Talk:Brian Caton

By Rutvi Dattani

Brian Caton is an Associate Professor of History at Luther College as of December 2022.

As per his bio, he has published no books, papers or research pertaining to rights of Hindus, the impact or relationship between Islam and Hinduism / Hindutva and the Indian Government.

In 2021, he 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."

Publications related to India

1. Caton, Brian. The Imperial Ambition of Science and Its Discontents: Animal Breeding in Nineteenth-Century Punjab. Shifting Ground: People, Animals and Mobility in India’s Environmental History, edited by Mahesh Rangarajan and K. Sivaramakrishnan, Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 132-54.
2. Caton, Brian. The Transition from Animal Capital to Land Capital in Colonial Punjab, 1850-1900. Capitalism Nature Socialism, vol. 26, no. 3, 2015, pp. 64-72. Special issue: "Capitalism, Modernity and the Environment in South Asia," edited by H. Karrar and A. N. Ahmad.
3. Caton, Brian. Social Categories and Colonisation in Panjab, 1849-1920. Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 41, 2004, pp. 33-50. Reprinted in Caste in Modern India: A Reader, edited by Sumit Sarkar and Tanika Sarkar, vol. 1, Permanent Black, 2013.