Here are 5 quotes that will re-shape your understanding of caste. Courtesy of @desiprism. For now, follow on Insta, instagram.com/desiprism/ 
https://twitter.com/rajiv_pandit/status/1348269882455052289
"Caste is a modern phenomenon, that it is, specifically, the product of a historical encounter between India and Western colonial rule." – Nicholas Dirks
"Caste used to be thought of as an ancient fact of Hindu life, but contemporary scholars argue that the caste system was constructed by the British." – Frank de Zwart
Caste is not and never has been a fixed fact of Indian life. Both caste as a varna and caste as jati...have been made and remade into varying codes of moral order over hundreds or even thousands of years." – Susan Bayly
"The emphasis on caste-cluster level of the system granted disproportionate importance to what was essentially a theoretical level of the Indian social system, of itself, possessing little or no social reality." – Bernard Cohn
"Unsurprisingly, Indian societies turn out to have been complex and ever-changing; they bear little resemblance to the frozen caste structures depicted by the colonial administrators or to the theoretical varna system one finds in the Manusmriti." – Thomas Piketty
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