My interest in the Hindu caste system developed at the insistence of W. Lloyd Warner while I was his student at the University of Chicago in the 1940s. In my first under-graduate class with him, he suggested that I should write my term paper on the Hindu caste system. I protested, because I was conscious of the moral reproach with which most foreigners asked me about how caste in India could be eradicated. I had no idea, and did not know what were the issues at stake. Being a new student of the social sciences, I was, of course, learning that the method of social science was to enquire objectively, and not to moralize. So I told Professor Warner that I did not know anything on the subject, and he assured me that he would help me find ample literature which I would find interesting. I still resisted, because I could not understand the amount of interest most Americans expressed on this particular aspect of Indian society. Yet as I had no alternate ideas of my own, I did write the term paper on Caste in India, and was surprised to find that many learned persons wrote many big books to point out various features of the caste system which did not seem at all familiar to me.
On the following year, I needed a topic for an M.A. thesis. This time I was bold enough to tell Professor Warner that I did not like being typed. Just because I was Indian by origin ought not to have been the reason for selecting the topic of Indian caste for a thesis. But he answered at once that one of my American friends was writing his M.A. thesis on the caste system of Central India, so perhaps I would like to limit my field of study to the area I knew, which was Bengal. Again I succumbed to his ideas. To be able to sit in the libraries of Chicago, and be absorbed in the available literature on Bengal, especially at a time when communication was limited, was very comforting indeed. I did not realize till years later that it was Warner's great interest in systems of social stratification which made him often push his students into this area of social research.
I wrote my thesis on "The Hindu System of Caste in the Province of Bengal in India" in 1942, as partial fulfilment for the M.A. degree in Sociology received at the end of that year at the University of Chicago. Perusing the literature, I was especially impressed with the descriptions of castes in the Indian Census volumes, especially in those from 1901 to 1981. I found in these reports patterns of social mobility which did not seem to coincide with the stereotyped image of the unchanging and oppressive qualities of the Indian caste system. Studies on Indian society were limited at that time, and my short thesis gained the attention of various scholars of Indian society at the University of Chicago.
A long time afterwards in the late 1950s some of my students at the Utkal University requested me to publish this thesis, as they found it useful. My drawback then was that a great deal more had been written on the subject of caste, and references had to be made to these if a new book was to be published. I made up my mind to do so, and from 1962, I have been periodically trying to rewrite my old student thesis.
In 1964-1965, while I was teaching at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, I was able to find the relevant literature in the Library of the School for the chapter on "Historical Perspectives". This chapter now remains as it was written at that time. Also I found the Library of the Royal Anthropological Institute very helpful, and was able to find many new references which have been included in the present study. From 1966-1970, my writings were shelved on account of my mobile academic interests. From 1971, as I was back in Calcutta, I was again exploring and observing the changes in caste behaviour that are now so commonly accepted, and which are so hard to fit into a theoretical framework. I now offer the facts I know, and my viewpoints, for the scrutiny of my readers. I am sure that the last words on the caste system have not been said. I am positive that more changes will continue to take place, and there will be greater challenge to find room for them in any theoretical outline.
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