The upper caste gaze injects humiliation in Dalit souls. Yengde testimonies to this fact in the first chapter 'Being a Dalit' where he recounts his moral harassment at the hands of his Indian friends both brahmin and non-brahmin. The book addresses the operation of caste system in 21st Century India and also abroad.Īmbedkar once famously wrote critiquing the casteist attitude of brahmins that wherever they will go, they will take the caste system with them. There are also criticisms about the theory and lack of structural coherence of the book, aspects which I will discuss later.

These criticisms were defended by many Dalit scholars who realized Yengde's commited pro-Ambedkarite spirit. The book received much backlash in the early days of its publication mounted to labeling Yengde's as 'anti-Ambedkarite' for his 'more than the Constitution' approach to Dalit problems. The book is a first of its kind in terms of theorising dailt experience of casteism as it is in the 21st century and also providing a nuanced critique of the caste system by analyzing not only the role of brahmins but each and every single person belonging to brahmin, bania, kshatriya, shudra and even Dalit sub castes and classes who participate in the caste system as it is everyone's participation and validation that makes the caste system thrive, but it is also sometimes blissful ignorance and denial. Cornel West about coloured people, to make dailt voices audible and dissect the always mutating caste ecology of India. Thus, the title shows that Yengde took upon himself similar project regarding dailt people as that of Prof. Cornel West, who is also Yengde's mentor. The title alludes to the book Race Matters (1993) by American philosopher and public intellectual, Prof. Caste Matters (2019) is Dailt scholar, activist Suraj Yengde's first book.

Caste matters