Publish-Independence India launched affirmative motion by means of completely different channels. Constitutional reservations for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes got here by means of Articles 15 and 16. State-level insurance policies for Different Backward Lessons existed lengthy earlier than the Mandal Fee. Land reforms within the Nineteen Fifties and Nineteen Sixties altered rural energy buildings. The 73rd Constitutional Modification created Panchayati Raj establishments. Cooperative actions allowed small farmers to entry credit score and markets. Later, reservations prolonged to Central establishments.
Political scientists Christophe Jaffrelot and Niraja Gopal Jayal documented how these measures modified land possession, native governance, and state entry earlier than Mandal grew to become a nationwide debate.
Land reform and the Inexperienced Revolution of the Nineteen Sixties and Nineteen Seventies introduced change that didn’t originate in lecture rooms or courtrooms. Planning Fee analysis and agricultural economists like Ashok Gulati confirmed these reforms had been geographically uneven however altered rural life. In components of Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh, coastal Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu, sections of Shudra and different agrarian communities gained safer landholdings, elevated farm earnings, and accessed credit score by means of cooperatives. Households might plan past survival and spend money on training.
The advantages reached sure areas, not all. Political results had been clear. Teams that gained financial stability additionally gained confidence and affect. Dominant agrarian castes akin to Jats, Yadavs, Vokkaligas, Kammas, and Marathas grew to become seen in native and state politics. OBC-led regional events rose throughout the Nineteen Seventies and Nineteen Eighties. Knowledge from the Centre for the Examine of Growing Societies Nationwide Election Research exhibits a gentle enhance in legislators from these communities in State Assemblies.
Financial safety did greater than enhance residing requirements. It gave individuals the arrogance to demand their share of public sources. When households had land, earnings, and organisational energy, they had been higher positioned to ask for entry to training, authorities jobs, and administrative authority. Sociologist M.N. Srinivas noticed that political assertion adopted materials stability. These calls for grew from collective energy constructed by means of cooperatives, panchayats, and farmers’ organisations.
Mandal and the parable of meritocracy
This era coincided with many years of anti-caste struggles, non-Brahmin actions, and backward class mobilisation. The First Backward Lessons Fee, chaired by Kaka Kalelkar in 1955, documented widespread instructional and occupational exclusion. A number of States launched OBC reservations earlier than 1990, notably Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Kerala. Mandal didn’t introduce caste into public coverage. Caste had all the time formed Indian society and governance. Mandal gave nationwide recognition to calls for that had existed for many years.
Mandal modified the dimensions and visibility of those claims. By inserting backward class exclusion inside a nationwide framework, it made inequality tougher to dismiss as regional or short-term. The Supreme Court docket’s judgment in Indra Sawhney v. Union of India (1992) upheld OBC reservations whereas laying down guidelines for implementation. Parliamentary debates and laws prolonged OBC reservations to Centrally funded establishments. Questions of caste and illustration reached elite areas such because the IITs, IIMs, and Central universities, establishments that had lengthy described themselves as purely merit-based.
Caste denial in India hardly ever seems as open hostility. Extra typically, it takes the type of neutrality. It speaks by means of professionalism, advantage, effectivity, and customary sense. These phrases sound honest however defend previous benefits. Analysis by the Indian Institute of Dalit Research exhibits that exclusion continues even when formal guidelines seem impartial, as a result of inequality reproduces by means of casual practices.
Language hides caste energy. The time period “higher caste” is often handled as easy description, however it accepts hierarchy. “Higher” suggests rating, even when “decrease caste” shouldn’t be spoken aloud. This on a regular basis language makes inherited benefit appear pure. Media and establishments use this shorthand repeatedly, turning caste right into a ladder as an alternative of recognising it as a system of energy. Extra correct phrases akin to “caste-privileged”, “dominant castes”, “traditionally advantaged communities”, or the executive class “Normal Class” describe the fact extra clearly.
Elite instructional establishments and company workplaces routinely declare: “We don’t see caste right here.” “We solely rent on advantage.” These statements assume caste exists solely as direct discrimination. Caste shapes entry to networks, referrals, language consolation, mentorship, and casual help. Organisational research in India present that benefit typically operates earlier than interviews or exams happen, by means of social familiarity and cultural ease.
Sociologist Satish Deshpande explains why caste privilege typically feels invisible to those that profit from it. Classes akin to “Normal Class” current privilege as impartial and unmarked. Dominant castes consider themselves as people with out caste, whereas deprived teams stay visibly marked as “quota”, “id”, or “background”. The privileged see themselves as casteless, whereas the marginalised carry caste labels. When establishments declare they don’t see caste, they miss out on exclusion.
College students in help of UGC fairness laws at Delhi College, on February 3, 2026.
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SUSHIL KUMAR VERMA
Public debate provides one other type of caste denial. “Why divide society?” “Why make all the things about caste?” These responses shift consideration away from discrimination and in direction of the individual naming it. Media evaluation exhibits that those that talk about caste inequality are accused of making division, whereas the construction producing inequality stays untouched.
Suraj Yengde’s work in Caste Issues clarifies why this denial persists. Caste is a deeply rooted system that already governs social relations. Caste doesn’t enter public life solely when talked about. It’s current in on a regular basis interactions, alternatives, and limits. Calls to cease speaking about caste defend consolation slightly than promote equality.
In debates about training, caste-blindness takes the type of opposition to reservations. “Reservations are unfair.” “Equality means the identical guidelines for everybody.” This view ignores unequal beginning factors and lengthy histories of exclusion. Authorized and coverage analysis exhibits that reservations had been launched as a result of elite areas had been by no means impartial. They had been formed by social situations that favoured some teams and excluded others.
When consideration focuses on attacking options slightly than inspecting the issue, the caste system itself stays unchallenged. The on a regular basis privileges that maintain inequality keep intact.
The violence of silence
Delicate types of caste discrimination on campuses matter. Digital rights teams documented how on-line abuse, threats, and mockery, together with jokes concerning the loss of life of Rohith Vemula, replicate a wider tradition of impunity. These incidents present why establishments want robust techniques to handle discrimination. Weakening such safeguards will increase the house for caste energy to function with out accountability.
City life doesn’t erase caste. Massive surveys, together with the India Human Growth Survey, present that caste continues to form housing entry, marriage patterns, friendships, and office alternatives in cities. Caste doesn’t want slurs to outlive. It adapts to well mannered language, skilled areas, and world cities whereas holding hierarchies in place.
These are lived realities of caste in up to date India, not distant echoes of a previous period. In accordance with knowledge shared by the Union Minister of State for Schooling within the Rajya Sabha in 2023, 98 college students died by suicide in increased training establishments between 2018 and 2023. The bulk had been from Dalit, Bahujan, and Adivasi communities. The best numbers got here from IITs, NITs, central universities, IIMs, IISERs, and IITs.
Caste-based discrimination complaints in these elite establishments rose 118.4 per cent. The UGC acquired 1,160 complaints from Equal Alternative Cells and SC/ST Cells throughout 704 universities and 1,553 schools between 2019 and 2024. Reported incidents elevated from 173 in 2019-20 to 378 in 2023-24.
What follows from it is a refusal to take part in denial. Caste persists as a result of it operates quietly, by means of norms that seem impartial, by means of establishments that declare advantage whereas reproducing exclusion in on a regular basis methods, and thru a public tradition that treats discomfort as hurt. Until there’s willingness to confront how deeply caste discrimination buildings lives, we won’t discover the braveness to dismantle it.
Meenakshi Jha is a Delhi-based educator and works on a ebook on adolescence.
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