Date: 09.04.2025
The ongoing debate around caste in India—one that surfaces powerfully in moments across the last hundred years—has once again stirred the national conscience. This conversation, historically led by giants like Shri Jyotirao Phule, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, and the Dalit Panthers such as Namdeo Dhasal, has too often been pushed into the margins—silenced deliberately by those in power to maintain the status quo. Today, it finds new life in the efforts of the Leader of the Opposition, whose Samvidhaan Samaan Samelans and recent dialogue with economist and educationist Prof. Sukhadeo Thorat has reignited a reckoning.
This isn’t just a political issue—it is a human one. And this moment opens a deeply complex and long-ignored Pandora’s box that demands soul-searching from all of us. For most of history, public discourse in India has been dominated by questions of religion, territory, and language—communal and regional divides that have defined our conflicts. Though important, beneath it, quietly but cruelly persistent, has been caste. It exists like an invisible wound, so normalized in our daily lives that we’ve stopped seeing it—even when it cuts deep. Caste has dictated where people stand in society, what jobs they do, and how they are treated. It has created a world where some, purely by accident of birth, are called “upper” and protected by an ecosystem that keeps them insulated. The system is not just unfair. It is inhumane. It is oppression.
To even begin to address this injustice, we must start by naming it. We must acknowledge the generational violence and exclusion that the so-called “upper” castes—here rightly called the oppressor castes—have perpetuated. It is not enough to point to exceptions and outliers, to the cases of financial success among the oppressed. That line of argument is not only dishonest, data-less but immersed in apathy. If we want real change, we need real data. That’s why the caste census is not just important—it’s essential. It gives us the factual, quantifiable truth that oppressor castes have long avoided: that wealth and opportunity in this country have been hoarded and passed down within the same groups, generation after generation. I say this as someone who has benefitted from that very system at various phases of life—consciously or not. The first step toward change is recognition—to stop speaking and start listening, and to walk alongside the oppressed castes toward justice.
Reservation is not charity. It is representation. It is a constitutional right. Its purpose is not just welfare—it is visibility, voice, and structural correction. And yet, in 2024, India’s top 30 private universities had just 5% Scheduled Caste (SC) students, and less than 1% Scheduled Tribe (ST) students. Only 4% of their faculty are from SC backgrounds. These numbers come straight from the Union Ministry of Education. Meanwhile, the oppressor castes enjoy what no one wants to name: financial reservation—the legacy of inherited wealth and generational access, used to secure education and opportunity behind closed doors. Reservation in the Private sector, especially education and healthcare, is the natural step towards correcting a historical wrong.
And there is something else too—something deeper. A psychological reality. A storm of guilt and discomfort brews within many from the oppressor caste that instead of confronting that guilt, run from it. They hide behind the argument of the poor among the oppressor castes—a small but real minority. The discomfort is manipulated by those in power to do whataboutery and rage. This rage is redirected—weaponized—into religious identity, into resistance against inter-caste mobility & conversion. And in doing so, the cycle of hate continues.
What’s even more tragic is how that hate travels downward. Oppressor castes discriminate against those just a notch below, and the oppressed—carrying wounds of their own—pass that discrimination further down. It is a deeply human response, and yet a deeply devastating one. The word for this chain of discrimination must be clear: Brahminical oppression. A person may be born Brahmin without embodying that mindset. But it is the system of Brahminical dominance—and the failure to dismantle it—that must be called out. And the responsibility for that lies squarely on the shoulders of the oppressor castes. The hate of the oppressor and the hate of the oppressed are not the same. One stems from centuries of entitlement; the other from centuries of pain. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar said it plainly: casteism cannot be destroyed unless the upper castes choose reform.
If India is to grow—not just economically, but morally, socially, and spiritually—then the oppressor castes must choose that reform. The only way forward is badlaav. Badlaav in thought, in action, and in heart.
Himanshu Chakravarty Sharma / मंच 