Is “Race” a Relevant Category in India?

 

The dominant understanding of racism has long been shaped by the Black–White binary rooted in Western histories of slavery, segregation, and colonialism. This framing often confines discussions of racism to Euro-American contexts, making it less effective for understanding how racism operates elsewhere. In India and South Asia more broadly, social hierarchies are produced through locally specific categories such as caste, religion, language, and ethnicity, which also generate racialized forms of difference. Post-independence debates around “race versus caste” further shaped how race was conceptualized in India. In the post-liberalization period, this discussion has shifted again, with scholars increasingly recognizing racism as a contemporary and internal problem, especially visible in the everyday experiences of migrants from the Northeast and Himalayan regions.

A common question that follows is: Is race really a relevant category in India? After all, caste, religion, and language remain the dominant ways through which Indian society and politics are understood. I want to suggest that while race may not be the dominant category, it is certainly a relevant one—working alongside others—to make sense of social hierarchies and lived experiences in India.

Categories of Practice and Categories of Analysis

In their influential essay Beyond Identity, sociologists Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper argue that concepts like race, nation, ethnicity, citizenship, and community can work in two ways at the same time. On the one hand, they are categories of practice—the terms ordinary people use in everyday life to make sense of who they are, who belongs, and who does not. On the other hand, they are categories of analysis—the concepts scholars use to study and explain social and political processes. Importantly, these two are not completely separate. Everyday meanings shape academic thinking, and academic ideas often travel back into social and political life.

Race and ethnicity clearly show this double role. In everyday life, people use these categories to interpret difference, similarity, and belonging. In politics, they are often mobilized by leaders and organizations to build collective identities, frame interests, and organize action. However, Brubaker and Cooper warn scholars against uncritically using race or ethnicity as analytical categories. Doing so can unintentionally treat these identities as fixed, natural, or clearly bounded groups. Instead, they suggest focusing on practices related to race and ethnicity—that is, studying how people act as if these categories exist, how racial distinctions are created and sustained, and how they gain social and political importance.

This approach aligns closely with critical race studies, which rejects the idea of race as a biological fact and understands it as a social construction. From this perspective, race is produced through historical, political, and institutional processes that attach meaning to physical features or geographic origins. It works by turning social differences into seemingly natural ones and by grouping diverse people into simplified racial categories. Central to this understanding is racialization—the process through which racial categories are created, given meaning, and put to work in specific social and historical contexts. This allows us to study racism critically without treating race as something fixed or given.

“Race” in India

In the context of the above conceptualization, there are at least three reasons why “race” is relevant to Indian contexts.

Colonial Classification: The concept of race emerged during the Western Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and spread globally through European imperialism and colonial expansion in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. European thinkers developed pseudo-scientific racial theories that classified human populations into hierarchical categories based on biological and socio-cultural traits, placing white Europeans at the apex. In colonial India, British scholar-administrators applied these racial ideas to Indian society by aligning them with indigenous social structures such as varna and caste. Early philological scholarship, especially the work of Sir William Jones, connected linguistic similarity with racial origin, promoting the idea of Aryan migration and constructing a hierarchy that privileged Aryans over Dravidians, tribal groups, and populations deemed racially “mixed.” By the nineteenth century, racial thinking had become institutionalized within colonial anthropology and administration. This was most evident in Sir Herbert Risley’s role as Census Commissioner in 1901, when he classified India’s population into distinct racial types based on physical characteristics and social rank.

All three categories—“Aryan,” “Dravidian,” and “Mongoloid”—have distinct postcolonial lives in India, continuing to shape political identities and social hierarchies even after the end of colonial rule. The Aryan category, though officially discredited as a racial concept, survives implicitly in upper-caste nationalist imaginaries that equate North Indian Hindu norms with the cultural core of the nation. The Dravidian category was reworked politically rather than rejected, becoming central to anti-caste and regional movements in South India that challenged Brahminical dominance by reclaiming a non-Aryan identity. In contrast, the Mongoloid category persists most visibly in the everyday racialization of people from Northeast India, whose physical features mark them as culturally “outsiders”. While stripped of its scientific legitimacy, this colonial racial label continues to inform popular stereotypes, experiences of racism, and practices of exclusion in many contexts.

Ethnic Movements in the Northeast: Colonial anthropology classified Indian populations not only by physical traits but also by language, identifying Indo-European language speakers as “Aryan” and associating them with Hinduism and the Brahmanical caste order, while categorizing others as distinct racial groups. These ideas were taken up by the Assamese intelligentsia in the late nineteenth century, when Assam was administered under the Bengal Presidency and Bengali elites dominated education and administration. In response, the emerging Assamese middle class asserted a separate cultural identity by establishing Assamese as an independent language linked to North Indian Aryan traditions rather than Bengali. This linguistic distinction reinforced an Assamese identity defined as Aryan-speaking, Hindu, and caste-based, while marginalizing lower castes and tribal communities. Over time, those outside this framework were increasingly constructed as “others.” Racial classifications were also selectively adopted by hill tribes themselves. The Nagas, for example, articulated their distinctiveness in racial and cultural terms, petitioning the Simon Commission to remain separate from Assam, a position later institutionalized by the Naga National Council. Similar strategies were used by other tribes to assert collective identity and demand political autonomy.

New Racism: Migration from Northeast India to mainland city centers for education, government employment, the armed forces, and public sector jobs has occurred since the early postcolonial period, intensifying after the 1990s due to improved connectivity, economic liberalization, and expanding middle-class aspirations. While this migration has reshaped the social and cultural landscape of cities, it has also exposed Northeastern migrants to widespread everyday racism. This includes stereotyping, social exclusion, moral policing, verbal abuse, and physical violence, often accompanied by racial gaslighting that dismisses or minimizes their experiences. Major mobilizations in the early 2010s brought national attention to these issues, leading to heightened engagement by media, civil society, and policymakers and making racism against Northeasterners a visible public concern.

In this context, race becomes a crucial analytical category, as explanations based solely on caste, tribe, religion, or physical features cannot fully account for the patterns of discrimination involved. Race helps capture how bodily appearance, region, and assumed cultural difference come together in everyday interactions. Here, race does not replace dominant categories but intersects with them, enabling a more nuanced understanding of this relatively new form of urban racism in India.

Concluding Remark

Taken together, the colonial production of racial categories, the politics of ethnicity in the Northeast, and the everyday racism faced by Northeasterners in Indian cities demonstrate why “race” is a relevant lens for understanding Indian society. This does not mean treating race as a fixed or natural category, nor does it imply assuming the existence of clearly bounded racial groups. Instead, race is used here as an analytical tool to examine social practices—how differences are produced, bodies are marked, and hierarchies are justified in everyday life, political discourse, and institutional contexts. In this sense, race operates alongside caste, religion, language, and region, intersecting with them rather than replacing them. Therefore, paying attention to race allows us to better understand processes of racialization and racism in India, without reifying race itself.