Talk:Ajantha Subramanian

By Sachi Anjunkar

Ajantha Subramanian is Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies and Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies at Harvard University, as of November 2022. According to her University Profile, her research interests include political economy, political ecology, colonialism and postcoloniality, space, citizenship, South Asia, and the South Asian diaspora.

In 2021, she endorsed the "Dismantling Global Hindutva" conference and made the allegation

"the current government of India [in 2021] has instituted discriminatory policies including beef bans, restrictions on religious conversion and interfaith weddings, and the introduction of religious discrimination into India’s citizenship laws. The result has been a horrifying rise in religious and caste-based violence, including hate crimes, lynchings, and rapes directed against Muslims, non-conforming Dalits, Sikhs, Christians, adivasis and other dissident Hindus. Women of these communities are especially targeted. Meanwhile, the government has used every tool of harassment and intimidation to muzzle dissent. Dozens of student activists and human rights defenders are currently languishing in jail indefinitely without due process under repressive anti-terrorism laws."

Publications related to India

Book Publications

1. Subramanian, Ajantha. The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India. Harvard University Press, 2019.
2. Subramanian, Ajantha. Shorelines: Space and Rights in South India. Stanford University Press, 2009. Reprint, Yoda Press, 2013.
3. Subramanian, Ajantha, John Cavanagh, and Sarah Anderson. NAFTA at Two Years: The Human and Environmental Toll. Institute for Policy Studies, 1995.

Journal Articles

1. Subramanian, Ajantha. "Meritocracy and Democracy: Indian Reservations and the Politics of Caste." Public Culture, vol. 31, no. 2, May 2019.
2. Subramanian, Ajantha. "Making Merit: The Indian Institutes of Technology and the Social Life of Caste." Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 57, no. 2, April 2015.
3. Subramanian, Ajantha. "Political Anthropology." Oxford Bibliographies Online, 2011.
4. Subramanian, Ajantha. "Community, Class, and Conservation: Development Politics on the Kanyakumari Coast." Conservation and Society, vol. 1, no. 2, 2003, pp. 177-208.
5. Subramanian, Ajantha. "Modernity from Below: Local Citizenship on the South Indian Coast." International Social Science Journal, no. 175, March 2003, pp. 135-144.
6. Subramanian, Ajantha. "Community, Place, and Citizenship." Seminar: Shades of Green, a Symposium on the Changing Contours of Indian Environmentalism, no. 516, August 2002.
7. Subramanian, Ajantha. "Indians in North Carolina: Race, Class, and Culture in the Making of Immigrant Identity." Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, vol. 20, nos. 1&2, 2000, pp. 105-113.
8. Subramanian, Ajantha. "Is Development Just a Red Herring? Indian Fishworkers, Multinationals, and the State." South Asia Bulletin, vol. 14, no. 2, 1994, pp. 108-114.

Book Chapters

1. Subramanian, Ajantha. "Merit and Caste at Elite Institutions: The Case of the IIT." Making Meritocracy in China and India, edited by Tarun Khanna and Michael Szonyi, Oxford University Press, 2021. (Forthcoming).
2. Subramanian, Ajantha. "Caste and Merit." Oxford Handbook of Caste in Contemporary/Modern Times, edited by Surinder Jodhka and Jules Naudet, Oxford University Press, 2021.
3. Subramanian, Ajantha. "The Meritocrats: The Indian Institutes of Technology and the Social Life of Caste." Sociology of Indian Elites, edited by Surinder Jodhka, Jules Naudet, and Gilles Verniers, Oxford University Press, 2019.
4. Subramanian, Ajantha. "Merit and Caste in Contemporary India." Indian Democracy: Origins, Trajectories, Contestations, edited by Alf Gunvald Nilsen, Kenneth Bo Nielsen, and Anand Vaidya, Pluto Press, 2019.
5. Subramanian, Ajantha. "Recovering Caste Privilege: The Politics of Meritocracy at the Indian Institutes of Technology." New Subaltern Politics: Reconceptualizing Hegemony and Resistance in Contemporary India, edited by Alf Gunvald Nilsen and Srila Roy, Oxford University Press, 2015.
6. Subramanian, Ajantha. "Indians in North Carolina: Race, Class, and Culture in the Making of Immigrant Identity." Contemporary Asian America: A Multidisciplinary Reader, 2nd ed., edited by Min Zhou and James Gatewood, New York University Press, 2007, pp. 158-175.
7. Subramanian, Ajantha. "Community, Place, and Citizenship." Environmental Issues in India, Pearson Longman, 2007, pp. 444-453.
8. Subramanian, Ajantha. "North Carolina’s Indians: Erasing Race to Make the Citizen." The American South in a Global World, edited by James Peacock and Harry Watson, University of North Carolina Press, 2005, pp. 192-201.