Lala Lajpat Rai’s Ideas on Caste: Conservative or Radical?

Descriptions of Lala Lajpat Rai as a Hindu nationalist or an Arya Samaji Hindu revivalist are unhelpful in evaluating whether he can be called conservative. Taking the desire to preserve the traditional hierarchical order as a defining feature of Indian conservatism, this article examines Lajpat Rai’s ideas on caste through this understudied category. Exploring the nuanced reasoning that undergirded his intellectual stances, it reveals that while at particular historical junctures, Lajpat Rai articulated ideas towards the caste hierarchy that can be described as radical, at other points he adopted conservative stances