A Christian Caste in Hindu Society

Religious Leadership and Social Conflict among the Paravas of Southern Tamilnadu

Bibliographic Data

ID3649986
AuthorsB Kaufmann (0000-0002-8033-8989), S B Kaufmann (St. Clare Hospital in Lakewood, corresponding author)
Year1981
Volume15
Issue2
Pages203-234
Publication date1981-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueModern Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0026-749X • E-ISSN: 1469-8099
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0026749x00007058
OpenAlexW1967125490
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited19

Since the nineteenth century scholars have depicted Indian castes as timeless, fixed communities whose customs, rituals, and occupational specialities evolved at an unidentifiable point in the distant past. It has now been shown, however, that manyjatisare of relatively recent origin, and historians have been able to trace the economic, political, and religious changes which acted to form individual caste groups during the colonial period. Several recent works on south India have argued that the agglomerations of artisans and cultivators described as castes in British ethnographies and Census reports had no real cohesion and were often no more than unstable political alliances or 'administrative fictions'. In this view it was the misconceived European notion of castes as rigid, competing corporations which stimulated the formation of many south Indian castes after 1880

Caste · Colonialism · Economic geography · Ethnography · Geography · Hinduism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Urban agglomeration · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Law · Religion and Society Interactions · Religious studies · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies