Table Of ContentC M I
ASTE IN ODERN NDIA
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CASTE IN
MODERN INDIA
A Reader
VOLUME 1
Edited by
S S T S
UMIT ARKAR AND ANIKA ARKAR
Published by
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Copyright © 2014 S S T S
Copyright © respective contributors, journals and publishers for
individual essays
eISBN 978-81-7824-437-2
e-edition:First Published 2014
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Contents
VOLUME 1
Preface and Acknowledgements
1. Caste in Colonial Times
1 D W
AVID ASHBROOK
Land and Labour in Late-Eighteenth-Century
South India: e Golden Age of the Pariah?
2 N B. D
ICHOLAS IRKS
e Original Caste: Power, History and Hierarchy in South Asia
3 S B
USAN AYLY
Western ‘Orientalists’ and the Colonial Perception of Caste
4 T R. M
HOMAS ETCALF
e Ordering of Difference
5 B P. C
RIAN ATON
Social Categories and Colonization in Panjab 1849–1920
6 S G
UMIT UHA
Civilizations, Markets, and Services: Village Servants in India from
the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Centuries
7 J D. R
OHN OGERS
Caste as a Social Category and Identity in Colonial Lanka
8 P C
HILIP ONSTABLE
Sitting on the School Verandah: e Ideology and Practice of
‘Untouchable’ Educational Protest in L ate Nineteenth-Century
Western India
2. Caste and the Census
9 P S
ADMANABH AMARENDRA
Anthropological Knowledge and Statistical Frame: Caste in the
Census in Colonial India
10 F F. C
RANK ONLON
e Census of India as a Source for the Historical Study of Religion
and Caste
11 B S. C
ERNARD OHN
e Census, Social Structure, and Objectification in South Asia
3. Caste, Sect, Religion
12 S D
AURABH UBE
M yths, Symbols and Community: Satnampanthis of Chhattisgarh
13 S B
EKHAR ANDYOPADHYAY
Popular Religion and Social Mobility in Colonial Bengal: e Matua
Sect and the Namasudras
14 V. G
EETHA
Social Suffering and Salvation: e Relevance of e Buddha and
His Dhamma
15 A.R. V
ENKATACHALAPATHY
Dravidian Movement and Saivites: 1927–1944
16 D M. M
ILIP ENON
Intimations of Equality: Shrines and Politics in M alabar 1900–1924
17 T S
ANIKA ARKAR
Holy Infancy: Love and Power in a ‘Low-Caste’ Sect in Bengal
VOLUME 2
4. Caste and Forms of Labour
1 S.J. P
ATEL
Agricultural Labourers in Modern India and Pakistan
2 D K
HARMA UMAR
Caste and Landlessness in South India
3 J. K
RISHNAMURTY
e Growth of Agricultural Labour in India—A Note
4 J B
AN REMAN
e Hali System in South Gujarat
5 N G
ANDINI OOPTU
Caste and Labour: Untouchable Social Movements in Urban Uttar
Pradesh in the Early Twentieth Century
5. Caste, Gender, and Identity
6 R M
OCHONA AJUMDAR
Looking for Brides and Grooms
7 A R
NUPAMA AO
e Sexual Politics of Caste: Violence and the Ritual Archaic
8 P D
RACHI ESHPANDE
Caste as Maratha: Social Categories, Power and Region in Colonial
South Asia
9 C G
HARU UPTA
Feminine, Criminal, or Manly? Imaging Dalit Masculinities in
Colonial North India
10 S S
UMIT ARKAR
Identities and Histories: Some Lower-Caste Narratives from Early
Twentieth-Century Bengal
6. Caste and the Nation
11 C J
HRISTOPHE AFFRELOT
Analysing and Ethnicizing Caste to Eradicate it More Effectively
12 D.R. N
AGARAJ
Self-Purification vs Self-Respect: On the Roots of the Dalit
Movement
13 M.S.S. P
ANDIAN
One Step Outside Modernity: Caste, Identity Politics, and the Public
Sphere
7. Caste and Resistance
14 R O’H
OSALIND ANLON
e Creation of Lower-Caste Identity in History and Popular
Culture, 1869–1873
15 D H
AVID ARDIMAN
Dalit and Adivasi Assertion
16 R S. R
AMNARAYAN AWAT
Struggle for Identities: Chamar Histories and Politics
Preface and Acknowledgements
C
aste has emerged as the key discursive category in
contemporary Indian social thinking, dislodging the earlier
emphases on class and nation to a considerable extent, and
producing scholarly explorations and polemical controversies in
equal measure. e historical literature on caste in colonial times is,
therefore, vast and rich, and arriving at a reasonable selection from the
corpus proved exceedingly difficult. We will briefly explain the
organizational scheme that we have followed in planning these two
volumes.
e essays explore certain specific aspects of modern caste: how the
issue of caste was variously understood in colonial times, how it was re-
created under conditions of modernity, and how various castes came to
relate to one another and to themselves in new ways. e volumes
exclude, therefore, sociological studies of the structure of castes, as well
as social anthropologies and ethnographies of lives of castes on the
ground. However, the essays reproduced here have considerably
absorbed the insights that such writings have produced. ey also
engage in debates that were first raised in these fields, thereby adding
important dimensions to them. Dirks, for instance, questions Dumont’s
notions about purity and power, while Breman and Guha argue with
the literature on jajmani—to mention just two instances.
For a long time, historians of modern caste have been trying to
ascertain how far caste was invented, exaggerated, colluded with, and
opposed by discourses of colonial social knowledge and administrative
policies. In fact, the dominant strand in post-colonial historiography
tended to focus almost exclusively on colonial and Western knowledge
that sought an Othering of India, a stigmatization of the culture of the
