Eugenics gained popularity in India by justifying caste endogamy as racial purity.

Evidence

Eugenics is the ‘science’ of predicting and controlling heredity that was popular at the turn of the twentieth century, in that it was perceived to be an effort at the ‘improvement’ of the human species. The term was coined by Francis Galton inspired by Darwin’s theory of natural selection as well as the rediscovery of Mendel’s work on heredity (see also Note 47). Galton advocated that only the best and most meritorious should be encouraged to breed; a more disastrous strand of his theory led to Hitler’s ‘final solution’. According to Mark Singleton (2007, 125–46), the popularity of eugenics in India can be understood by the place it occupied as a ‘scientific explanation’ for the ‘degeneration’ of Hindu society and colonial subjugation by the British. Another reason for the popularity of eugenics was its valorisation of the endogamy of the caste system as a mechanism of racial purity. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 1070

Categorization

• XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s project: how caste was rationalized via pseudoscience, and how the annihilation argument had to dismantle scientific racism. — connects to: Some Indian thinkers defended caste as the world’s first eugenic movement.; Gandhi defended caste as superior to class on grounds of blood and heredity; Indian anticaste thinkers linked caste and racism over a century ago (+3 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 1070

Broader Connections

• Some Indian thinkers defended caste as the world’s first eugenic movement. #corroborates (0.80)
• Ambedkar described Hindus in eugenic language popular with European fascists #corroborates (0.75)
• Indian anticaste thinkers linked caste and racism over a century ago #corroborates (0.60)
• Ambedkar defined caste as an enclosed, endogamous class distinct from race and class #complicates (0.60) — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 297
• Gandhi defended caste as superior to class on grounds of blood and heredity #exemplifies (0.55)
• Hindu castes share race rather than being racial divisions #qualifies (0.50)