When thinking of India it is hard not to think of caste. In comparative sociology and in common parlance alike, caste has become a central symbol for India, indexing it as fundamentally different from other places as well as expressing its essence. A long history of writing—from the grand treatise of the Abbé Dubois to the general anthropology of Louis Dumont; from the piles of statistical and descriptive volumes of British colonial censuses starting in 1872 to the eye-catching headlines of the New York Times—has identified caste as the basic form of Indian society. Caste has been seen as omnipresent in Indian history and as one of the major reasons why India has no history, or at least no sense of history. Caste defines the core of Indian tradition, and it is seen today as the major threat to Indian modernity. If we are to understand India properly, and by implication if we are to understand India’s other core symbol—Hinduism—we must understand caste, whether we admire or revile it (Dirks 3).
Dirks, Nicholas B.. “Introduction: The Modernity of Caste.” Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton University Press, 2011, pp. 3-18.