Caste today / edited by C. J. Fuller

This is a collection of nine papers which together with the general introduction describes and analyses the nature and significance of caste in contemporary India. These papers are mostly based on

ethnographic research carried out both in rural and urban areas, in north and south India, and among Hindus and Muslims. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 deal with caste in the rural setting in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Tamilnadu. Chapters 5 and 6 bring in urban India; the former deals with a Tamilnadu town and the latter with urban middle classes generally. Chapters 7, 8 and 9 are about Muslims - the Meos of north India and Tamil and Andhra Muslims. There is a chapter on the interface between caste and politics in Tamilnadu. The book shows how caste today is increasingly about cultural separation rather than hierarchical rank and how it can become an idiom for class inequality, taking on different forms among Muslims and Hindus.

The book also demonstrates how the significance of caste is progressively becoming complex and ambiguous. This development must be given more analytical attention than it has received earlier.

Caste Today provides up-to-date and analytically sophisticated anthropologic perspectives on one of India's most researched social institutions.