INDIA, December 29, 2018 (India Facts): “Western Foundations of the Caste System” by Martin Farek, Dunkin Jalki, Sufiya Pathan, and Prakash Shah has been published by Palgrave Macmillan. The editors challenge the claim that the caste system was devised by self-serving Brahmans. How could, they ask, a small number of Brahmans be so successful in propagating the caste system across the country? Caste, they correctly point out, was a category in the census for a mere sixty years (from 1871 to 1931).
The book argues that the dominant descriptions of the caste system that we have today are results of originally Christian themes and questions. The authors of this collection show how this hypothesis can be applied beyond South Asia to the diasporic cultures that have made a home in Western countries, and how the inheritance of caste studies as structures by European scholarship impacts on our understanding of contemporary India and the Indians of the diaspora.
This lengthy review of the book and the subject of caste can be read at “source” above.