The Implied Rajput: Caste and Disguise in the U.P. Police

CASI Seminar

in partnership with the South Asia Center and the Department of South Asia Studies

Joel Lee
Associate Professor of Anthropology, Williams College
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Ronald O. Perelman Center for Political Science & Economics
133 South 36th Street, Suite 230
Philadelphia PA 19104-6215

About the Seminar:
R. K. Chauhan (a pseudonym) ascended the ranks of the Uttar Pradesh police from one of its lowliest stations to one of its highest, retiring as a district superintendent. Over the same period, he underwent a transformation of caste; by his own account, he was born Dalit but became Rajput, taking on a title, manner, and comportment associated with that dominant community—with unexpected consequences. Anchored in interviews in Lucknow and part of a larger book project on caste concealment in urban north India, this seminar follows the career of Chauhan and the critical reflections on chhaap—the indexical operation of marking and unmarking bodies with caste stigmata—that his experience as a doubly undercover observer leads him to elaborate.

About the Speaker:
Joel Lee is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Williams College. He is the author of Deceptive Majority: Dalits, Hinduism and Underground Religion (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and co-editor, with K. Satyanarayana, of Concealing Caste: Passing and Personhood in Dalit Literature (Oxford University Press, 2023).

View Full CASI Fall 2023 Events Flyer

The Nand & Jeet Khemka Distinguished Lecture Series is an endowed public program of the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI). Launched in the 2007-08 academic year, and made possible through the generous support of the Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation, the series brings renowned India specialists to the Penn community and serves as a critical forum for analyzing and understanding the complex economic, political, social, and cultural changes that the world’s largest democracy is experiencing, as well as the challenges that lie ahead.
The Saluja Global Fellows Program has been made possible by the generous gift from Vishal Saluja ENG’89 W’89. CASI was excited to launch the program during the 2022–23 academic year, coinciding with the Center’s 30th Anniversary. This new program enables CASI to invite eminent leaders and rising experts on contemporary India preferably from the fields of media, culture, law, and contemporary history to be in residence for one to two weeks at CASI.