"Risley then decided to solve the problem by applying a racial theory. He started distinguishing ‘tracts’ according to their supposed racial composition and within which some greater uniformity might be expected. The North-West, today divided between India and Pakistan, he declared ‘the Indo-Aryan Tract’, consisting of the two Rajasthan census divisions, together with Punjab and Kashmir. Though the report for Punjab gave him no support and that for Kashmir rather little, he took his cue from the two Rajasthan reports and, on this slight basis, he set up for that tract a unified classification which included a ‘Class VII: Castes untouchable’. No such term could be worked into any of his other tracts. From this unpropitious start, representing as it did more of a rebuff than a successful initiative, the career of a key term in modern India was launched."
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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/Dalit
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