<i>Volk</i> against <i>Kaste</i>: Nondemocratic Popular Sovereignty in Nazi Germany

This article argues that the concept of “caste” (Kaste), a supposedly Indian idiosyncrasy, was pressed into service in Nazi Germany for a peculiar understanding of popular sovereignty without democracy. A fundamental critique of recent equations of “caste” with the racially oppressed, the article shows how the term was originally generalized into global political grammar to designate the enemy of “the people,” pointing to the aristocracy rather than the Indian Dalit or Black slave. Under the Nazis, Kaste continued to designate the primary antithesis of the valorized idea of the Volk. The essay marshals a broad array of high-ranking Nazi politicians and ideologues to reconstruct a unique vision of nondemocratic popular sovereignty that reconciled ruler and ruled through the annihilation of caste.