Legacies of Colonial Rule in India: How Race and Caste Continue to Divide Modern India

The use of the word ‘race’ in the Nineteenth century came to be harnessed to the colonial expansion of European powers, to justify and explain why certain nations were able to conquer large parts of the world. In India, French and German Indologists created a hierarchy of races to argue that while India was originally the home of the Indo-European or Aryan people, explaining the great cultural achievements of Ancient India, the racial intermixing over centuries with inferior races had caused the degeneration and decline of Indian civilization in the present time. The British harnessed these theories to argue that Indians needed to be governed based on their racial heritage, and created further categories of ‘martial’ races, and ‘criminal’ races. They also used the Indian system of social ordering (the caste system) to create concrete, unchangeable categories of hierarchy and power. This chapter looks at the manner in which these categories were created, and the results of such categories in terms of actual colonial rule. It provides correctives to the colonial studies which justified such divisions and examines the legacy of such categories in contemporary India.