title: Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India.
author:  Nicholas B. Dirks 
description: Is India's caste system the remnant of ancient India's social practices or the result of the historical relationship between India and British colonial rule? Dirks (history and anthropology, Columbia Univ.) elects to support the latter view. Adhering to the school of Orientalist thought promulgated by Edward Said and Bernard Cohn, Dirks argues that British colonial control of India for 200 years pivoted on its manipulation of the caste system. He hypothesizes that caste was used to organize India's diverse social groups for the benefit of British control. His thesis embraces substantial and powerfully argued evidence. It suffers, however, from its restricted focus to mainly southern India and its near polemic and obsessive assertions. Authors with differing views on India's ethnology suffer near-peremptory dismissal. Nevertheless, this groundbreaking work of interpretation demands a careful scholarly reading and response. John F. Riddick, Central Michigan Univ. Lib., Mt. Pleasant <br />Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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  Caste as Maratha: Social Categories, Colonial Policy and 
  Identity in Early Twentieth-Century Maharashtra 
   
   
   
  Submitted to Indian Economic and Social History Review 
  September 2003 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  Prachi Deshpande  
  Department of History 
  Colorado State University 
  prachi.deshpande@colostate.edu
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  Abstract 
   
  In light of recent scholarship emphasising the historicity of caste, this paper tracks this 
  transformation of the category ‘Maratha’ from its pre-colonial register as a military ethos to that 
  of a caste in the early twentieth century. Surveying the category’s genealogy in non-Brahman 
  literature and colonial ethnographic writings and policy, it argues that this caste-based register of 
  ‘Maratha’ was shaped through a complex, interactive process both by colonial and Indian 
  discourses. In doing so, the paper attempts to historicise ‘Maratha’ and emphasises the 
  importance of locating the modern history of caste and its encounter wit