Caste in India: The Facts and the System c7.s2.37

c7.s2.37

but in both it is equally riddled with uncertainties and contradictions, which are tantamount to confessions of failure. Everything reveals the system as artificial and speculative. The facts have no legal basis. At every turn they give the lie to the system—by contradicting it or failing to coincide with it. The system does not even lay claim to be authoritative, since it clearly recognizes the stronger claims of custom. It is, in a word, nothing more than the focusing of an existing situation whose incoherences and complications it sets out to reconcile in an attempt to bring the whole into conformity with an ideal type.