Understanding Caste

Understanding Caste approaches the historical issue of caste and anti-caste movements from a position of insightful inquiry and rigorous scholarship. Critiquing the sensibility which equates Indian tradition with Hinduism, and Hinduism with Brahmanism—which considers the Vedas as the foundational texts of Indian culture and discovers within the Aryan heritage the essence of Indian civilisation—it shows how even secular minds remain imprisoned within the Brahmanical vision. And so it looks at the alternative traditions nurtured within dalit movements, which have questioned this way of looking at Indian society and history.