Caste Profiling in Indian Social Sciences: Epistemology of Ignorance as a Tool of Governance

Highlighting caste profiling in India under British and post-British rule, this article points toward the need to compare caste and race in an appropriately historicized way and to recognize caste oppression in India as a form of racial inequality and structural discrimination. It historiographically traces the role of Brahmanic epistemology in constructing “India” and “Hindu” identities and incorporating different groups into Varna hierarchy and thereby “Hinduizing” them in order to impose caste profiles, for example, on the Tiyyas and Ezhavas of Kerala. Subsequently, the role of Brahmanic epistemology in constructing caste as a subject of sociology and anthropology is also traced in the imposition of “Sanskritization” and the equating of “India” with “Hindu.” The author argues that Hinduization and Sanskritization constitute a methodological nationalism that is in fact Brahmanic and racist and that forms the dominant epistemology of the Indian social sciences. Following the framework of the Theory of Racial Ignorance, this article shows how Indian social sciences perpetuate Brahmanic racism through caste profiling of marginalized groups while ignoring their realities and histories. Caste profiling is a tool of governance and epistemic violence, and it is an integral aspect of Brahmanic racism.