Ashish Koul, "Reinventing Caste: Islam and Hierarchy in Late Colonial India" (Stanford UP, 2026)

Podcast: New Books in South Asian Studies · New Books Network

Opublikowano: 2026-09-09

Reinventing Caste: Islam and Hierarchy in Late Colonial India (Stanford UP, 2026) reveals that caste, usually assumed to be a feature of Hindu society, was in fact a trans-religious phenomenon in colonial India, as it is today. Even in an Islamic religious milieu that was supposedly more egalitarian than hierarchical Hinduism, colonial Indian subjects thought and acted in terms of caste. Through a focus on one agrarian Muslim caste known as Arains, Ashish Koul shows how some Indian Muslims transmuted caste and emplaced it within their understanding of Islam. During this time, Arain Muslims were derogatively called mali— gardener—instead of w...