The Dhaarmik Traditions - Indic Studies Foundation

Caste and the Colonialist Enterprise
Caste (as we experience it today in India) is neither an unchanged
survival of ancient India nor a single system that reflects a core
cultural value. Rather than a basic expression of Indian tradition,
caste is a modern phenomenon – the product of a concrete
historical encounter between India and British colonial rule
Nicholas Dirks Castes of Mind, Colonialism and the Making of Modern
India
Herbert. H. Risley, Commissioner of the 1901 census, also bared his underlying
British prejudices in an 1886 publication which stated that race sentiment, far
from being:
a figment of the intolerant pride of the Brahman, rests upon a foundation of fact
which scientific methods confirm, that it has shaped the intricate grouping of
the caste system, and has preserved the Aryan type in comparative purity
throughout Northern India.
The interesting inference we can make from this statement, is that while he
brands the Brahmana as being intolerantly proud, he reveals his strong belief in
the existence of an Aryan racial prototype. The zeal and efficacy with which the
British segregated themselves from the middle class Indian for over a hundred
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