Caste class and occpation.

In 1921 when studying at Cambridge I chose caste as the
subject of my research. Previously, while living in London
for some time I had thought of combining the study of caste
with that of class. The decision I took at Cambridge was
the result of my preliminary study of the racial aspect of
caste. It was by itself intricate enough to occupy me for the
best part of two years which I could afford at Cambridge.
At that time I could hardly dream of anyone approaching a
similar avenue of study. But subsequent events showed that
Prof. P. C. Mahalanobis was studying Bengal caste from a
similar point of view. The results of my inquiry were
accepted as one of the papers for the Ph.D. degree the
Cambridge University in the first quarter of 1923. The paper
"Ethnic Theory of Caste" after some delay was published in
Man in India in 1924. Before I left Cambridge in April 1923
I had signed a contract with Messrs. Kegan Paul and Co. for
a book Caste and Race in India to be included in their series
entitled History of Civilization, edited by C. K. Ogden. I had
already prepared a tentative plan of not only the racial aspect
but also the other aspects of caste and its historical setting.
When at Bombay I sat down to it in 1924 I added to it as a
natural conclusion the plan of analysis of contemporary trends.
The final type-script of the book was despatched to the London
publishers early in 1931 and the book was published by them
in London in the beginning of 1932.
Between the time my type-script of Caste and Race in
India left me and its publication in the book-form a number
of papers and books appeared here in India in quick succes-
sion, demonstrating the fact that the subject of caste was in
the air. The Report on the Indian Census of 1931 was pub-
lished after my book but the anthropometric survey under-
taken in connection with the Census was rather slow to
appear. The Census Report contained Dr. Hutton's contribu-
tion to caste. The anthropometric survey when published,
created a little confusion in the beginning. Later on its grave
defects were pointed out by me.
My book, as extracts of some of the reviews so insistently
printed by the present publishers will show, was almost uni-
versally well received. It went out of print some years back,
when owing to other pre-occupations I could not direct imme-
diate attention to its revision. When I was almost free to do
so I found that Dr. Hutton had forestalled me with his book
Caste in India. Naturally I waited for some time.
an
During the interval of nearly twenty years from the time
when the manuscript of Caste and Race in India was ready
and the actual revision of it, the subject of caste as
extreme case of social stratification has assumed a significance
which was realized by me but was not common heritage of
sociologists. The European institution of class, too, has come
in for a more detailed and analytical treatment. A number
of investigations to measure its strength, to unravel its precise
nature, were made, more in the U.S.A. than in the U.K. The
Marxian doctrine of class-war, since the success of the Rus-
sian Revolution and the establishment of the Soviet Regime,
turned the attention of not only professional students but
wise statesmen to the understanding of class structure. In
the United States the Negro problem worried and worries a
number of sociologists and statesmen. Its apparent affiliation
to caste has naturally turned American attention to the study
of caste. Racial differentiation brought to the forefront by
the Nazis in Germany further oriented the subject. The
result is seen in the much fuller treatment of class and caste
in the recent edition of the best of English text-books of Socio-
logy, Prof. R. M. MacIver's Society, which he has brought out
in collaboration with Page. A little earlier Cox wrote a
whole volume, which for the first time brought the three
aspect of social differentiation, caste, class and race, together
under one title.