Published Paper Details:

Abstract: This paper synthesizes historical, genetic, anthropological, and socio-cultural research to examine competing and complementary explanations for the origin and persistence of caste in South Asia. The historical literature has long debated whether caste primarily crystallized with the arrival of Indo-European-speaking groups or whether it emerged from earlier, indigenous forms of stratification organized around clan, totem, and occupation. As a result of recent genetic studies, simple "imposition" narratives have been complicated. This research has revealed that structures of social status, marital control, and occupational specialization existed before Indo-Aryan linguistic groups were fully consolidated. Furthermore, superimposition of endogamy on exogamy in later times reinforced hierarchy rather than creating it ex-nihilo (Ambedkar vol. 1). The evidence from mitochondrial DNA, Y-chromosome lineages, and medical genetics shows substantial maternal continuity across populations with sharper differentiation in paternal lines, consistent with gendered pathways of social incorporation and boundary making. Religious rationalizations around purity and pollution subsequently codified these social boundaries; colonial and postcolonial knowledge practices then reinterpreted, enumerated, or politicized them. Contemporary work in development studies and social psychology reveals the durable impact of caste on opportunity, skill acquisition, health, and subjective beliefs about agency. Throughout, we show that caste is best understood as a historically layered formation: early agrarian and tribal orders sedimented into ranked groups; religious and legal regimes sanctified those ranks; endogamy locked them in place; and modern institutions alternately challenge and reproduce them. We conclude by outlining a framework that reconciles genetic homogeneity with social heterogeneity and highlights how methodological pluralism, combining archives, ethnography, surveys, and genomics, yields a more adequate account of caste's past and present.