Archive · 11 Oct 2026
Graphic Book Makes Caste Visible as a Built System
The Blue Book is a graphic book about caste in India.
Its author, Siddhesh Gautam, uses pictures and imagined conversations to explore the subject.
He talks on the page with important figures from the anti-caste movement, though those conversations did not really happen.
The book shows caste as a system that sorts people into groups.
It also asks how caste can affect what people feel allowed to want.
Gautam writes about communities being recognized for their work but not always for their ideas or culture.
The reviewer says the pictures are often the book’s strongest way of making its point.
Sometimes, though, the words explain things that the pictures have already shown.
Siddhesh Gautam’s The Blue Book uses images and imagined conversations to explore caste in India.
Across eight chapters, Gautam engages with figures including B. R. Ambedkar, Savitribai Phule and the Buddha.
The book depicts caste as a system that sorts people, using images such as a factory, map, queue and label.
It examines how caste can shape people’s desires and limit recognition of communities as makers of culture and history.
The review praises the book’s visual arguments but says some passages explain ideas the drawings already convey.
- Who
- Siddhesh Gautam, author of The Blue Book.
- What
- A graphic book exploring caste through images, imagined conversations and personal reflection.
- Where
- India, the setting of the book’s discussion of caste and the anti-caste movement.
- Why
- To explore caste, its effects on people’s lives and desires, and the recognition of communities in history and culture.
- Book
- The Blue Book
- Author
- Siddhesh Gautam
- Structure
- Eight chapters
- Visual palette
- Blue and white
- Figures featured in imagined conversations
- B. R. Ambedkar, Savitribai Phule and the Buddha
- Review’s assessment
- The drawings are most persuasive when they portray caste as a system; some passages are described as overly explanatory.