My first post over at HAP. The theses of some scholars who argue for social construction of caste has obviously gone too far, but I do want to add that I suspect there’s a lot correct about specific details. For example, it seems possible that the class “Kayastha” broadly refers to groups which uplifted from the non-Brahmin substrate relatively across the Indo-Gangetic plain relatively recently. We will know soon, as the 1000 Genomes will release a lot of Bengali Kayastha results, and we can compare them to Santhals and other groups.
Against social constructionism