Curing Indian Sociology’s Obsession with Caste

The excessive focus on caste in Indian sociology, beyond its profound social and political consequences in postcolonial India, stems from colonial perspectives that interpreted South Asian society primarily through the lens of caste. French sociology, influenced by British anthropologists like Risley, and Indological frameworks that favored Brahmanical textual interpretations over material conditions, shaped Indian sociology during the colonial and postcolonial eras. Therefore, the predominant analytical framework for Indian sociologists studying Indian society was caste. Sociologists disregarded alternative sociological methodologies, including the work of Weber and Hocart, that enabled a more empirically based, materialist comparison of caste. Nonetheless sociologists and anthropologists like Beteille, Srinivas, Dirks, Quigley, and Raheja, among others, have later contributed to a resurgence of materially grounded perspectives on caste. Drawing on the comparative sociology of Samuel Clark, Murray Milner, Weber, and Hocart, this chapter prepares the groundwork for developing a ‘Global Sociology of Caste and Power’.