Prejudice and Identity: Hindi High Caste Journals,United Provinces (1918–30)

Abstract

Nationalism is a fluid concept which needs contextual understanding. Construction of communal and caste identities played an important role in countering or qualifying nationalism in the United Provinces (UP) (1918–30). This article investigates the contents of some of the Brahman caste journals in order to study the evolution of identify consciousness, the construction of the ‘self’ vs. the ‘other’, where the self was always the Hindu upper caste, and the ‘other’ was invariably the ‘Musalman’. It is clear that identity consciousness had an overarching presence in middle-class UP in the 1920s—a presence which is clearly traceable in the caste journals published in that decade.