Locating Race in Mughal India

Abstract

This article uses writings of the French traveler François Bernier (d. 1688) on race as an inroad into the question of locating race in Mughal India. I explore Mughal discourses of alterity through an examination of Persian writings from various genres composed during the long seventeenth century. In contrast to Bernier, these writings do not offer concepts equivalent to that of race. However, by invoking narratives of descent from Noah's son Ham, ideas of climatic and physiognomic humoralism, and the attribution of physical qualities or character traits to social groups, these works engage in practices of racialization while also at times undermining them.