ABSTRACT
The idea of a 'type of society' obscures the actual pathological racial antagonism, leaving some diffused impression that it is socially right, even as the caste system in India is right. The dominant view of caste has been to look at it as a unique cultural reality, a part and parcel of the Indian/Hindu tradition. For the modernization theory that had its origin in the structural–functional frameworks of conceptualizing human society, and acquired prominence in the social sciences during the post-World War II period, caste was a textbook case of traditional institution. Perhaps the most surprising and interesting thing that the reality of caste presents in contemporary India is the fact that precisely at a time when all sociological evidence points to its decline, it is becoming more visible and complex. The chapter focuses on some of the writings on racial discrimination produced by sociologists and economists in the context of the race question in American society.
