Caste and race in India
- 5th ed.
- Bombay Popular Prakashan 1979
- 504p.
CASTE IS the most dominant single spect of Indian society, and no study of Indian society can be complete without getting into the ramifications of the Hindu caste system. Caste and Race in India, since its first publication in History of Civilization series, edited by C. K. Ogden in 1932, has remained a basic work for students of Indian sociology and anthropology, and has been acclaimed by teachers and re- viewers as a sociological classic. The chapters retained from the earlier edition discuss the features of the caste system, nature of caste groups, caste during the Vedic, post-Vedic and Sutra period, and under the British rule. Other topics that come in for treatment are elements of caste outside India and the relationship betweeen caste and race. There is a separate chapter on the history and present position of the scheduled castes whichis so com- pendious that it includes even an ac- count of the offences under the Un- touchability (Offences) Act in recent times. The present edition is an expanded version with five new chapters, com- prehensive enough for a separate volume. Answering his critics, the author elaborates his arguments on the evolution of sub-castes and examines caste, sub-caste and kin in its proper perspective in two chapters. The relationship between caste and politics, which he had briefly dealt with in the 1932 edition, is developed into two chapters in the present edition, with a provocative and thorough-going analysis of caste and politics in Tamil Nadu from early times to the present day. The concluding chapter is an incisive analysis of contemporary Imdia: the author apprehends that India will develop into a plural soclety and not a casteless one which was the dream of the architects of her Constitution