Revisiting Power-knowledge: Caste, Colonialism and Knowledge production

Monday, 8 June 2026, 4pm to 6pm

By the early decades of the twentieth century, the introduction of colonial mode of education transformed the existing ways of knowing practices in Malabar and elsewhere in British India. Closely following this transformation, this presentation maps the emerging new form of power-knowledge entanglement and the struggles against this methodological domination from the marginalized communities. I argue that the dominant form should be marked as Colonial-Brahmanical as caste was central to the new form of knowledge production. The marginalized communities did resist this dominant form which can be categorized as artisanal ways of knowing. The paper further propose that the artisanal model could significantly contribute to the contemporary debates of decolonizing, which is also de-Brahmanising in the Indian context, knowledge production.

Sunandan K N is an Associate Professor at School of Arts and Sciences, Azim Premji University, Bangalore. His research interests include history and Sociology of Knowledge production, relationship between caste and technology in India and entanglement of science and colonialism. His book “Caste, Knowledge, Power: Ways of Knowing in 20th Century Malabar” explores the emergence of new forms of knowledge in Malabar during the long twentieth century and marks its form of power as “colonial-Brahmanical”. His current research explores how genetics has become the new domain of science where social categories such as race and caste and their power relations are naturalised through population genetics.

Speaker(s): Sunandan K N (Azim Premji University, Bangalore)

Series: SAIH Seminar Series

Venue: St Antony's College - Pavilion Room - Pavilion Room St Antony's College 62 Woodstock Road Oxford Oxfordshire OX2 6JF United Kingdom

Department: Asian Studies Centre (St Antony's)

Organiser: Abraham Murad, Jack Jacobs

Register here: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/e985ade8-f2d2-41fa-b360-096c669f104e@cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91