"The colonisers invented or constructed Indian social identities using categories of convenience during a period that covered roughly the 19th Century. This was done to serve the British Indian government’s own interests - primarily to create a single society with a common law that could be easily governed. A very large, complex and regionally diverse system of faiths and social identities was simplified to a degree that probably has no parallel in world history, entirely new categories and hierarchies were created, incompatible or mismatched parts were stuffed together, new boundaries were created, and flexible boundaries hardened. The resulting categorical system became rigid during the next century and quarter, as the made-up categories came to be associated with real rights. Religion-based electorates in British India and caste-based reservations in independent India made amorphous categories concrete. There came to be real and material consequences of belonging to one category instead of another."
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quoted in Rajiv Malhotra_ Vijaya Viswanathan - Varna, Jati, Caste_ A Primer on Indian Social Structures-Infinity Foundation (2023)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India
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Caste system in India
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