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Article: Caste in question: identity or hierarchy?(Book review)
- Article from:
- Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
- Article date:
- September 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Royal Anthropological Institute. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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GUPTA, DIPANKAR (ed.). Caste in question: identity or hierarchy? xxi, 255 pp., bibliogrs. London, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2004. Rs 480 (cloth)
In the first edition of the journal Contributions to Indian Sociology in 1957, Louis Dumont and David Pocock famously asserted their view that 'India is one'. By this they meant that despite caste, regional, and language differences, certain values and structures had pan-Indian power. They firmly believed that a pan-Indian ideological whole could not be understood by studying different castes in different places in a piecemeal fashion. This collection challenges the assumption of the holism of Indian society, and ...