Talk:Ajantha Subramanian

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By Sachi Anjunkar


Ajantha Subramanian is Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies and Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies at Harvard University[1][2], 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 along with Hibatullah Akhundzada, the supreme leader of the Taliban, co-signed a letter supporting "Dismantling Global Hindutva" Conference, as an academic and scholar 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."[3]

On November 5, 2017, she signed the letter submitted by the South Asia Faculty Group (SAFG) to the California State Board of Education[4] where she:

  • She misrepresented scholarship stating "Mythological terms substitute for historical ones for example the 'Indus Valley Civilization' (a fact-based geographic term) appears to be replaced with a religiously-motivated and ideologically charged term 'Indus-Saraswati/Sarasvati Civilization'. The Saraswati is a mythical river"[5][6][7]
  • Implied that Christians and Muslims existed in Ancient India, prior to the founding of these religions ​

Publications related to India[edit]

Book Publications[edit]

  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[edit]

  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[edit]

  1. Subramanian, Ajantha. Caste and Merit. Oxford Handbook of Caste in Contemporary/Modern Times, edited by Surinder Jodhka and Jules Naudet, Oxford University Press, 2021.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. Subramanian, Ajantha. Community, Place, and Citizenship. Environmental Issues in India, Pearson Longman, 2007, pp. 444-453.
  7. 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.

References[edit]

  1. ↑ Ajantha Subramanian page on Harvard University accessed November 10, 2022
  2. ↑ Ajantha Subramanian CV PDF accessed November 10, 2022
  3. ↑ "Letter of Support", Dismantling Global Hindutva Conference website, accessed August 7, 2022
  4. ↑ 2017 South Asia Faculty Group (SAFG) Letter to the California State Board of Education
  5. ↑ Chakrabarti, Dilip, and Sukhdev Saini. The Problem of the Sarasvati River and Notes on the Archaeological Geography of Haryana and Indian Punjab. Aryan Books International, 2009.
  6. ↑ Danino, Michel. The Lost River: On the Trail of the Sarasvati. Penguin Books, 2010.
  7. ↑ McIntosh, Jane R. A Peaceful Realm: The Rise and Fall of the Indus Civilization. Westview Press, 2002, p. 24. ​where she stated "Suddenly it became apparent that the “Indus” Civilization was a misnomer—although the Indus had played a major role in the development of the civilization, the “lost Saraswati” River, judging by the density of settlement along its banks, had contributed an equal or greater part to its prosperity. Many people today refer to this early state as the “Indus-Saraswati Civilization” and continuing references to the “Indus Civilization” should be an abbreviation in which the “Saraswati” is implied. There are some fifty sites known along the Indus whereas the Saraswati has almost 1,000. This is misleading figure because erosion and alluviation has between them destroyed or deeply buried the greater part of settlements in the Indus Valley itself, but there can be no doubt that the Saraswati system did yield a high proportion of the Indus people’s agricultural produce"
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