“It was no accident that my caste radar worked more efficiently when there was a group of people interacting among themselves. Caste is, in a way, a performance, and I could detect the caste positions of people in a group but not necessarily a single Indian by himself or herself. “There is never caste,” the Dalit leader Ambedkar once said. “Only castes.”

“It was no accident that my caste radar worked more efficiently when there was a group of people interacting among themselves. Caste is, in a way, a performance, and I could detect the caste positions of people in a group but not necessarily a single Indian by himself or herself. “There is never caste,” the Dalit leader Ambedkar once said. “Only castes.”

— Isabel Wilkerson