Bursting the Propaganda of British Caste Narratives Volume 1

This paper critically examines the colonial and missionary portrayal of the Hindu caste system as rigid and Brahmin-dominated, arguing that such narratives were politically motivated to facilitate Christian conversion and administrative control. Drawing on early nineteenth-century surveys of indigenous schools, textual evidence from Vedic and epic literature, and analysis of British translations of Hindu texts, it demonstrates that education and intellectual authority in India were widely accessible to non-Brahmin communities. Statistical data from Madras, Bengal, and Bihar Presidencies show that a majority of students and a significant portion of teachers came from Shudra and other non-Brahmin castes. The paper further highlights the ideological distortion introduced by missionaries such as Thomas, and misrepresentations like Ambedkar's critique based on altered translations of Manusmriti. This study affirms that caste, as popularly understood in Europe and colonial discourse, was not an intrinsic feature of Hindu civilization.