Question

Outline the positions of Herbert Risley and G.S. Ghurye on the relationship between race and caste in India.

Answer 1

Herbert Risley believed that human beings could be divided into separate races on the basis of their physical characteristics. His main argument was that caste originated in the race because the different castes belonged to different racial types. He believed that the higher castes originated from Indo-Aryans while the lower castes originated from non-Aryan races. Risley was of the opinion that the conditions in India were suitable for studying racial evolution as inter-caste marriages were strictly prohibited in India.

Ghurye was of a different view. He believed that Risley’s argument was partially correct and the argument of upper castes being Aryan and lower castes being non-Aryan was true only for north India. He further said that the prohibition of intermixing of different castes was only limited to northern India, and people in other areas had been mixing for a long time. According to him, racial purity was preserved only in North India while other parts adopted the practice of endogamy only after variations had occurred in racial groups.