Race and Caste: A Theoretical Exploration

Durgesh Solanki, Johns Hopkins University

Caste has been an important feature of Indian society and to some extent of South Asian society, defining life outcomes and opportunities. Early studies of caste in India drew on scholarship and writing on race. In particular, these studies relied on theories that understood caste in racial terms. Phule (2002) discusses how caste was created by Aryan invaders from the Iran region belonging to the Indo-European race. The indigenous people whom the Aryans defeated and subjugated were known as the Shudras. Similarly, Gupta (1980) argues that the varna system originated as racial differentiation between Aryans and the original inhabitants, dasa varna. Though more recent work has rightly refuted these theories of the racial origin of caste, the tradition of studying these systems in conjunction is important. Similarly, early work in American sociology also attempted to understand racial inequality through the lens of the caste system (Warner 1936; Myrdal 1944; Berreman 1960) but also made the case for considering caste and race separately (Cox 1945). Since this initial research, caste has received little attention in American sociology (Fuller 2011). More recently, Anderson et al (2012) note the potential of scholarship on caste and race to inform each other. In this vein, this paper attempts a theoretical exploration of caste. Further, this paper demonstrates how caste, an endogamous and hereditary system of religiously sanctioned hierarchy based on occupation with little upward mobility, serves as an important counter-case to race and contributes to larger understandings of social stratification.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 106. Theoretical Perspectives on Race