"Phantom India: A Look at the castes" is a 1969 French seven part television documentary about India, directed by Louis Malle. It was shown on BBC television.

Malle later said that the film was his most personal work and the one he was most proud of, it is widely regarded as the crowning achievement of his career. It was initially inspired by a two-month trip to India in late 1967 that Malle made on behalf of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs to present a selection of "new French cinema" throughout the country. Filming took place between January 5, 1968 and May 1, 1968 with a crew of two, a cameraman and a sound recordist. Malle arrived in India with no particular plans and financed the trip himself. The resulting 30 hours of footage was then edited down to the 363 minutes of Phantom India.

Malle starts the episode by interviewing Thomas Howard, a US Peace Corps agricultural specialist who's one of 700 volunteers there, then he shows footage from Haryana, a village in Northwest India with a huge Muslim influence. Various activities are shown, and Malle explains the four main caste categories--Brahmans (priests), Kshatriyas (warriors), Vaisyas (peasants, merchants) and Sudras (which serve the others)--as well as the Untouchables (outcasts), Harijan (backward classes) and the quarantined (those who lack any caste). He states that in India, the relationship between people is important and not the individual. Dhobi, the lowest rank of the Untouchables, are shown doing everyone's laundry. He adds that while many think caste is an Aryan innovation from about 3,000 years ago, it may have originated in even earlier Indian civilizations. He shows a funeral procession, with 'mourners' celebrating to the tune of 'For He's a Jolly Good Fellow'. With the metaphors of a blind camel endlessly forced to travel a circle to mix cement, and two teams of players playing a mixture of Red Rover and Greco-Roman wrestling, devolving into a huge free-for-all, Malle makes the claim that if India is going to prosper, it won't take fertilizer or irrigation but the changing of minds, which he feels won't take place anytime soon, both because the lowest classes don't want education of agricultural reform even if it's legislated, and those in charge of education are the Brahmans, who constitute the highest caste level. He completes the episode by showing a façade of democracy, as a village leader (sarpanch), accused of embezzlement, goes free because of his ties to the government, which consists of his caste.

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