More to Read about Caste and South Asia

by Sumit Guha

Fredrik Barth ed., Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. Reprint Long Grove IL: Waveland Press 1998. This collection of essays illustrates the working of ethnic differentiation in various parts of the world.

Ilona Katzew, Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth Century Mexico. New Haven: Yale University Press 2004. This beautifully illustrated volume shows how the elite in the Spanish empire viewed its people as divided into “castas” each with its characteristic physical and mental traits and costumes.

Rajni Kothari ed., Caste in Indian Politics, second edition with an introduction by James Manor. Delhi: Permanent Black, 2010. First published in 1970 but reissued with a valuable new introduction, this is an outstanding scholarly work analyzing how democratic elections and modernization had changed and are changing identities in India.

Edmund R. Leach ed., Aspects of Caste in South India, Ceylon and North-west Pakistan Cambridge University Press 1960. This volume contains Barth’s essay on caste among the Swat Pathans as well as studies of similar phenomena elsewhere in Southern Asia.

Vasant Moon, Growing Up Untouchable in India: A Dalit Autobiography, translated from the Marathi by Gail Omvedt (2001). A vivid memoir by a man who rose out of one of the lowest castes and achieved academic and political success.