During the Parliamentary proceedings in 2013, Indian-origin Bhikhu Parekh, a Member of the House of Lords in the United Kingdom, remarked: “How do you define caste? Sociologists have tried for 200 years, ever since the Portuguese invented the word caste. It is not an English but a Portuguese word; when they came to India, they found that we were classified in a certain way and called it caste. In India, caste is very much in flux thanks to globalisation, urbanisation and so on, and in Britain it is even more so. Castes are therefore difficult not only to define but to distinguish.” The word ‘caste’ is often used to describe India’s unique social system, but the term did not come from India. So how did a foreign word come to describe such a central element of Indian society? ‘Casta’: a colonial inheritance In India, caste is seen as an ancient Hindu social system based on the concepts of varna (class), karma (action), and dharma (duty), as described in the legal text Manusmriti. The varna system divided society into four main groups—Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and …