In his new book, Suraj Yengde writes about local manifestations of caste among Indians in Trinidad

When we speak of caste and its presence worldwide, the conversation is often confined to the contemporary rise of migration and caste in the West. Most often the dialogue is restricted to the diasporic Dalits resident in the West. One can hardly find a comprehensive study of castes in locations outside the Western episteme. When I went to South Africa, one of the urgent projects that I had intended to study was caste among Indians and non-Indians in Africa. I was advised instead to focus on contemporary Indian migrant labour.

During my research, I found out that major studies of the history of indentured labour, the sociology of political movements, and the economics of social classes in India did not feature caste as one of the subjects of analysis. There are various reasons for this. But the three most important are that caste was forgotten during the era of the indentured system; people gave up caste owing to pressure from the colonial regime; and Indian identity was mostly divided because of regional and religious (Muslim–Hindu) differences. While these reasons partly explain why, they do not give a complete picture.

In my research, I found out how both Hindus and Muslims, the South Indians and...

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