Homo Connubialis Brahmanicus

The colonial (mis)understandings of Hindu society were reduced to rigid caste identities through caste narratives. By means of a discursive study of the text “Brahmarshi Vansha Vistar [History of Brahmins]”, first written by an indigenous scholar, Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, the book shows that the various Brahmin castes and sub-castes did not and do not have rigid boundaries inter-se. The monograph aims to reopen the debate and challenge the perspectives inherited in sociological and culture-anthropological research that resonate in postcolonial societies by examining identity formation in Indian society around which politics, electoral behaviour, horizontal social affiliations and fixed caste-based reservations are structured under the constitution.