Publication

Nicholas Dirks in his book "Castes of Mind", challenges the modern view of caste as universal and hierarchical. He argues that this view of caste was an invention of the British who, after declaring a policy of noninterference into Indian culture and tradition in 1858, used the census to universalize and ethnicize caste in order to identify and guard that tradition. By analyzing British encounters with female infanticide, this paper argues that the caste system as understood today is not a result of post 1850s policy, but has its roots in caste criminality dating back to the 1790s.