Reddit reviews Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India.

If only Indians would go, and read their own manuscripts that are in the millions, but I guess that's left to people like the Chancellor of UC Berkeley, Nicholas Dirks, because we're too ashamed, or worse too lazy, to find the truth for our selves even though it's right beneath our beds.

Here's a quote from his book "Caste of Minds":

>... the accounts that have become hegemonic in the West, and to some extent India itself, in which caste is the key symbol of Indian society, and in which caste is a system of social relations in which the unvarying position of the Brahman and the untouchable confirm the spiritual basis that justifies, explains, and underlies this unique institution. Dumont's muddle in the middle is the rule, not the exception. In fact, caste neither exhausted the rang of social forms, function, and identities, nor provided underlying unity. The only common social facts of caste concerned the codification of kinship relations and, to some extent, the protocols for interdining. But even these codes and protocols yielded to larger political histories of community formation, regulation, discipline, and participation within a range of larger social and political worlds - until, that is, the larger political history became dominated by a colonial power whose interest in ruling India through an indirect logic predicated on caste changed things altogether.
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and

> ... all Kallars participated in the kingship of the royal Tondaiman family, though to varying extents. The forms of clan and subcaste structure within the group of Kallars were vitally affected by proximity to the king; the political hierarchy turned out to determine the social hierarchy as well, with alliance structures working out the political gradations and relations of proximity in fine detail... The autonomy accorded to pollution issues for Brahmans was the luxury of a particular kind of dominance, and thus, contra Dumont, could only be mistaken as the ideological principle of the hole if one was blinded by power itself... As caste had been constructed as a social system, first in the political milieu of the old regime and then increasingly Brahmanical reforms under colonial rule, the most pervasive forms of oppression were directed at women.
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Furthermore Dirks highlights the fact that the organization of caste, power, and society were not uniform, but shared an underlying feature of addressing political structures.

>From the Telugu country to Maharashtra, and from the older Rajputs of northwestern India to the new Rajputs of central India. The very dominance of these groups suggests the extent to which their own political ideologies and structures exerted influence over the organization of social relations generally, as well as the principles underlying them... My argument is that there were multiple organizing social relations - all, however, socially and politically contingent in various way. We have already noted a far more complex position for Brahmans than would be guess from the texts.
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And to give perspective how nuanced of a role status played out in society:

> As Dubois put it in his inimitable style: "The rights and privileges for which the Hindus are ready to fight such sanguinary battles appear highly ridiculous, especially to a European. Perhaps the sole cause of the contest is the right to wear slippers or to ride through the streets in a palanquin or on horseback during marriage festivals. Sometimes it is the privilege of being escorted on certain occasions by armed retainers, sometimes that of having a trumpet sounded in front of a procession, or of being accompanied by native musicians at public ceremonies." These privileges were, in fact, markers of rights that were indexed to status within and between communities, to control over public space and other pubic markers of position, to relations with various groups and institutions (from powerful and dominant patrons to temples), and to connections with royal families and court personages.
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There's nothing holy in the world, nor a people so spiritual to abide by a con perpetuated by a minority of the people claiming some pure divinity. No. The reality is economy, and power, those two are the only goals human history shares. Everything bows before the king, as Kautilya would be proven right when he asserts that the greatest dharma is not devotion to Kama, or Moksha, but Artha, which a King presides over as his duty. And so this very simple fact is displayed in the working of Caste as mechanism of building relationships in a society, and at the same time forging one's own values, and therefore profession in society. We can also see how, and why we have such an emphasis on family, because it is only through a tight nit group of individuals can we actually progress. Otherwise we're left alone, disparate, and without assistance in this world, and with the one's inner own demons.

With that said it also required the sacrifice of individual exploration as society was you, and you were society. The two were not separate at all. What we see with the rise of enlightenment, and liberal ideas of individualism is in many ways flawed, as Wittgenstein in Tractatus shows that there can be no private thoughts at all. So then this dichotomy, and conflict of having a feeling of individuality, in conflict with society arises, and can only be resolved through asceticism, and understanding the ascetic ideas of ones' own self.

(As for the Mahabharatha we can understand where Arjun is coming from. He's a prince taking part in a royal event, reserved only for the graduating princes of the Kingdom to display their attained knowledge from Gurukul in the Rangbhumi (A play on words of Ranbhumi where Ranbhumi denotes battlefield, and Rangbhumi translates literally as Color-Field, or a display of colors, a display of the varied abilities of the newly graduating youth.). And with the outline of how royalty in India works, I think it would make logical sense for Arjun to object Karan's participation in the event. )

Yeah.

I recommend Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India by Nicholas Dirks, Princeton University Press. He comes across as a bit strong, but he provides plenty of primary sources that you can peruse for yourself.

Also Erik Stokes wrote a bunch of papers (and a book I believe) on this topic. I don't have references handy on this computer, but I can dig them up.

Before the British got there, the Mughal Empire was still theoretically running the place. British "Unification" proceeded apace with the disintegration of the mughals, so it's not quite like they swept into this war-torn wasteland and brought peace and harmony. Even the caste system was barely in effect in small parts of the previously diverse Indian subcontinent before the shrewd British administrators imposed it across the board to expand their control.

Even disregarding all that... The thing is, if you're saying they're bringing modernity to a backwards land, then your argument that they were "no worse" than the old regime doesn't really get you anywhere. If their mission was a civilizing one, they should be held accountable for some kind of improvement, at the very least. As to the brutality of the British administrators, I leave you the words of Edmund Burke, who, far from a bleeding heart liberal, is literally the founder of conservatism.

When it comes to slavery in Africa, it's like saying that industrial-scale farming in the Midwest couldn't possibly cause any trouble because Native Americans had been farming in the midwest for centuries. Yes, slavery had existed as a social system. The addition of massive amounts of foreign money and weapons probably had some kind of effect, though. There's also maybe a difference between hundreds of people being exchanged between tribes and tens of millions being brought across an ocean, a trip during which millions would die. Saying "slavery already existed" is true, but the way you're using it it's ridiculous--the trans-atlantic slave trade completely changed everything about the institution, and it's very difficult to claim that European involvement had no role in making Africa a far more backwards and violent place than it would have been otherwise.

Europe was a backwards and violent continent right up until the late 1700s, especially when compared to China. If someone had come on in before the industrial revolution, reinforced every ancient social hierarchy with deadly force, removed millions of able-bodied people to die half a world away (or, fine, paid and armed some groups of europeans to remove millions of other Europeans to die etc.), and otherwise callously extracted every possible bit of profit from the land and the people for centuries before leaving the shambles to fend for themselves, do you really think it'd be as developed as it is today? You're in deep as far as victim-blaming goes.

The strict enforcement of the caste system was a result of British Colonialism

http://www.amazon.com/Castes-Mind-Colonialism-Making-Modern/dp/0691088950

Read this book.

It shows that the caste system as we know it was in part created by the British.

Its interesting that the book takes an example of a kingdom from Kerala itself.

The basic thesis of the book is that:

"Rather than a basic expression of Indian tradition, caste is a modern phenomenon - the product of a concrete historical encounter between India and British colonial rule. "