Book Review from The Hindu 03/11/2002 http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/lr/2002/11/03/stories/2002110300280500.htm CASTE in India has been the subject of many scholarly works as well as public and private debate in the last century and a half. It still eludes understanding, in its role in Indian society in various periods, although it is often "valorised" as the central organising principle in Indian society. Nicholas Dirks is one of those historians whose work on the Poligars and colonialism has been significant and provided useful insights into the ways in which colonialism constructed "native" institutions and their history for building up its own technologies of imperial rule over the colonised and even shaping its future history to a large extent. The present book is about the historicity of caste and the ways in which caste came into being, and as such been "conditioned by history to condition (and make conditional) any possibility of a future beyond or without caste." [snip] ================= ----- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar Nagpur, India