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<p>Caste’ is today almost universally perceived as an ancient and unchanging Hindu institution preserved solely by a deepseated religious ideology. Yet the word itself is an importation from sixteenthcentury Europe. This book tracks the long history of the practices amalgamated under this label and shows their connection to changing patterns of social and political power down to the present. It frames caste as an involuted and complex form of ethnicity and explains why it persisted under nonHindu rulers and in nonHindu communities across South Asia. About the Author Sumit Guha Ph.D. (1981) University of Cambridge is Frances Higginbotham Nalle Centennial Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. His previous books include Environment and Ethnicity in India c.1200–1991 (1999) and Health and Population in South Asia from Earliest Times to the Present (2001).</p>
