The concept of race in South Asia

South Asia has always played a part in the European imagining of race, but has not been considered in the scholarly literature of the present generation; nor, recently, have concepts of race figured very prominently in South Asian Studies. This volume constitutes one of the first attempts to raise the question comparatively and over a long time-span with regard to South Asia. It examines whether there were South Asian concepts of race, or, as has often been argued, race became an issue in the subcontinent only under Western influence after the eighteenth century. The issues studied include South Asian equivalents of the concept of race, the nature of Western concepts as applied to India during colonial rule, and the origin and type of more recent variants. The essays in this volume engage with a vast and growing body of writings on such issues, embracing studies of the person, identity, civil society, ethnicity and nationalism. This book will interest all scholars of Indian history.