Caste in India: The Facts and the System c8.s4.1

c8.s4.1

IT is in race, and the enmities born of race, that Risley, here in direct contradiction to Nesfield, seeks the soul of caste. According to him the existing hierarchy is the social consecration of the ethnological ladder from the Āryans, who have retained their purity in the highest castes, down to the humblest aboriginals herded together in the lowest. Race is now substituted for profession as the generating principle. ‘ The nasal index ’ is the formula for the proportions of the nose, and is, it appears, the most unerring criterion of race. Risley ends by making the following somewhat singular assertion : ‘ It is scarcely a paradox to lay down as a law of the caste-organization in Eastern India that a man’s social status varies in inverse ratio to the width of his nose.’ ¹ Who among his readers would not be a little sceptical ?