From Varna to Jati: Political Economy of Caste in Indian Social Formation: Commemorating Scholar and Revolutionary Martyr Yalavarthi Naveen Babu

This commemorative volume is based on Yalavarthi Naveen Babu’s M.Phil dissertation in sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Using the more dynamic conception of jati as opposed to a static western understanding of ‘caste,’ Naveen Babu traces its history in the social, cultural and economic aspects of the information of ‘Varna into Jati’ from the Rg-Vedic period to the end of 20 century. He demonstrates how these changes were grounded into the changing modes of production and its accompanying social formation. Naveen Babu’s work is a modest but significant interdisciplinary contribution to Indian Marxist historiography, sociology and political economy. It is relevant, not only for a scientific understanding of caste, but also for contemporary social movements against the caste and class divided Indian society. It is hoped that readers of this book will be further motivated to dig deeper into the complexity of the present social formation that embodies the subcontinent. Other contributors include sociologists such as Prof. Yogendra Singh, Political scientist Prof. Manorajan Mohanty, revolutionary poet Dr. Vara Vara Rao and Naveen’s friends and contemporaries, including the editor, B. Ramesh Babu, a biotechnologist, entrepreneur and a faculty at Wayne State University, USA.