“Race science enjoyed a prestigious place in Indian academic life in the twentieth century. Mukharji’s book is a startling revelation of how leading Indian anthropologists and statisticians used serological techniques to study caste. This is the forgotten story of Indian eugenics in the service of national development.”

Partha Chatterjee, Columbia University

“Mukharji’s Brown Skins, White Coats is a brilliant book, absorbing to read and brimming with lyrical insight about the vexed history of global racial science, identity, nationalism, and alienation. The book offers a masterful, often poetic journey into the ever-shifting practices of racial scientists striving relentlessly to weave notions of skin, blood, caste, tissues, disease, and belief into a potent yet illusory science of Indian identity, whiteness, and biologized difference. A captivating, pathbreaking new work in race studies and science studies.”

Keith Wailoo, Princeton University

“Brown Skins, White Coats is the most innovative and engaging book I have read on the fraught relationship between race and genetics. Combining rigorous historical research with compelling fictional interludes, Mukharji recalls India’s forgotten history of seroanthropology, a form of race science that links colonial anthropometry to contemporary genomics. A must-read for area studies and history of science alike, Mukharji’s book skillfully shows how the underappreciated contributions of Indian scientists to global human genetics also reinforced essentialist and often discriminatory narratives of racial difference within South Asia.”

Elise K. Burton, University of Toronto