Gobineau’s race theory translated caste decline into civilizational decay

Evidence

In fact, as seen in Roy’s introduction to this edition, even Gandhi, in his South Africa years, strongly believed in the British and India’s ruling classes both being ‘Aryan’. Ambedkar, however, also differs on this front from his predecessor and radical thinker Jotiba Phule and his contemporary fellow-traveller ‘Periyar’ E.V. Ramasamy Naicker (1879–1973) who turned the racial theory inside out, postulated a pre-Aryan golden age, and regarded the Brahmins as Aryans, and hence foreigners, who imposed the caste system upon the non-Brahmins who were seen as an indigenous race. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 1069 (#responds-to, via linked claim)

It was while he was there, under the tutelage of John Dewey (of ‘Deweyan liberalism’ fame), Edwin Seligman, James Shotwell, James Harvey Robinson and A.A. Goldenweiser, that he wrote his original, path-breaking paper on caste, “Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development”, in which he argued that caste could not be equated with either race or class, but was a unique social category in itself—an enclosed, endogamous class. When he wrote it, Ambedkar was only twenty-five years old. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 297 (#responds-to, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Doctrines of civilizational decay are intimately connected with race-thinking; Gobineau’s doom-mongering expressed exiled French nobility’s caste fears; Indian anticaste thinkers linked caste and racism over a century ago (+5 more)

Related

• Periyar and Phule inverted Aryan racial theory to oppose Brahmins as foreigners. (similarity 0.86)
• The modern race concept was modeled on aristocratic caste ideas (similarity 0.85)
• Gobineau invented racism by projecting his caste’s decline onto civilization’s fate. (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Periyar and Phule inverted Aryan racial theory to oppose Brahmins as foreigners. #responds-to (0.80) — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 1069
• Indian anticaste thinkers linked caste and racism over a century ago #expands (0.75)
• Ambedkar defined caste as an enclosed, endogamous class distinct from race and class #responds-to (0.75) — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 297
• European racialism originated in intra-European caste ordering, not color #expands (0.74)
• The modern race concept was modeled on aristocratic caste ideas #expands (0.72)
• Race-thinking supplied a natural aristocracy to replace the feudal nobility #responds-to (0.72)