Shooting an Elephant: A Public Choice Explanation of Caste

The following paper proposes the furtherance of a rational choice explanation for the caste system. Using ethnographic and qualitative evidence on the history of institutional changes in the caste structure of India, I show that caste has been used in India by invaders and power-vying local rulers as a way to systematically exert administrative, political, and economic control over a populace. I also use instances of caste in other parts of the world throughout time as well as how caste has changed since a ban on discrimination based on caste three years after the end of British occupation over India to provide further evidence. While I do not make claims that my theory is mono-causal, I make the much milder claim that it has worked in tandem with other theories of the origins, continuance, and structure of caste systems.