In the last decades, racism has become a central public debate in India. First, as Dalit political movements presented the discrimination to which they are still subject as a form of racism in international platforms, the question acquired a fresh national and political urgency. The debate then extended to the importance of colour, more precisely whiteness, as a determinant of social relations and status. International and national stakes involved new actors in these debates, moving them beyond the circles and platforms of social sciences, which had viewed race and caste principally within colonial frames, to more fundamental questions of social inequalities.