ABSTRACT
Any attempt today to bring together race and caste for comparison and contrast is likely to meet with a cold reception. Such an attempt invites the opprobrium specially reserved for positivism, empiricism and eclecticism by the theoretically well tuned. They will readily acknowledge the similarities between caste and race when they are pointed out; what they will deny is that these similarities can have much significance for the understanding at least of caste. It may be safely said that, although the subject of caste has been discussed threadbare by students of Indian society and culture, the comparison with race has hardly figured, if at all, in the last twenty to twenty-five years.
