Identity, Consciousness And The Past: Forging Of Caste And Community In India And Sri Lanka

These nine essays, written by leading anthropologists and historians and grouped in two parts, further the frontiers of understanding between history and anthropology. The first part focuses on passions of ethnic and national identity as these impinge on how the past is imagined. The essays analyze how the past is continually reconstructed by the events, perceptions, and interests of the present. The secont part consists of a set of essays which try to understand the caste order, its linkages with kingship, and the manner in which colonial domination defined and redefined this relationship.