tamil society, the Tamil
heroic discourse, and the writing and its uses in early historic society.



He has authored several books both in Malayalam and English on
Socio-economic and Cultural History,  Structural Anthropology,  Historical
Sociology,  Social formations of South India, myth, history and society,
Human Ecology of the Southern Western Ghats and political sociology.



*Vijaya Ramaswamy* is professor at the Centre for Historical Studies in the
School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.



Praveen Rai
Academic Secretary
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
29, Rajpur Road
Delhi - 110054
Phone: 91-11-23942199
Fax: 91-11-23943450
www.csds.in