Nancy Stephen in her recently published book 'The Ideas of Race in Science' has charged these race scientists with deliberate concoction. The book reviewer Dr. S. K. Mahajan of BARC Bombay writes, "Beginning with the 15th century, the white Europeans came in contact with more and more people around the globe, most of whom looked physically different, thanks so their superior military technology, the Europeans soon found themselves exterminating, enslaving or subjugating many of these people. All this was profitable, though morally difficult to justify. A morally defensible rationale for slavery and colonialism would have been highly useful. Such were the imperatives that led to the genesis, around the year 1800, of what Nancy calls 'the race science', in her book. The basic hypothesis of this science was something as follows".

"Based on their biological constitutions, human beings can be classified in to a small number of well defined racial types. These racial types are fixed and can be arranged in a hierarchy in which the European whites are at the top and the African blacks at the bottom, with others coming in between. The physical, moral and mental worth of any individual is determined by the hierarchical status of the racial type to which he belongs".

"The primary goal of the race scientists was to generate empirical data as well as a theoretical framework in support of the above hypothesis. This they did with remarkable zeal, diligence and persistence for well over a century in the face of formidable practical as well as theoretical set-backs. Their purpose was to show that the white man was endowed with superior mental and moral attributes which were necessary for humanity's progress but were missing in non-whites and then the European domination could be rationalized as the "White man's burden". In spite of the great labors of the race scientists, their work has mostly been forgotten. The emergence of molecular biology of the gene has proved differently".

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