Did a google search, with limited results--I don't see a solid academic study, just some student work or summaries that can go off track. This might be the best one, throwing in "class system" and "meritocracy" as well as slavery and caste. One big problem is comparing different times and different countries.
What's striking to me from Ants is the use of force to enforce caste boundaries. As it happens, a front page article in the Post today is an account of an honor killing, a Dalit married a woman of a trading caste, her father hired men to kill him. Force obviously was used in slavery. Which one was/is more violent.
In both cases (chattel slavery and caste system), the position is inherited by child from parent. In chattel slavery the law backs the social norms; apparently in the caste system social norms were sufficient. And in India these days the law doesn't support the system.
It seems some social mobility is possible in both systems. Certainly the family described in Ants is mobile, though their upward progress seems a function of the changing laws. Their progress seems more problematic than some mobility under slavery. The key difference might be the ownership: if your owner was your father and/or enlightened, he could boost you. Since Dalits have no owner, that doesn't work.
On the other hand, there might be more unity among the caste (considering Dalits as a caste) than there was in slavery. Perhaps, perhaps not.
[Added: Other important differences:
- there seems to be no boss, no slave driver in the caste system. That might mean more "freedom" in one's daily routine, more akin to the "task" system in rice culture than the "driver" in cotton system.
- mobility within the caste is restrcted--no house slaves versus field slaves, no chance to become a skilled artisan]
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