the 'new' colonialism

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Yoshie:
>>  According to Susan Bayly, however, India's caste system, too, is of
>>  the modern origin:
>>
>>  *****   Caste, Society and Politics in India: From the Eighteenth
>>  Century to the Modern Age
>>
>>  Susan Bayly
>
>As far as I know, Indian castes are usually described as a system of
>hierarchical endogamous social division. Prohibition on intermarriages
>between members belonging to different castes in a tribal society has been
>taken as the essential nature of caste system. Indian caste system has
>undergone changes in different epoches (feudal, colonial and contemporary
>India) and has been put to different uses, but castes seem to have
>originated in Ancient times. See Marxist historian D.D. Kosambi's work, The
>Culture and Civilization of Ancient India in Historical Outline.
>
>Ulhas

I will look up Kosambi's work as you suggested.  I still think, 
though, that what's interesting is transformation of social 
relations, rather than the use of the same terms in reference to 
social groups.  We use the same term -- slaves -- to refer to slaves 
in ancient Greece and slaves in antebellum America, but the former 
and the latter did not occupy the same structural location vis-a-vis 
the rest of society.
-- 
Yoshie

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