Abstract
This article attempts to highlight the Eurocentric and colonial roots of Weber’s racist perspective on caste in India and urges scholars to overcome Eurocentric and colonial influences and seek more emic understandings of complex phenomenon in non-European societies, including India.
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Notes
Srinivas in his contribution attempts to problematize the term indigenous by referring to certain ethnic groups, tribes, and residents of some parts of the country as different from the majority of Indians. Ironically, the terms and concepts he uses rely on racial thinking and its associated Aryan invasion theory which is itself under question. See “The Indo-Aryan Invasion Debate: The logic of the Response” by Edmin F. Bryant (1998) in Proceedings of the Tenth Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference edited by Karelene Jones-Bley, Martin E. Huld, Angela Della Volpe, and Miriam Robbins Dexter, and “There is no scientific basis for the Aryan Invasion Theory” by T. R. S. Prasanna (2012), Current Science, 103(2): 216–221.
A religious text of the Hindu tradition that lays down prescriptions for the varna system.
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Ojha, A.K. Undoing the enduring colonial influence of Weber’s racist perspective on India. Decision 50, 367–371 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40622-023-00356-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40622-023-00356-x