Neocolonial Saviorism

Part 2 foregrounds ethnographic examples that locate the analysis at the interface of neocolonial race, caste, and gendered relations as they influence Sahaayaka's praxis. Shankar characterizes the forms of racialized difference he analyzes in each chapter of part 2 as “neocolonial” because they have been shaped by earlier colonial demarcations of difference as they relate to labor capacities. As such, in these chapters Shankar focuses on the way that particular racialized categories associated with colonial and postcolonial governance in India—poverty, nation, caste, gender, and religion—reemerge in how brown saviors, mentors, and those who live in the villages outside of Bangalore imagine who should be helped and how. Together, these five chapters show how Sahaayaka's interventions reinscribe neocolonial hierarchies within the governance structures associated with help.