Colonial Casts

Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India by Nicholas Dirks; Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 2001; xvi + 372, Paperback $19.95 SAURABH DUBE Castes of Mind is an elegant essay in the interpretation of an idea, the idea of caste. Nicholas Dirks tracks the pathways of caste from its fluid and plural, political and contingent configurations in pre-colonial India, to its discrete renderings by administrators, missionaries, and scholars under early colonial rule. He traces the thoroughfares of caste from its transformation into a singular, hierarchical yet homogeneous, category-entity by the imperial