The French anthropologist Louis Dumont made the famous argument that one cannot even really talk about “inequality” here, because to use that phrase implies that one believes people should or could be equal, and this idea was completely alien to Hindu conceptions.18 For them to have imagined their responsibilities as debts would have been profoundly subversive, since debts are by definition arrangements between equals—at least in the sense that they are equal parties to a contract—that could and should be repaid.
