In the shadow of caste

One person, one vote — the democratic mantra. Someone speaks, someone listens. The state says it listens. It ought to. In his interpretation of Buddhism — the so-called Navayana — Dr BR Ambedkar insisted caste must not be allowed to obstruct the path to liberation. What one should hold as a social fact in India is that people so readily using religious identifiers, like Sanatan, have to agree that this self-actualisation is the goal of a dharmic mortal existence. This is the enlightenment, you can notch it up and even call it nirvana. ‘Symptoms’ of this state include dignity complemented by education — and it must not be a luxury. Everyone has the right to reach the top of Maslow’s pyramid.

Many today believe caste-based discrimination is a thing of the past. Some may even prefer the word varna — caste’s more sanitised sibling. Compounding the situation is the fact that if one believes divine justice awaits in the hereafter, eschatology is the word — karma is the dharmic equivalent — the urgency of justice in this life can seem negotiable.

Caste continues to dictate the terms of life for lakhs of Dalits. In Karnataka, last year, a young Dalit woman was allegedly poisoned to death after marrying outside her caste. In Uttar Pradesh, a minor Dalit girl was raped — her pleas for help reportedly ignored by local police. In Uttarakhand, several Dalit families faced social boycott after missing a religious event due to illness. And in Madhya Pradesh, a Dalit man was reportedly tortured by police officers using casteist slurs. Now, think of manual scavenging — it is officially outlawed, yet practiced in parts of the country. Just a month back, Panth Lal Chandra, a 43-year-old migrant from Chhattisgarh, died in New Delhi after inhaling toxic fumes in a manhole—without any protective gear. Authorities denied culpability. As many as 377 people died between 2019 and 2023 while cleaning sewers and septic tanks. Multiple scholars have demonstrated that manual scavenging is deeply rooted in the caste system. Despite legal prohibitions, the practice persists because it is intrinsically tied to the caste-based social order that assigns dehumanising work to specific communities, the ‘impure’ communities whose impurity is rationalised using karma.

As sociologist Pierre Bourdieu observed, violence — both symbolic and literal — foments when inequality is accepted as normal — when social hierarchies are internalised as common sense. Ambedkar did not ask for charity. He demanded dignity. He asked the country to confront uncomfortable questions: Who decides worth? What is purity? Who gets to be deemed dvija, the twice born? When does justice begin?

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