The former rural elite began to reappear, consolidated into the great Rajput caste spread over much of northern India.
In North Bastar, Baba Bihari Das had started an aggressive drive to "bring tribals back into the Hindu fold", which involved a campaign to denigrate tribal culture, induce self-hatred, and introduce Hinduism's great gift – caste.
A system of affirmative action has given caste greater potency.
Originally agricultural festivals, they are observed with great enthusiasm irrespective of caste, creed, and religious affinity.
Olson's book was short but sprawling, touching on everything from the Great Depression to the caste system in India.
But, the new study said, if you factor in friendships, cultural tastes and the great new marker of caste that is food you would get a more variegated picture today.
At the time of Indian independence in 1947, she recalled, there was a mood of optimism about the prospects for equality .There was a great hope that the caste system would die out.
Setting himself up as the anti-Gandhi (wearing black, to counter Gandhi's habit of dressing in white), he pressed for equal treatment of the lower castes, greater recognition of southern culture and language and, above all, greater freedoms for women in a country where wagons were still circled around the patriarchal family.
The cost of providing infrastructure in urban areas is lower, it means the weakening of caste barriers, greater social mobility, more opportunity for gender equality.
He's also great as a half-caste Aboriginal called Peevay, who recounts the decline of his people in a spicy mix of convict slang and the King James Bible.
