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Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India.
When thinking of India, it is hard not to think of caste. In academic and common parlance alike, caste has become a central symbol for India, marking it as fundamentally different from other places while expressing its essence. Nicholas Dirks argues that caste is, in fact, neither an unchanged survival of ancient India nor a single system that reflects a core cultural value. 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. Dirks does not contend that caste was invented by the British. But under British domination caste did become a single term capable of naming and above all subsuming India's diverse forms of social identity and organization.
Dirks traces the career of caste from the medieval kingdoms of southern India to the textual traces of early colonial archives; from the commentaries of an eighteenth-century Jesuit to the enumerative obsessions of the late-nineteenth-century census; from the ethnographic writings of colonial administrators to those of twentieth-century Indian scholars seeking to rescue ethnography from its colonial legacy. The book also surveys the rise of caste politics in the twentieth century, focusing in particular on the emergence of caste-based movements that have threatened nationalist consensus.
Castes of Mind is an ambitious book, written by an accomplished scholar with a rare mastery of centuries of Indian history and anthropology. It uses the idea of caste as the basis for a magisterial history of modern India. And in making a powerful case that the colonial past continues to haunt the Indian present, it makes an important contribution to current postcolonial theory and scholarship on contemporary Indian politics.
Dirks traces the career of caste from the medieval kingdoms of southern India to the textual traces of early colonial archives; from the commentaries of an eighteenth-century Jesuit to the enumerative obsessions of the late-nineteenth-century census; from the ethnographic writings of colonial administrators to those of twentieth-century Indian scholars seeking to rescue ethnography from its colonial legacy. The book also surveys the rise of caste politics in the twentieth century, focusing in particular on the emergence of caste-based movements that have threatened nationalist consensus.
Castes of Mind is an ambitious book, written by an accomplished scholar with a rare mastery of centuries of Indian history and anthropology. It uses the idea of caste as the basis for a magisterial history of modern India. And in making a powerful case that the colonial past continues to haunt the Indian present, it makes an important contribution to current postcolonial theory and scholarship on contemporary Indian politics.
328 pages, Paperback
First published September 17, 2001
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April 27, 2020
Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India, Nicholas B. Dirks
Caste apologists in South Asia often refer to the ‘varnashramadharma’, not as a vicious system of social gradation, but as a method in organisational value and community life. In the face of neoliberal individualism, corporate capitalism and market competition, [all these aspects adopted from the West] it is caste, they believe, which preserves the inherent social values of the ‘Indian’ society. Caste is a sign of India’s religiosity and a marker of its essential difference from the West. Taking this as the starting point of his book, Nicholas B. Dirks’ ‘Castes of Mind’ enlightens us of the various ways caste has taken its present shape under the British Raj. He states that much like religious communalism, which emerged as a colonial construction, mobilisation based on caste occurred after caste had been incorporated as a category in the census. The desire to include caste stemmed from the need of the Raj to understand better the people they were governing. Hence, the modality of colonial knowledge shifted its focus from the political economy to the study of different cultures, traits and characters of the people. Since caste is embedded in the Indian tradition, it had become imperative to examine how it had affected the communities. Dirks rightly calls the Raj an “ethnographic state” that systematically characterised the population and preserved its findings through archives. However, caste was soon dropped from the census. Introduced in 1872 and relinquished in 1932, the Raj could not tackle the situation of various caste groups writing to them to change their status (p. 243). It underscores the point that caste was intrinsically linked with privilege and power. For instance, Pallis and Vamiyar produced tracts to prove their Ksatriya status that meant upward mobility in terms of caste status (p. 238).
It is interesting to note that Dirks clearly differentiates between caste politics and politicisation of caste. The Politicisation of caste is enmeshed with mobilisation among lower caste to challenge the orthodox caste-based discrimination in India. In turn, it results in caste politics that Hindu nationalists, including Gandhi, believed to be anti-national and divisive. The point is that politics in India has always been localized—emerging from regionalism—divisive and plural. When read against this backdrop, the word ‘divisive’ does not have a pejorative connotation; instead, it is pregnant with political possibilities of myriad nature. Dirks explains it by drawing examples of anti-caste mobilisation led by Periyar and Ambedkar. Since Dalits have always been marginalised, their actions are habitually termed as reactions, emanating from the margins. Nevertheless, the fact that Gandhi had to blackmail Ambedkar during the Poona Pact, and after the event, had to change his stance regarding caste vouches for the potential that caste-based mobilisation has in our country. For caste still remains one of the primary determinants of property, power and privilege in present-day India. It is used by the rich and the powerful to maintain their hold and strengthen their domination. As long as it remains so, the poor and the deprived have the moral right and political responsibility to uphold their caste identity in their struggle for a just, equal and casteless society.
Caste apologists in South Asia often refer to the ‘varnashramadharma’, not as a vicious system of social gradation, but as a method in organisational value and community life. In the face of neoliberal individualism, corporate capitalism and market competition, [all these aspects adopted from the West] it is caste, they believe, which preserves the inherent social values of the ‘Indian’ society. Caste is a sign of India’s religiosity and a marker of its essential difference from the West. Taking this as the starting point of his book, Nicholas B. Dirks’ ‘Castes of Mind’ enlightens us of the various ways caste has taken its present shape under the British Raj. He states that much like religious communalism, which emerged as a colonial construction, mobilisation based on caste occurred after caste had been incorporated as a category in the census. The desire to include caste stemmed from the need of the Raj to understand better the people they were governing. Hence, the modality of colonial knowledge shifted its focus from the political economy to the study of different cultures, traits and characters of the people. Since caste is embedded in the Indian tradition, it had become imperative to examine how it had affected the communities. Dirks rightly calls the Raj an “ethnographic state” that systematically characterised the population and preserved its findings through archives. However, caste was soon dropped from the census. Introduced in 1872 and relinquished in 1932, the Raj could not tackle the situation of various caste groups writing to them to change their status (p. 243). It underscores the point that caste was intrinsically linked with privilege and power. For instance, Pallis and Vamiyar produced tracts to prove their Ksatriya status that meant upward mobility in terms of caste status (p. 238).
It is interesting to note that Dirks clearly differentiates between caste politics and politicisation of caste. The Politicisation of caste is enmeshed with mobilisation among lower caste to challenge the orthodox caste-based discrimination in India. In turn, it results in caste politics that Hindu nationalists, including Gandhi, believed to be anti-national and divisive. The point is that politics in India has always been localized—emerging from regionalism—divisive and plural. When read against this backdrop, the word ‘divisive’ does not have a pejorative connotation; instead, it is pregnant with political possibilities of myriad nature. Dirks explains it by drawing examples of anti-caste mobilisation led by Periyar and Ambedkar. Since Dalits have always been marginalised, their actions are habitually termed as reactions, emanating from the margins. Nevertheless, the fact that Gandhi had to blackmail Ambedkar during the Poona Pact, and after the event, had to change his stance regarding caste vouches for the potential that caste-based mobilisation has in our country. For caste still remains one of the primary determinants of property, power and privilege in present-day India. It is used by the rich and the powerful to maintain their hold and strengthen their domination. As long as it remains so, the poor and the deprived have the moral right and political responsibility to uphold their caste identity in their struggle for a just, equal and casteless society.
September 20, 2019
You need to read this book know how castes was flexible but then Britisher made it rigid. This flexible system was alien concept to them but under British domination caste did become a single term capable of naming and above all subsuming India's diverse forms of social identity and organization. Book also talk about postcolonial theory. It was a very interesting book.
November 25, 2017
Published in 2001, this book gives a nuanced history of the caste system as it was transformed under colonial rule, imbricated within ethnographic and anthropometric data collection, and used in various ways within political agendas - both secular and religious - in postcolonial India. Dirks concludes with an explicit discussion of controversies within academic fields of history and postcolonial studies, tempering pseudo-marxist analyses that we might now call "neoliberal" with critical yet porous account of colonial history and its ongoing influences.
June 10, 2024
As i read through this book one of the things that i realized is the too many loose ends. There are too many polemics without substantive follow through justifications.
This book is in an important sense, a continuation of his pioneering doctoral thesis "The Hollow crown : Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom". His main argument in that book was to debunk the commonly held notion that caste is the organizing principle of Indian society. The belief among historians that in India, the state if at all it existed was peripheral, with kings subsumed in the sacerdotal power of the Brahmans. In that book he makes the case that until the coming of the British, Kings in India had real power and "caste is embedded in the political context of kingship".
This book takes the argument one step further. In this book he argues that caste in its modern form(as we know it) is an outcome of its colonial encounter. There are many nuances here. Dirks does not make an argument that caste did not exist in precolonial India. His argument is that other than for the Brahmans at the top and their polar opposites, the untouchables at the bottom, the middle was a muddle which was an arena for political contestation. Politics in the form of kingship profoundly affected it. Dirks argument in this book is that with political authority in the form of kings removed, colonial understanding of caste started to shape and distort the historical form of caste.
The book with all its complicated sociological language and reasoning's was difficult for me to follow. But I could never get to understand the complicated rhetorical conclusions that Dirks arrives from particular actions of colonial administrators. Yes, the British tried to understand Indian society from the point of caste, an outcome of that being the archives, the census, the classification of criminal tribes et al. This might have changed an Indian's understanding of caste but how did it change an Indian's particular lived experience of caste. In simple words, in a local Indian village, did this colonial knowledge, change the way caste life was experienced. Yes,there are examples of castes vertically aligned in the ancien-regime who clamored for higher status in horizontal agglomerations. But does this merit the charge that caste was totally transformed.
In conclusion this already contested topic is made more difficult by Dirks relentless imputation of motives on the British. I got the feeling that this book is in a long line of books which reflect current multicultural western world's constant need to move away from its very European origins. That would be fine as long as biases do not affect scholarship.
This book is in an important sense, a continuation of his pioneering doctoral thesis "The Hollow crown : Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom". His main argument in that book was to debunk the commonly held notion that caste is the organizing principle of Indian society. The belief among historians that in India, the state if at all it existed was peripheral, with kings subsumed in the sacerdotal power of the Brahmans. In that book he makes the case that until the coming of the British, Kings in India had real power and "caste is embedded in the political context of kingship".
This book takes the argument one step further. In this book he argues that caste in its modern form(as we know it) is an outcome of its colonial encounter. There are many nuances here. Dirks does not make an argument that caste did not exist in precolonial India. His argument is that other than for the Brahmans at the top and their polar opposites, the untouchables at the bottom, the middle was a muddle which was an arena for political contestation. Politics in the form of kingship profoundly affected it. Dirks argument in this book is that with political authority in the form of kings removed, colonial understanding of caste started to shape and distort the historical form of caste.
The book with all its complicated sociological language and reasoning's was difficult for me to follow. But I could never get to understand the complicated rhetorical conclusions that Dirks arrives from particular actions of colonial administrators. Yes, the British tried to understand Indian society from the point of caste, an outcome of that being the archives, the census, the classification of criminal tribes et al. This might have changed an Indian's understanding of caste but how did it change an Indian's particular lived experience of caste. In simple words, in a local Indian village, did this colonial knowledge, change the way caste life was experienced. Yes,there are examples of castes vertically aligned in the ancien-regime who clamored for higher status in horizontal agglomerations. But does this merit the charge that caste was totally transformed.
In conclusion this already contested topic is made more difficult by Dirks relentless imputation of motives on the British. I got the feeling that this book is in a long line of books which reflect current multicultural western world's constant need to move away from its very European origins. That would be fine as long as biases do not affect scholarship.
December 6, 2015
In a nutshell, caste is not an age old product of Indian "tradition" but instead was reified for instrumental purposes by 19th century British imperialists to serve as an alternative to the kind of civil society that was demanding democracy and self-determination back in Europe. Caste, in its timelessness, put India outside of history and thus enabled the indefinite deferral of questions of independence. But the most interesting part of Dirks's account is how he demonstrates the many contradictory performative uses of the concept of caste throughout the last two hundred years of Indian history, especially in the postcolonial period, where the persistence of caste became an increasing embarrassment. Like many another great book, it is also an explicit takedown of an earlier titan in the field, in this case, Louis Dumont.
July 3, 2015
Though a bit too academic, this is a great book on that most Indian of concepts. Dirks main contention is that caste, prior to colonialism, was a fluid, guild system (but unlike Europe's it was not feudal), whereby guilds were intricately, and circularly, connected in the performance of judiciary, corporate and political duties.
The second is that the British, partially in an attempt to make sense of a social system which was unheard of in the newly invented European nation-state, carried out extensive ethnographic studies to establish a structure which would ease the administration of their revenue systems. Indians then started to conform to the British idea, making caste the rigid, and hierarchical system it is today.
It's not difficult to believe the second view, given colonialism's effects on the colonized and their identity. Moreover, Dirks does a great job of researching primary and secondary sources to back his claim. The problem is the first one, as there is very little historical material of Ancient India, so the question of caste fluidity and mobility goes unanswered, at least in this book.
The second is that the British, partially in an attempt to make sense of a social system which was unheard of in the newly invented European nation-state, carried out extensive ethnographic studies to establish a structure which would ease the administration of their revenue systems. Indians then started to conform to the British idea, making caste the rigid, and hierarchical system it is today.
It's not difficult to believe the second view, given colonialism's effects on the colonized and their identity. Moreover, Dirks does a great job of researching primary and secondary sources to back his claim. The problem is the first one, as there is very little historical material of Ancient India, so the question of caste fluidity and mobility goes unanswered, at least in this book.
October 8, 2012
This is a really fantastic book, and gives an excellent historical background and historiographical assessment of caste debates and politics across the last two centuries.
March 16, 2011
This book is extremely dense, and assumes a fair bit of familiarity with the on-the-ground politics of caste in India. Given that, though, it's extremely good. It provides a very thorough critique of the idea that caste in India was an eternal system with strong boundaries, instead demonstrating (fairly effectively) that caste, especially in the four-fold Varna conception, was reified within Indians in response to the application of the British colonial epistemology, especially ethnology, philology, and census-taking. It's really a book for academics about the academic project of understanding the Indian sub-continent, but if you are at all interested in that project, this book should be on your to-read or have-read list.
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October 4, 2015Dirks sets forth the idea of "the ethnographic state" and alters the more conventional understanding of the caste system as an age-old tradition that haunted Indian society. Dirks highlights the varied ways in which the colonial state made rigid the fluid boundaries of caste through their need to categorise, tabulate, and catalogue the Indian population.
August 30, 2020
This books will leave you with more questions than answers. And I don't mean that as a complaint. The central premise of the book is to state that Caste, as we know today in Indian society, is more to do with what happened to Caste during the colonial period than how caste was before that. Dirks argues that the caste system was not monolithic, not uniformly hierarchical and definitely not the definite social system before the colonial era. Beyond the two polar opposites of brahmans and outcastes, the castes in between didn't have a clear hierarchy or even a clear sense of categorization.
Dirks further argues that the Colonial government in its effort to document the caste system over-simplified and standardized a system that was widely different throughout India. This he argues how caste was politicized and solidified as the single most important social category in India.
So far so good. But it leaves with you more questions about the pre-colonial India and what role caste system played in that. It is a question that also makes you think about the role of caste in today's society and politics. Certainly thought-provoking in that way.
One minor complaint: Book is very academic. would have liked it more if there were more history and less academic hypothesizing.
Dirks further argues that the Colonial government in its effort to document the caste system over-simplified and standardized a system that was widely different throughout India. This he argues how caste was politicized and solidified as the single most important social category in India.
So far so good. But it leaves with you more questions about the pre-colonial India and what role caste system played in that. It is a question that also makes you think about the role of caste in today's society and politics. Certainly thought-provoking in that way.
One minor complaint: Book is very academic. would have liked it more if there were more history and less academic hypothesizing.
January 23, 2022
Great content, but terribly written
I would have given 5 stars for the content. But only 1 star for the writing. So I have averaged the two and given 3 stars. (I would have given 21/2 stars if I could)
It has in-depth coverage about the topic from Pre 1857 riots to post independence period. The book covers content from popular books, voluminous texts, newspaper reports and even compilations of undigested raw literature collecting dust in some obscure corner of some old libraries. So this book is a huge effort.
But it is terribly written. Each sentence is a complex one with obscure words. One needs to read each sentence a few times to make sense of it. Some sections are written as if the content in the subsequent sections are already known to the reader. Authors and their work is quoted willy nilly as if the reader is fully well versed with what they said. I took three months to finish the book (I usually finish a book in 2 weeks). It takes great patience to read through the book.
I would have given 5 stars for the content. But only 1 star for the writing. So I have averaged the two and given 3 stars. (I would have given 21/2 stars if I could)
It has in-depth coverage about the topic from Pre 1857 riots to post independence period. The book covers content from popular books, voluminous texts, newspaper reports and even compilations of undigested raw literature collecting dust in some obscure corner of some old libraries. So this book is a huge effort.
But it is terribly written. Each sentence is a complex one with obscure words. One needs to read each sentence a few times to make sense of it. Some sections are written as if the content in the subsequent sections are already known to the reader. Authors and their work is quoted willy nilly as if the reader is fully well versed with what they said. I took three months to finish the book (I usually finish a book in 2 weeks). It takes great patience to read through the book.
December 2, 2019
A Saidian take on caste. Edward Said is certainly valuable but in books such as this one sees how nuance can often gets lost. The central thesis of this book is that caste was no monolith and that colonialism was the creator of modern caste. It is indisputable that caste operated in conjunction with the whims and bureaucratic ideologies of the white masters but was the premodern world not terrible? Did Ambedkar and Phule not have unique experiences of caste? But the book could be read for its recollection of the history of anthropology in India and passions of individuals like Colin Mackenzie (the author says that the book began as a biography of Mackenzie and the ethnographic thrust of colonialism). What I must instantly do is read the Hollow Crown, the study of Pudukottai.
April 7, 2022
A great book that describes how the British had used the existing caste system in India to their own advantage, how the orientalist, sociological scholars used this to their advantage. It also gives us an understanding of the caste system and its evolution in India from the British period to the 1950s & 1960s also what are the reasons that it became a politicized issue and how it affected the social structure of India.
September 9, 2025
"Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India" by Nicholas Dirks is a brilliant and thought-provoking book that dives deep into the transformation of the caste system in India under British colonial rule and its continued evolution in the postcolonial era. Dirks argues that caste, often seen as a fundamental aspect of Indian tradition, is actually a modern phenomenon shaped significantly by colonialism.
Nicholas Dirks goes deep into medieval writings of people like Abul Fazl (who was a contemporary of Akbar the Great), noting that caste did not feature prominently in their writing.
He also pointed out that early British writing on the sub-continent did not mention caste, except in passing. Does this mean that caste did not exist in India before then? Nicholas B. Dirk clearly states that caste existed, but did not dominate the discourse the way it does now.
The book then traces the history of caste from medieval southern Indian kingdoms to the colonial archives, highlighting how British rule redefined and rigidified the caste system, in particular after the Uprising of 1857, when they wanted to classify and deconstruct and reconstruct Indian society, to 'better govern' the people of the subcontinent.
Dirks explores the role of colonial administrators (in particular, people like Risley), ethnographers, and Indian scholars in shaping the modern understanding of caste. The author repeats and emphasizes a critical theme in Indian writing on caste during, and since, late colonial times – that Indian authors did not appear to dive into original or medieval literature, but defined their scholarship and writing in relation to British writers.
He also examines the rise of caste-based movements in the twentieth century and their impact on Indian politics. The effect of colonial thought persists to the current day, impacting the ebb and flow of Indian politics.
"Castes of Mind" is brilliant for its comprehensive analysis and its contribution to postcolonial theory and contemporary Indian politics.
I'd like to compliment Nicholas B. Dirk on maintaining a neutral tone throughout the book, a rare achievement.
Read the book if you have enough time available. The material demands your full attention and an open mind.
Nicholas Dirks goes deep into medieval writings of people like Abul Fazl (who was a contemporary of Akbar the Great), noting that caste did not feature prominently in their writing.
He also pointed out that early British writing on the sub-continent did not mention caste, except in passing. Does this mean that caste did not exist in India before then? Nicholas B. Dirk clearly states that caste existed, but did not dominate the discourse the way it does now.
The book then traces the history of caste from medieval southern Indian kingdoms to the colonial archives, highlighting how British rule redefined and rigidified the caste system, in particular after the Uprising of 1857, when they wanted to classify and deconstruct and reconstruct Indian society, to 'better govern' the people of the subcontinent.
Dirks explores the role of colonial administrators (in particular, people like Risley), ethnographers, and Indian scholars in shaping the modern understanding of caste. The author repeats and emphasizes a critical theme in Indian writing on caste during, and since, late colonial times – that Indian authors did not appear to dive into original or medieval literature, but defined their scholarship and writing in relation to British writers.
He also examines the rise of caste-based movements in the twentieth century and their impact on Indian politics. The effect of colonial thought persists to the current day, impacting the ebb and flow of Indian politics.
"Castes of Mind" is brilliant for its comprehensive analysis and its contribution to postcolonial theory and contemporary Indian politics.
I'd like to compliment Nicholas B. Dirk on maintaining a neutral tone throughout the book, a rare achievement.
Read the book if you have enough time available. The material demands your full attention and an open mind.
November 6, 2021
A mostly interesting and informative read on the historicity of caste, the ways caste has come into being, and as such been conditioned by history to condition and make conditional any possibility of a future beyond, or without, caste
Highly detailed and well referenced, I did think the book would have benefited from more explicitly what caste was before colonialism and its evolution throughout, rather than exploring it through the actions of different people
Highlights include:
Explaining how in precolonial India, the units of social identity had been multiple and determined by context e.g. temple communities, lineage segments, family units, royal retinues etc. and all were far more significant than any uniform caste groupings
Explaining that the idea that varna - the classification of all castes into four hierarchical orders with the Brahman on top - could organise all social identities and relations across the subcontinent was only developed under British colonial rule; because of caste, and the colonial ethnology that constructed it as the centerpiece of Indian society, the British could rule all of India indirectly
Highly detailed and well referenced, I did think the book would have benefited from more explicitly what caste was before colonialism and its evolution throughout, rather than exploring it through the actions of different people
Highlights include:
Explaining how in precolonial India, the units of social identity had been multiple and determined by context e.g. temple communities, lineage segments, family units, royal retinues etc. and all were far more significant than any uniform caste groupings
Explaining that the idea that varna - the classification of all castes into four hierarchical orders with the Brahman on top - could organise all social identities and relations across the subcontinent was only developed under British colonial rule; because of caste, and the colonial ethnology that constructed it as the centerpiece of Indian society, the British could rule all of India indirectly
May 12, 2020
One of the anthropologists who are real historians. The anthropologist writes about a colonial history, labors on colonial archives, and critically shows the ironic colonial ideological production that gets holds of not only the colonial and post-colonial Indians (who embraced caste and made Mughal Muslims irrelevant) but also the good-willed Westerners who wanted to restrain their own concepts (Dumont, in particular). The irony is that by the end of the day, from the book we still know more about the colonial officers from Britain rather than the re-organization of ideologies on the soil of South Asian subcontinent during the same period. I'm glad that Dirks mentioned Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan 1817-1898, but shouldn't we learn more about these figures who participated in early British consolidation of power yet obviously did that from quite a different stand.
November 29, 2025
For a number of people their introduction to "Caste" is through Isabel Wilkerson's book with that name. Her book just replaces "caste" for "race" to maybe set herself/ and the book apart for the multitude of books on race in America.
This book is an essential reading for folks who want to understand how the modern notion of "caste" came about in India and the role of colonial powers in making it. It is well researched/ well referenced and doesn't push any agendas.
This book is an essential reading for folks who want to understand how the modern notion of "caste" came about in India and the role of colonial powers in making it. It is well researched/ well referenced and doesn't push any agendas.
January 1, 2026
It's a very informative & nuanced book, though too verbose. It's well referenced, which makes it a decent reference book, but even so, I could not fully agree with the structure & organization of the content of the book. Considering that books treating the subject of caste truthfully are few & far between, I still consider it to be a good book, though a very, very heavy read & not everyone's cup of tea.
December 16, 2020
Well-argued but inaccessibly written, so I struggled my way through it.
June 13, 2023
Fascinating! Really well-written and researched.
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