South Asian Studies Program

About the Soli Sorabjee Lectures in South Asian Studies

This lecture series engages with themes of justice — broadly defined to include the interrogation of human rights, historical narratives, literary and political representations, gender and social justice, citizenship and democracy, and cross-border connections between the nations of South Asia.

Our goal is to expose students at Brandeis (and the larger public) to the scholarship being conducted in the multidisciplinary fields of South Asian Studies, both in the United States and in South Asia itself, as well as to the vast range of South Asian intellectual and artistic traditions. The series is sponsored by the South Asian Studies Program. It was named after the honorable Soli J. Sorabjee, former attorney general of India and a friend of Brandeis University.

We invite you to a lecture by Jayaseelan Raj titled,
Egalitarian Paradox: Dalits and the State in South India

Jayaseelan Raj

2:20 - 5:10 p.m. April 5th, 2024 | Schwartz Hall 103

Jayaseelan Raj is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Development at King's College London, and a Fellow in the GRNPP at SOAS, University of London. He is the author of Plantation Crisis: Ruptures of Dalit Life in the Indian Tea Belt (UCL Press, 2022), and co-author of Ground Down by Growth: Tribe, Caste, Class and Inequality in Twenty-First Century India (Pluto Press, 2017). Recently, he was awarded New India Foundation fellowship to write a book on Dalits and State in India. His research and writings have focused on plantation system and labour, caste, class, gender and ethnicity, agrarian capitalism and migration, and state and Dalit question in India. Read more.

Past Events

2020 Soli Sorabjee Lecture: Sangeeta Ray
2019-20

March 18, 2020

Sangeeta Ray is a professor of English and Comparative Literature. She teaches anglophone postcolonial and world literature, US minority literature, and environmental literature.

Parmesh shahani
2018-19

April 11, 2019

Parmesh Shahani, founder of Godrej India Culture Lab and author of Gay Bombay

  • Other Worlds Are Possible: Re-imagining new Indias through "cultural acupuncture"

Amita Baviskar event poster
2017-18