ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with disputes between the so-called ‘right’ and ‘left’ hand caste divisions in early colonial South India. It investigates how the European merchant-rulers were drawn into these disputes, and how the disputes disappeared as South Indian society transformed under colonial rule. Detailed analysis of various caste disputes in different contexts suggests that the colonial encounter is best conceptualized as a dialogic process, in which colonialists and indigenous people sought to incorporate each other into their own social structure and conceptual universe. Viewing Indian society as entirely dominated by the rigid and religious hierarchy of the caste system, Louis Dumont– according to his critics – serves to perpetuate important elements of the colonial construction of India. In Dialogue and History, E. F. Irschick argues that the colonial transformation of rural society in the Chingleput District near Madras was a project shared between British administrators and local people.
