Caste has always generated political and scholarly controversy, but the forms that this takes today newly combine anti-caste activism with counter-claims that caste is irrelevant or non-existent, or claims to castelessness. Claims to castelessness are, in turn, viewed by some as a new disguise for caste power and privilege, while castlessness is also an aspiration for people subject to caste-based discrimination. This article looks at elite claims to “enclose” caste within religion, specifically Hinduism, and the Indian nation so as to restrict the field of social policy that caste applies to, to exempt caste-based discrimination from the law, and to limit the social politics of caste. It does so through a comparative analysis of two cases. The first is the exclusion of Christian and Muslim Dalits—members of castes subordinated as “untouchable”—from provisions and protections as Scheduled Castes in India. The other case is that of responses to the introduction of caste into anti-discrimination law in the UK. While Hindu organizations in the UK reject “caste” as a colonial and racist term and deploy postcolonial scholarship to deny caste discrimination, Dalit organizations, representing its potential victims, turn to scholarly discourse on caste, race, or human rights to support their cause. These are epistemological disputes about categories of description and how “the social” is made available for public debate, and especially for law. Such disputes engage with anthropology, whose analytical terms animate and change the social world that is their subject.

中文翻译：

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种姓之外？印度和英国的种姓封闭和无种姓要求

种姓总是引起政治和学术争议，但今天这种形式的新形式将反种姓激进主义与种姓无关或不存在的反诉结合起来，或声称无种姓。反过来，声称无种姓被一些人视为种姓权力和特权的新伪装，而无种姓也是受种姓歧视的人的愿望。本文着眼于精英声称将种姓“封闭”在宗教中，特别是印度教和印度民族，以限制种姓适用的社会政策领域，免除法律上基于种姓的歧视，并限制社会种姓政治。它是通过对两个案例的比较分析来实现的。第一个是将基督教和穆斯林达利特人——从属于“贱民”的种姓成员——排除在印度在列种姓的规定和保护之外。另一个案例是对英国将种姓纳入反歧视法的回应。虽然英国的印度教组织拒绝将“种姓”作为殖民和种族主义术语，并利用后殖民学术来否认种姓歧视，但代表其潜在受害者的达利特组织则转向关于种姓、种族或人权的学术话语来支持他们的事业。这些是关于描述类别以及“社会”如何用于公共辩论，尤其是法律的认识论争论。这种争论与人类学有关，人类学的分析术语活跃并改变了作为其主题的社会世界。