Harold A. Gould

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Harold Alton Gould (February 18, 1926 – July 2, 2021) was an American anthropologist who studied Indian society and civilization. He wrote many books on caste, religion, politics, and international relations. He earned his PhD in anthropology from Saint Louis University in 1959. From 1968 to 1991 he was a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and directed its Center for Asian Studies. From 1991 he was a visiting professor at the University of Virginia’s Center for South Asian Studies. He died in Delray Beach, Florida, at the age of 95.

Gould did field work in India, starting with Lucknow University as a Fulbright scholar in 1954–55, where he studied village communities in the Faizabad district. Over his career he made many research trips to India, spending more than ten years there in total. His research covered rural life, caste, religion, local politics, elections, and national and international politics.

Selected works and ideas:
- The Hindu Caste System (Volume 1) was praised by reviewer Robert I. Crane of Syracuse University as a masterful study with insightful analysis. Crane highlighted chapters on priests and contrapriests and on the jajmani system, but questioned Gould’s emphasis on religious values and whether power and economic interests might have shaped those values.
- Grass Roots Politics in India was called a masterful account by Lloyd I. Rudolph of the University of Chicago, covering about a century of political change in the Faizabad district. Gould argued that India’s political system grew from the Congress party’s links to district organizations and from the interaction between traditional society and modern politics. He introduced the idea of a desacralized caste system—viewing caste as an ethnic group rather than only a religious category—and showed how caste could drive political participation and social change. Rudolph, while impressed by the analysis, questioned whether district-level study alone can explain India’s politics, noting the influence of ideology, leadership, and top-down factors as well.