Supporters of Mayawati Kumari of the Bahujan Samaj Party—which represents Dalits, also regarded as untouchables or of low caste—wait during a political rally on April 6, 2009, in Palwal, India.

The caste system in South Asia — which rigidly separates people into high, middle and lower classes — may have been firmly entrenched by about 2,000 years ago, a new genetic analysis suggests.

The caste system in South Asia — which rigidly separates people into high, middle and lower classes — may have been firmly entrenched by about 2,000 years ago, a new genetic analysis suggests.

Read CNN’s Hinduism Fast Facts and learn more about Hinduism, the third-largest religion after Christianity and Islam.

In 1871-72, the British started the system of counting castes during population surveys, purportedly to understand Indian society. The last published caste data is from the 1931 census, which ...

India’s caste system, says a new genetic study, began about 2,000 years ago. The study adds that people from different genetic populations — from the North and the South — began to mix with ...

The caste system in South Asia — which rigidly separates people into high, middle and lower classes — may have been firmly entrenched by about 2,000 years ago, a new genetic analysis suggests.