the social impact of its enforcement was profiling, division and isolation of many communities of Hindus as criminals-by-birth. Religion and caste segregated human rights Eleanor Nesbitt, a professor of History and Religions in India, states that the colonial government hardened the caste-driven divisions in India not only through its caste census, but with a series of laws in the early 20th century. Colonial officials, for instance, enacted laws such as the Land Alienation Act in 1900 and Punjab Pre-Emption Act in 1913, listing castes that could legally own land and denying equivalent property rights to other census-determined castes. These acts prohibited the inter-generational and intra-generational transfer of land from land-owning castes to any non-agricultural castes, thereby preventing economic mobility of property and creating consequent caste barriers in India. Khushwant Singh, a Sikh historian, and Tony Ballantyne, a professor of History, state that these colonial-era laws helped create and erect barriers within land-owning and landless castes in northwest India. Caste-based discrimination and denial of human rights by the colonial state had similar impact elsewhere in India. Social identity Nicholas Dirks has argued that Indian caste as we know it today is a "modern phenomenon," as caste was "fundamentally transformed by British colonial rule." According to Dirks, before colonial rule caste affiliation was quite loose and fluid, but colonial rule enforced caste affiliation rigorously, and constructed a much more strict hierarchy than existed previously, with some castes being criminalised and others being given preferential treatment. De Zwart notes that the caste system used to be thought of as an ancient fact of Hindu life and that contemporary scholars argue instead that the system was constructed by the colonial authorities. He says that "jobs and education opportunities were allotted based on caste, and people rallied and adopted a caste system that maximized their opportunity". De Zwart also notes that post-colonial affirmative action only reinforced the "British colonial project that ex hypothesi constructed the caste system". Sweetman notes that the European conception of caste dismissed former political configurations and insisted upon an "essentially religious character" of India. During the colonial period, caste was defined as a religious system and was divorced from political powers. This made it possible for the colonial rulers to portray India as a society characterised by spiritual harmony in contrast to the former Indian states which they criticised as "despotic and epiphenomenal", with the colonial powers providing the necessary "benevolent,