Divya Cherian, "Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia," (University of California Press, 2022)

Winner of the 2022 Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social SciencesMerchants of Virtue explores the question of what it meant to be Hindu in precolonial South Asia. Divya Cherian presents a fine-grained study of everyday life and local politics in the kingdom of Marwar in eighteenth-century western India to uncover how merchants enforced their caste ideals of vegetarianism and bodily austerity as universal markers of Hindu identity. Using legal strategies and alliances with elites, these merchants successfully remade the category of “Hindu,” setting it in contrast to “Untouchable” in a process that reconfigured Hinduism in caste terms. In a history pertinent to understanding India today, Cherian establishes the centrality of caste to the early-modern Hindu self and to its imagination of inadmissible others. South Asian Studies Podcast Indian History Podcast Indian Anthropology Podcast Merchants of Virtue by Divya Cherian Precolonial South Asia history Hindu identity in precolonial India Marwar kingdom history Caste and Hinduism in India Vegetarianism and bodily austerity in Hinduism Eighteenth-century India social history Hindu and Untouchable distinctions Caste ideals in precolonial India Early-modern Hindu self-definition Social politics in Marwar India Hinduism and caste in historical perspective Religious identity in precolonial South Asia Caste and legal strategies in India Merchants and elites in Marwar Indian caste system history Caste and Hindu identity reconfiguration Social dynamics in precolonial Indian kingdoms Hinduism and social hierarchy in India Cultural history of western India Joseph W. Elder Prize winner book Understanding caste in Indian history