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His speech in the Constituent Assembly is significant because it forcefully argues that a good constitution cannot function well if it is handled by bad people. Similarly, even a bad constitution can yield good results if it is used by good people.

In other words, much more than formal rules and procedures, the social location, interests, and intentions of those who interpret or implement them are important—a point which is often missed by liberal scholars but not by Dr. Ambedkar.

The first meeting of the Constituent Assembly, with the aim of drafting the Constitution, was held on December 9, 1946, and it continued to function for around three years, with B. R. Ambedkar, as Chairman of the Drafting Committee, bearing a major share of the responsibility. When the work of drafting the Constitution was completed, Dr. Ambedkar delivered his closing speech on November 25, 1949, a day before the Constitution was formally adopted. November 26 was later celebrated as Constitution Day to mark this historic event.

Giving his closing speech in the Constituent Assembly, Babasaheb put it: “… however good a Constitution may be, it is sure to turn out bad because those who are called to work it, happen to be a bad lot. However bad a Constitution may be, it may turn out to be good if those who are called to work it, happen to be a good lot. The working of a Constitution does not depend wholly upon the nature of the Constitution.”

In his speech, Dr. Ambedkar argued that rules, laws, or the Constitution are not sufficient in themselves, nor do they guarantee justice, however well they may be framed. Beyond the law, the persons who interpret and implement it are the critical factor.

In the context of the Constitution, Ambedkar takes a critical sociological view and said that mere having good rules are not enough, if the person interpreting or implanting it has a bad intention. His argument is directly linked with his political movement to fight for the proportionate and effective representation for Dalits and other marginalised castes and communities.

The opponents of affirmative action, including reservation, often invoke the logic of meritocracy. However, anti-reservationists are not willing to accept the fact that merit is often defined through caste interests.

For example, the skills acquired by rich, upper-caste males are taken as the benchmark and imposed on the rest of society, ignoring the geographical, cultural, and linguistic diversity of the country, as well as the social and economic backgrounds of the people. Unlike such Brahminical logic, B. R. Ambedkar argued for bringing every caste and community within the process of decision-making so that they could not only make laws but also interpret and implement them in their own interests.

Dr. Ambedkar was of the view that if power is not shared and remains concentrated in a few hands, the interests of marginalised castes and communities are bound to be compromised. The same logic extends to the field of law, where mere formal rules cannot ensure justice for marginalised castes; rather, they must be in a position to interpret and implement them to ensure justice in society.

To illustrate B. R. Ambedkar’s argument, let us take the analogy of a car. A new car is not a guarantee of safe driving if it is handled carelessly. Conversely, even if a car has some technical faults, there is a greater chance that the journey will be safe if the driver is experienced and careful. In the context of law, Ambedkar is not merely satisfied with having a good constitution; rather, he is concerned about the misuse of a good constitution in the hands of bad people. But even if the constitution is not perfect, if those implementing it have good intentions, there is a greater possibility of bringing about justice in society.

Although Dr. Ambedkar, in his speech, disagreed with the Indian communists and socialists over their “condemnation” of the Constitution, Babasaheb’s sociological understanding of law comes very close to the Marxist critique of law. While liberal jurisprudence emphasizes rules and procedures and the idea of providing a level playing field to everyone seeking justice in a court of law, Marxist philosophers foreground the political dimension of law. Radicals argue that, in the absence of a genuine level playing field in society—where a few monopolise wealth and shape culture, religion, and other institutions to perpetuate their dominance—the judiciary and law cannot remain neutral zones of freedom and rational deliberation.

While the class character of society is central to Marxist thinking, it does not get displaced in Dr. Ambedkar’s analysis. While Ambedkar was a firm supporter of state socialism and of the state taking greater responsibility for people’s welfare, he strongly disagreed with the communists over their support for the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Dr. Ambedkar, on the other hand, was a strong advocate of bringing about equality and reconstructing an egalitarian order through democratic and constitutional means.

Having acknowledged these differences, Ambedkarite scholars and Marxists converge on the point that, unlike liberal scholars, they do not ignore the social reality and deep-seated inequalities that exist beyond the formal and legal structures of the state. While class and property relations are central to classical Marxist analysis, Dr. Ambedkar’s primary focus is on the caste-based graded inequality of Indian society. While Dr. Ambedkar does not ignore class contradictions in society, he, unlike Marxist scholars, explains class inequality through a caste-based analysis.

Since caste-based inequality remains deeply entrenched in society and the post-Independence state did not go much beyond providing formal equality to the lower castes and other marginalised communities, Dr. Ambedkar was acutely aware of the continuing presence of upper-caste hegemony from society to politics and from culture to the economy. That is why he was concerned that a good law in itself is not a guarantee of justice unless marginalised castes and communities are in a position to interpret and implement it in their own interests. These sociological insights of Dr. Ambedkar are crucial not only for understanding our judicial system but also for analysing other institutions of the state.

[The author is the author of the recently published book Muslim Personal Law: Definitions, Sources and Contestations (Manohar, 2026).]

Related:

Caste Shadow on Ambedkar Jayanti: From campus censorship to temple exclusion

On his 135th birth anniversary, we ask, would Ambedkar be allowed free speech in India today?

A principled PM, a determined law minister: Nehru, Ambedkar & Opposition in Indian Politics

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Methodological Prologue: Theory as Lens, not Template

To be able to think caste within the same analytical field of reference as Michel Foucault and Antonio Gramsci— two intellectual giants who have left an indelible impression upon his generation—whose long shadows loom large over the landscape of modern Europe, demands a first-order methodological clarification. It is an undeniable premise that caste is uniquely South Asian, a totalising social system with a distinct ontology around indigenous cosmologies of purity, pollution and hierarchal interdependency. Its thinking, its historical trajectory and the experience it embodies can be only partially understood through terms drawn from European history such as class or feudalism or racism, as people like Gopal Guru, Sundar Sarukkai and Dalit Studies thinkers have never tired of insisting. To apply these categories would amount to an act of epistemic violence, the imposition of an artificial reality onto a queasy and never quite-fitting architecture that illuminates nothing but dims what appears from Indian soil, reiterating the colonial knowledge systems that sought once to solidify and regulate caste under alien rubrics. Such as it is, the critique of Eurocentrism isn’t merely an afterthought but a disciplinary sensibility tout court.

So, I provide an inversion in this engagement with Foucault and Gramsci. I am not trying to “apply” their theories to the Indian “case” (as if it were a case of universal concern) in order to fit caste into the Procrustean bed of their local historical referents (the clinic, the prison, the European factory or the making of the Italian nation-state). Rather, I seize their essential methodological insights as adaptable analytical heuristics for shedding light on an essentially novel object. Foucault’s dialectic of the scene and the obscene is indispensable if not as an explanation of European épistémès, at least for its sophisticate analytic tool for understanding how power arranges seeing and saying, produces zones of authorized words and tactical silence, articulates a frontier between what is audible and inaudible. And, once again, Gramsci’s idea of hegemony is not used as a theory of European class making but as a dynamic way to grasp the securing of domination through the construction of “common sense” and the combined action between coercion and consent. Within such a machine, theory is no longer a master narrative so much as an array of precision tools. I do this by deploying these instruments to dismantle the historically specific materiality of caste from its sacred roots to its colonial codification and postcolonial mutations making it possible for the specificity of the phenomenon itself to interrogate and remould the theoretical tools. This essay is then a thought experiment of a critical, situated translation. It deploys Foucauldian and Gramscian optics in order to illumine caste’s internal architecture, its historical transmogrification, while insisting that the image at which one arrives is thoroughly, irreducibly Indian and needs also to conjure up its own vocabulary even as it speaks a global language of power. 

Introduction: The Architectonics of Invisibility

One of the most enduring and complex systems of social stratification in the world—India’s caste system (varna-jati)—is found in the Indian subcontinent. Its analysis requires tools that can penetrate not only its economic or political aspects, but its deep entrenchment in the spheres of knowledge production, body and space. Michel Foucault’s conceptually rich dyad of the “scene”, (what is made visible, sayable and governable) and the “obscene” (that structurally figured beyond but which in its beyond-ness constitutes the scene) provides a powerful prism. When coupled with Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, the means by which ruling groups achieve consent via an ideological “common sense”, this set-up reveals how power functions not just through suppression but through careful organization of social reality itself.

This paper opines that the history of caste has to be considered as a history involving managing (or mismanagement) of this scene/obscene border. The shift from premodern India to modern makes for a seismic change in such tactics of management: from an integral sacral-political scene to a fragmented modern settlement, where the official defacement of caste on real constitutional law and its attendant discourse on the public scene is the very condition for its raucous (albeit often underhand) existence in that social obscene. In it, the dominant scientific and technological discourses on which the ‘normalisation’ of modern society is based cohabits uneasily with remnants of an archaic and pre-modern social universe intricately woven into a powerful hegemonic discourse that systematically normalizes denial akin to what we have called here the hermeneutics of caste. The analysis draws from, among others, works by Nicholas Dirks (2001), Anand Teltumbde (2014) and Gopal Guru (2016) to map this transition showing that contemporary caste should be best understood as a sort of social schizophrenia driven by imaginative acts whereby power perpetuates itself through a convoluted hermetic legitimising act in India.

I. The Integrated Premodern Scene: Inscription, Spectacle and Sacral Hegemony

The caste hierarchy was a relatively coherent and explicit “scene” in the precolonial and early colonial environment. Its effectiveness was based on its thoroughgoing visibility and its cosmological basis. This can be felt clearly through the texts and inscriptions of medieval India.

Case of the Chola Temple Inscriptions and the Smritichandrika: The walls of the temples in Chola period (approx. 9th-13th centuries) are not just structural, but are public records of the social scenario. That act of reciprocation is documented in countless inscriptions which record the details of gifts but also control in great detail the spatial and ritual order: which castes could offer which kinds of gift, how close they might reside to the temple, and what the penal fines would be if they broke faith. At the same time, codified legal digests such as Devanna Bhatta’s 13th-century Smritichandrika continued to systematise dharma for a wide range of varnas and jatis, dictating clothing and ornaments suitable for narrow groups and stipulating edible diets or respectable partners in marriage.

They are performances of sovereign power. The law was not concealed in statute books but carved onto the holiest public edifices. That made the caste system, already a great monument to human pettiness and pride, permanently, monstrously visible. The elaborately clothed body of the Brahmin (instituted with the sacred thread, instringent in particular fabrics) contrasted with the regulated “nakedness” or coarse apparel of those belonging to “lower castes” was a wearable map of social arrangement- status could be read at once on bodies. “Conjugable” was not private, but public, scripture-regulated machinery for the perpetuation of biology and society.

This was an order that was not only maintained through coercion. It was the centre of agrarian economic and ritual life. Writing caste duties on the walls, the ruling powers (the Chola king, Brahmin sabha) attached social status to divine will and royal command. What it did was not to punish, but explain, rationalise and naturalise. It was polished over by embedding caste inside a sanctified “common sense” in which following one’s svadharma was identified with piety, social tranquillity and karmic reward. Consent was produced by the reaffirmation of ritual incorporation and cosmological tale.

An opulent calligraphy of gleaming inscriptions is what this glittering scene silences. The manual, waste-dirty work of temple purification, cleaning, and waste management, labour assigned to the lower (in caste hierarchy) communities, was the necessary but repelled root. There they were a required obscenity, consigned to literal geographical peripheries (the cheri outside the village) in order to keep unsullied, the jatra’s pure centre. The violence required to maintain this order, whenever necessary, was a public spectacle in its own right, a Foucauldian “scene” of sovereign punishment that reaffirmed the parameters of the permissible.

The coherence of this “scene” can be better appreciated, and the premodern character of it more clearly identified, by consideration to a ritual control of everyday practices that makes hierarchy in large measure visible and ever self-evident. The very access to water for instance worked as a micro-theatre of caste power. Shudras and untouchables were forbidden to draw water from a common source that the Savarna castes drank. The prohibition was not just economical or hygienic, it was dramaturgical. The distance at which awaiting castes waited to receive water from above the threshold through a high-caste intermediary enacted hierarchy as embodied choreography. Here, power did its work not by abstract law alone, but through disciplined gestures and spatial distance and the policing of touch. The practice of pollution was practised time and again on the body, making domination a matter of course.

Temple Restrictions of Entry Again, temple entry restrictions circumscribe how the holy solidified the sightedness of the field. As a condensation of the cosmic arena for legitimacy, these were the gatekeepers to those who could and could not come near divinity itself but whose mere presence would cause ritual chaos. Therefore, being kept out of temple space was not just  marginalisation but rather the ontological disqualification from the moral order which organized village life. The untouchable body was constitutively “ob-scene”, that which was vulgar so as to be excluded from the sacred frame, and thus a figure of purity in the visible scene. But this exclusion, counter-intuitively, verified centrality: the system needed what it banished. Carcass removal, tanning and sanitation-labour were materially integral to the agricultural way of life, and that the obscene was not external to power but its hidden basis.

This paradox has the kind of echo that Foucault will say later, that power creates what it seemingly excludes. The untouchable was, then, not simply oppressed but discursively produced as pollutant, essential to the symbolic unity of Brahmanical purity. Visibility and invisibility therefore comprised one and the same machine. Although his labour was required to be concealed in the sacred space of ritual, it was common for punitive violence against him to become hyper-visible. Public flogging, forced parade or head-shaving was used as exemplary scenes; measures which were not so much punishments for the individual violator but white lines re-drawn in the scene for all its observers. Acts of sovereign violence, in this respect, reconfigured ritual order by sporadic eruption into theatrical display.

But coercion alone cannot account for the endurance of this structure. Hegemony in Gramsci’s sense explains how domination hardened into “common sense.” The karmic reading of suffering converted structural inequality into a moral story: One’s birth deserved, one’s duty redemptive. Most importantly, this imagination was not the prerogative solely of the dominant castes. The participation of the subalterns in ritual hierarchies, through service function in festivals, acceding to hereditary occupation or practicing endogamy indicates to what extent voluntary and coercive approaches were complementary. This was not passive belief, but lived practice that was realised through kinship, worship and toil.

At the same time, however, that premodern scene was never perfectly sealed. Bhakti movements in various regions periodically disrupted the ritual hierarchy by emphasising devotional equality and vernacular expression. Literary figures like Ravidas or Nandanar made religious claims that transcended caste lines, briefly disturbing the visibility of the status quo. Even these challenges, however, were frequently absorbed (or re-absorbed), their radical potential domesticated within particularities of tradition. This ability to absorb demonstrates the strength of hegemonic formations: protest could be recognised symbolically without altering the material basis of hierarchy.

Here, the premodern caste order is not merely a system of hardened stratification but a staged totality through which space, body, work, force and belief converged aesthetically. The Foucauldian pairing of scene and obscene demonstrates the need for purity to be premised upon exclusion, as well as how visibility became a mode of discipline, while the Gramscian lens helps us understand that the long half-life was driven by moral internalization and quotidian consent. Together they reveal a system whose stability was founded on portraying hierarchy as both sacred and natural, a portrayal that subsequent historical developments would gradually start to undo, but not without enormous effort.

II. The Colonial Interregnum: Re-Scenography, Biopower and Taxonomic Hegemony

With the beginning of colonial governance, a significant change occurred. The British colonial state, a modern bureaucratic state at work, wanted to know, categorise and govern its subjects, effectively transforming the performance of caste.

Case of the 1901 Census and Risley’s Anthropometry: The Census, especially under Superintendent Herbert Risley, turned into one of the effective colonising projects. Risley tried to confer a “scientific” legitimacy on caste hierarchy through the use of anthropometry (the measuring of nasal indexes, skull shapes and other bodily features) to construct a racial taxonomy of Indian castes. This information was then used to generate all-India rankings for caste status. This was biopolitics in the pure, administrative state. Power worked in the colonial state by treating the Indian as an object to know, measure, and categorize. The caste became a fixed category rather than the fluid groups of jati relations that it had been, as well as an enumerated and pan-Indian taxonomy, a trope of colonial “governmentality” (Dirks 2001). The muddled local logic of purity/pollution was transformed into a clean, bureaucratic chart. This gave rise to a new all-India “scene” for caste: the statistical report, the ethnographic survey, the gazetteer. The ritual body became a racialised or datafied body.

This scene of bureaucracy had far-reaching hegemonic implications. In cataloguing (and ranking) castes so consistently, the Census rendered new identities that groups came to accept even as they fought them. It laid the groundwork for caste-based political organisation, as represented in the Non-Brahmin Manifesto of Madras (1916) or in the demands for separate electorates. The strategy of the colonial state was one of “divide and rule,” but it did so by offering the vocabulary, among the enumerated caste identity, through which political claims could be made. It fragmented older, more local solidarities and forced a re-configuration of the political terrain along these freshly rigidified lines.

In fact, this act of scientific observation ushered in an obscene that was entirely new. The native logic of purity/pollution, the “scene” which could be publicly declared is now called by the colonial “civilising” eye primitive, irrational and obscene to modernity. The colonial state could thus present itself as a modernising referee, underling proving to the world that it was not some backward social order the British had themselves rendered calcified. The “native obscenity” of caste practices became the rationale for the colonial mission, just as the colonial economy frequently solidified caste-based divisions of labour.

Colonial rule did not just “disperse” (de Kiewiet’s word) the prehistoric caste “scene”; it re-staged its appearance through its interventions in western technology of knowledge, and techniques of administration and surveillance. If the previous order was premised on ritual spectacle and cosmological legitimacy, colonial modernity made caste legible as an object of bureaucratic reason. Authority was transformed from the dramatic practice of impurity to its less conspicuous, but more far-reaching, work of sorting and classifying. In Foucauldian terms, there was a substitution of sovereignty for governmentality: the village stage of hierarchy was slowly but never entirely replaced by that of archive, census table and legal code.

And enumeration was central to this transformation. Colonial census, from the end of the 19th century onwards, attempted to freeze caste identities into universal pan-Indian categories. What had been a locally contingent and regionally flexible hierarchy became interpretable to the state through lists, schedules and ethnographic description. This act of naming was not neutral. In forcing the community to map onto certain fixed classificatory grids, the colonial state both reinforced and naturalised caste. The scene was not just spatial and ritual; it had turned statistical. From the village square, visibility moved onto the bureaucratic paper. The hidden ‘obscene’ here was not just secret labour, but the insecurity and indeterminacy of everyday caste relations, just what enumeration aspired to hide.

The law additionally re-fashioned the grammar of hierarchy. Colonial law did not assimilate such norms of Dhar­mashastras to create “Hindu Law” but the principles selectively codified in colonial jurisprudence and statutes, transformed Brahmanical textual traditions into enforceable legal standards. But this juridification introduced an unintended ambivalence. On the one hand, it consolidated some structures of endogamy or patrimonial inheritance and, on the other hand, made possible certain space for contestation. Instead, pursuing cases in court and challenging bureaucratic rulings or attempting legal reform created new sites for subordinated groups to express grievance. Power was less visibly violent, but more extensively inscribed in institutional procedure. Foucauldian discipline supplanted sovereign terror, at the same time as older types of social coercion remained a reality.

Meanwhile, colonial political economy transformed the economic basis of caste. Monetisation, commercialisation of agriculture and a new exposure to labour mobility disrupted hereditary occupations to an extent. Emigration to plantations, railways or cities created scenarios in which ritual oversight was diluted and anonymity expanded. These spaces didn’t eliminate caste, but they broke the hermetic unity of the premodern set. Hierarchy had to be re-made in unfamiliar landscapes, creating new solidarities along with new exclusions. The obscene, once exiled from the village borders, began to seep back in through developing public forms, often in submerged or indirect ways.

Gramscian hegemony likewise underwent mutation. The karmic “common sense” which previously helped to naturalize hierarchy faced rival ideological formations: missionary critiques, liberal ideas of equality, print-mediated reform movements and pre-modern anti-caste intellectual traditions. Cosmology alone could no longer determine consent, it had to be negotiated in the languages of rights, representation and progress. But hegemony did not disappear; it was transformed. Domination groups re-articulated caste privilege through discourses of tradition, community autonomy or social order that translated ritual authority into cultural capital in the colonial public- sphere. What emerged was not rupture but re-arrangement: An older hierarchy learned to speak new idioms.

More importantly, the colonial moment created conditions for a systematic anti-caste politics. Access to education, print circulation and associational life facilitated figures like Jotirao Phule and later B.R. Ambedkar to unveil the hidden underpinning of social order. Their criticisms made visible that which had been structurally hidden for so long, the historical making of caste inequality. In Foucauldian terms, new counter-discourses challenged the regime of truth supporting hierarchy; in Gramscian terms, subaltern groups revolted for moral-intellectual hegemony. The very scene itself became a battleground not one that was divinely settled.

Colonial modernity then should be neither mistaken for sheer continuity nor for simple break. It eclipsed spectacle with surveillance, ritual fixity with bureaucratic classification and karmic inevitability with ideological contest. But that dialectic of inside-outside, the mobile frontier between scene and obscene endured in the new guise. Caste lived by infiltrating modern institutions, even as the very same institutions nurtured the forces that would eventually question its legitimacy. The oneness of the pre-modern theatre was broken, and what followed was a much more complex and unstable stage for caste drama to develop.

III. The Postcolonial Modern: Schizophrenia, Eruptions and the Hegemony of Denial

The founding of the Indian republic was a script most thrillingly re-written of the scene/obscene dialectic. Inspired by liberal democracy and led by a modernising elite, this new nation-state wanted to make a complete break with the past. And India’s public, legal “scene” was dramatically re-scripted. The framework of the Constitution, authored under B.R. Ambedkar, a Dalit jurist deeply critical of caste, effectively banished it as obscene to the political-juridical order. Articles 15, 17 (which destroyed untouchability) and the guarantee of equality before the law erected a new platform that transformed individuals into citizen, rather than caste subject. The reservation policies (Articles 15(4), 16(4)) became a temporary, exceptional instrument in this stage, as corrective historical justice until achieving the final goal of “Join Casteless India”. The rhetoric of secular nationalism and, later, that of neoliberal meritocracy helped create a public sphere in which caste was meant to be sloughed off in the interests of national or consumer identity.

Caste, however, did not vanish. It had strategically migrated from the public-sacral scene to the privatised, affective, and social “obscene.” This obscene is no negative empty but a powerfully busy shadow stage. Endogamy would still be the strongest fortress. As sociologist G. Shah (2002) and others have shown, the “c­onjugable/u­nc­onjugable” binary flourishes in the private domain of family alliances, matrimonial ads, and community networks concealed from the law’s scrutiny. Purity/pollution practices can draw back into the private and daily life, who in principle may enter the kitchen, share a water glass, sit as an equal at a meal. These are not officially recorded, but they are vital to social reproduction. In contemporary institutions, the corporate office, the university, elite social clubs, caste operates as though it’s based on race and class, if by its own ecosystem of social capital and unspoken biases. The Dalit expert may be officially welcome on the corporate stage, but exclusion thrives in the obscene of informal circuits and cultural codes (such as hearing a last name). Anand Teltumbde (2010) calls this the “persistence of caste” in new, “camouflaged” versions in hitherto seemingly-casteless modern sites. Lynchings, social humiliations and caste-based rapes are not vestiges of a pre-modern past. They are modern obscene eruptions, as scholars such as Kalpana Kannabiran contend. They are frequently sparked, as others have also noted, by a perception of Dalits “overstepping” their bounds, owning land, riding horseback, sporting a moustache or falling in love across castes. Recorded on cell phones and disseminated through the social media, this violence is at once secret in its execution and hyper-visible in its sharing, revealing the brutal truth that the official scene seeks to deny.

The dominant casts in modern India have had a project: to naturalise the split. The new “common sense” is an aggressive discourse of the successful erasure of caste: “Caste doesn’t matter anymore,” “We are all casteless now,” “Only the backward castes talk about caste.” To talk about pervasive caste discrimination is characterised as “playing the caste card”, an obscene game of etching a primitive poison into the modern body politic. This is the hegemony that allows dominant caste persons to populate public spaces as generalised liberal individuals, free from caste bias while their social and intimate worlds are structured through caste power. It vulgarises the systemic character of caste to analysis, when it is reduced into ‘incidents’ alone or individual prejudices.

Case 1: The Khairlanji Massacre (2006): At Khairlanji town of Maharashtra wherein a Dalit family- the Bhotmanges—was lynched and women were sexually violated before they were murdered. The flash point was their testimony in a police case and the perceived social disobedience of owning property and being educated. Khairlanji is not a remnant of the archaic: it is a contemporary obscene explosion. The violence was not a spectacle of sovereign power but a secret, community-approved atrocity, later brought to light through the media and activism. It was a bid to violently re-assert a weakening local hegemony. By using the tools of modernity (courts, education, land titles), the Bhotmanges broke the “common sense” of Dalit acceptance by demanding subordination. The massacre was a demonstration to force a restoration of that “common sense.” The State’s initial reticence in using the PoA Act[1] was very much present. An alternate dialectic reveals: the progressive law (integral to constitutional scene) was subverted by the police, who were seeing it as a local arm of an obscene social order. The massive Dalit protests that followed were a counter-hegemonic gesture, dragging the obscene out of the closet and into the national eye-scape, compelling the official scene to abandon its hollow bromides and reckon with the violence it had rendered invisible.

Case 2: Corporate India and Duality of the Sabhya-Gavva: In the glass-and-steel offices of Bangalore or Gurgaon, it’s a different story. The office is a place of casteless modernity, it is run by HR (human resource) manuals and meritocratic ideology and professional dress codes. Here, caste is officially obscene; to mention it is a breach of professional etiquette. But it flourishes in the obscene of social capital (Teltumbde, 2010): weekend resorts gupshup, references and mentor chains; and crucially, ‘off-siting’ matrimonial alliances. Attempts to bring the Dalit professional into the elite corporate fold abound but they are not part of these obscene networks driving genuine career mobility and cultural identity. The hegemonic “common sense” is strong: “We don’t see caste here.” Such is the hegemony of caste, the many-layered monopoly by which privilege functions when you are a dominant caste, that it can reproduce itself updated to the gilled hilt with practised ease like no other marauding bandit – and all Dalit assertion of identity or complaint about bias can be counterpoised not as an obscenity but even better – since there’s always a reason why an obscenity cannot be effective enough in its monstrosity: casted as something that comes from ob-scoot-ated couches. This is the crowning achievement of modern caste schizophrenia: an absolute disconnection between the formal scene of liberal equality and the informal obscene of caste-reinforcing sociability.

Independence and the acceptance of a new constitution did not so much lead to the death of caste as to a transformation in the means adopted by it. If colonial modernity banished ritual spectacle in favour of bureaucratic classification, the postcolonial state ushered in a new grammar of visibility mediated by democracy, rights and representation. Caste was no longer publicly exalted in the form of sacred hierarchy; it now existed in the juridical idiom of egalitarianism and administrative calculus of reservations. The stage went from the village square and census archive to the courtroom, legislature, and electoral arena. But this transformation did not erase the old boundary of scene and obscene, it transformed it.

The explicit abjuration of untouchability and fundamental rights in the Constitution was a symbolic break with Brahmanical social ontology. In other Foucauldian terms, a new regime of truth was articulated: caste discrimination became something that it is illegal to speak about, but something that persists. That created a paradox of democratic visibility. Dalit presence in educational institutions, government bureaucracy, Parliament indicated an entry into the national scene, but leaves a lot of mediation through categories of injury, backwardness and compensatory justice. The reservation system, which is and was both re-distributive and emancipatory of caste identity, necessitated –for its operation– ongoing administrative naming of caste identity. By this, the very mechanism proposed to erode hierarchy itself re-inscribed caste within state knowledge. Visibility (to use the title of a good read) became two-edged: recognition and regulation.

This ambivalence is indicative of the larger movement from sovereign or disciplinary power toward what Foucault named bio-political administration. The post-colonial state manages its populations through welfare, quotas, development programmes and statistical surveillance. Caste in these instances is neither simply ritual nor only juridical, but becomes a demographic for techniques of governance. The obscene is no longer the occult labour that sustains ritual purity, but the residue of structural degradation that survives beneath the language of formal equality. Day-to-day violence—social boycott, atrocities, denial of access to housing or marriage networks—is frequented in a domain beyond the spectacular optics of national democracy, where it appears as exception rather than rule. What cannot be incorporated into this story of progress is relegated to the fringe of visibility.

Hegemony, as in Gramsci, thereby assumes a new form. The national promise of unity, development and democratic citizenship generates a strong ‘common sense’ that situates caste as a left-over social problem being slowly dissolved by the process of modernisation. This story line allows for some reform but overcomes more radical change. Dominant castes adjust by converting historical privilege into educational capital, bureaucratic power and management of local political establishments. Hegemony now moves away from ritual superiority to meritocratic language; inequality is no longer described using karma, but as the result of competition, culture, or efficiency. You win consent not so much by theology as by the aspirational rhetoric of the nation-state.

But the post-colonial picture is also one of an un-anticipated countervailing assertion. Dalit protests, Ambedkarite politics, literary publics and mass mobilizations turn humiliation into a collective critique. Public conversion ceremonies, acts of remembrance and symbolic appropriations of public space such as university campuses or spaces of atrocity re-perform the terrain from which Dalits were once confined. In Foucaldian parlance, subjugated knowledge systems explode into discourse questioning the neutrality of law and development. In Gramscian terms, these struggles are driven not only to inclusion but to moral-intellectual leadership capable of redefining the very order. Democracy doubles as instrument of regulation and terrain of insurgency.

This visibility is also complicated by both media and modern popular culture. Caste now whirls through television debates, digital activism, electoral rhetoric and bureaucratic documentation. The scene widens to a national and ever more virtual canvas. But growth is not the same as change. This is the realm of spectacular, and sometimes scripted, moments of outrage which can be simultaneous with banal indifference, giving rise to what could be termed a politics of intermittent visibility- caste appears dramatically in crisis and disappears back into normalcy. The obscene endures right in this several back and forth.

The postcolonial condition, then, is to be understood as a dynamic antagonism [rather than resolution]. Inherited hierarchy is contested by constitutional morality, but is also constantly re-articulated through social practice. Caste becomes subject to critique under democratic inclusion, even as administrative governance secures its categories. Power works less by oppressive and direct prohibition than by selective recognition; hegemony less by naturalised order than by promised development. It is not the distinction between scene and obscene that disappears, but rather becomes mobile, contested and historically contingent.

On this slippery ground, caste endures not as immobile tradition but as malleable entity materialised in modern institutions. Its strength is its adaptability; its weakness, the very visibility that democracy requires. The postcolonial stage then sets the stage for the contemporary moment, where neoliberal recalibration, digital moderation and new identity politics will once again realign what is visible, sayable and contestable in caste’s name.

IV. The Contemporary Neoliberal-Digital Scene: Circulation, Concealment, and Algorithmic Power

The late modern and early postmodern era represents another re-organization of caste’s scene of action, one related to neoliberal financialization, ever-faster urban transformation and digital communication. If the postcolonial constitutional order made caste visible in the languages of rights and welfare, neoliberal modernity deflects attention to markets, mobility, and privatised aspiration. Power increasingly functions by means of circulation rather than repression: capitalist, informational or affective flows transform social existence. In this terrain, caste does not vanish; it mutates, finding solace in infrastructures that seemingly are formal and neutral. The scene becomes diffuse, meshed and not entirely transparent.

Urban anonymity at first appeared to hold the promise of eroding inherited hierarchy. This was a society of skill, and with the migration to metropolitan labour markets, service economies now expanding, and meritocratic competition as the order of the business day it was implied a world governed by skill rather than by birth. But a closer look shows that caste does indeed change in response to these conditions through more subtle forms of recognition and exclusion. The segregation of housing in both the formal and informal real-estate markets, matrimonial advertisements coded by surnames and community markers, professional networks organized around kinship: All are reminders of how caste survives beneath the surface equality of contract. Free choice is, quite often, the cover for inherited social capital. In the Foucauldian sense, discipline becomes internalized as self-improvement: people structure their education, language and behaviour to mimic upper-caste cultural models. Power functions through aspiration.

This paradox of visibility and obscurity is only magnified by digital media. Social media, internet archives and digital journalism created, and continues to create, new Dalit self-presentation, memory-making and political mobilization. Stories of discrimination spread quickly and turn localised instances of pain into national or global conversations. Hashtag activism, digital memorialisation and virtual community building generate new counter-publics that challenge hegemonic narratives of caste vanishing. Subaltern knowledges gain a technological magnification, attempting to recall Foucaultian perceptions of the growth of discourse as a place for resistance.

Yet it is precisely these digital infrastructures that produce new forms of obscuration. Algorithmic sorting, datagov and platform economies all function through categories that look caste-blind even though they frequently reproduce historical inequality. Bandwidth access, linguistic capital, digital literacy, and social networks are variously unevenly distributed such that who can speak and what differences ultimately get heard is formed accordingly. Online anonymity can obscure caste identity, but it also opens the doors to a revival of abuse, harassment and symbolic violence stripped from responsibility. And so once more the obscene moves: not invisible work outside the ritual space, nor systematic humiliation under constitutional equality, but coded replication of hierarchy within seemingly neutral technological systems.

Neoliberal political economy also recasts Gramscian hegemony. Developmental nationalism is displaced by entrepreneurial individualism, with success recast in terms of personal realization rather than collective redistribution. This is an ideological shift that pulls the rug from under solidarity-based politics, while eclipsing structural constraint. Dominant caste privilege is reformulated as excellence, professionalism or global-competitiveness. Today, it is not through moral doctrine (as ideology) that hegemony functions but through desire: the desire for upward mobility within market society. Consent is obtained by promising the irrelevance of caste when in fact, material divisions remain.

Simultaneously, counter-hegemonic energies take on new shapes. Dalit entrepreneurship, trans-national mobilization, inter-sectional alliances, and cultural production in literature, film, and digital art re-invent dignity beyond the abjection of victimhood or what Geisser calls state-replaced recognition. Memory turns into political technology: archives of atrocity, commemoration of historical resistance, re-imagining Ambedkarite thought travel across geographies to confront neoliberal amnesia. These operations are not content with coming in from the outside: they want to redraw the lines of its deck, show us the hidden continuities between ritualized past and digital present.

The result is that the present period is one not of stability but rather of heightened contradiction. Caste is there and it is not; submerged in words while floating above them, crushed and dispersed in the personal but ominous in its structural totality, sundered across experience but knit tightly through data. The Foucauldian analysis shows that there is a move towards power as dispersed and infrastructural – algorithmic, not spectacular – while the Gramscian emphasises a hegemonic order built on aspiration, consumption and selective memory. The line between scene and obscene is constantly reconfigured by media circulation and political contestation.

In this neoliberal-digital formation, caste continues because it is able to occupy invisibility and exploit visibility: become visible when mobilised, disappear when asked. Its fate will rest on whether emerging counter-publics are able to change technological exposure into structure-changing possibilities, converting sporadic oppositional outcry’s to new moral-intellectual leadership. The drama of caste, far from being over, therefore moves on to a stage where power itself is more and more ethereal, and the fight to make inequality observable becomes the primary political act.

Anand Teltumbde’s analysis of caste’s “camouflaged” persistence provides a powerful lens for understanding the modern obscene. As he argues, “caste today is not what it appears to be. It has shed its religious garb and put on the secular attire of modernity” (Teltumbde 2010, 23). This insight resonates deeply with the Foucauldian scene/obscene dialectic: caste thrives precisely because it has migrated from the visible ritual scene to the hidden networks of social capital, professional networking, and matrimonial alliance. The corporate office that publicly celebrates meritocracy while privately excluding Dalits from informal mentorship networks exemplifies this schizophrenic condition. Yet Teltumbde’s Marxist commitments also remind us that this is not merely a matter of discourse or visibility: caste’s persistence is ultimately rooted in material control over land, capital, and labour. The scene/obscene dialectic, therefore, must be understood not as an alternative to materialist analysis but as a framework that reveals how power organises the visibility and invisibility of material exploitation itself.

V. Dalit Politics: Shattering the Proscenium Arch

It is possible to see the history of anti-caste resistance, from Jyotirao Phule’s radical philosophy through Ambedkarian revolutionary constitutionalism to today’s post-bahujan (radical) politics, as a prolonged struggle against this forced dialectic.

It may be noted that Dr. Ambedkar’s public burning of Manusmriti in 1927 was an archetypal act of shattering the sacred instrumentality constitutive of the old stage in scene making. In drafting the Constitution, he was seeking to reconstruct a new, fair scene from below. Dalit political and cultural assertion is, at bottom, a way of calling the obscene into the eye of the scene. The Bahujan political parties (such as the BSP party) emerging to prominence have put caste identity, previously considered a shame marker, on the national stage of the electoral politics for a source of pride and community mobilization. The taking of public space, a public scene which performs the exhibitionism of “dalitness” could be interpreted by authorities as a sign that dalits are trying to create some kind of counter-­public space. The “cattle meet festival” is striking in this regard, by publicly eating the meat deemed most polluting within Brahminical norms, activists force the unspeakable into public space, undermining the grammar of purity/pollution itself.

Dalit Studies, as it is being launched by veteran scholars such as Gopal Guru and others, does this important labour of theorising from the site of the obscene. It confronts the hegemonic “common sense” with a systematic recording and analysis of the lived experience of caste, not leaving it as anecdotal or passé.

VI. Synthesis and Conclusion: The Dialectic’s Enduring Grip and Its Cracks

The Foucauldian Gramscian analysis discovers that caste-modernity is not to be located in its end, but rather its strategic disintegration. Power circulates by keeping intact the gap between disavowing public scene and luminous private torque. The state’s role turns Janus-faced: progressive legislation that has made lives more livable and breathable in some ways, but that has also all too frequently, through institutional bias and political compromise, proved itself powerless to prevent obscene eruptions of violence.

This arrangement suits liberal democracy down to the ground, for it provides protection for the “private” sphere as an area beyond state interference and lets caste flourish there behind a screen of personal choice and cultural preference. It is also conducive to global capitalism, which can use caste-based social networks to control labour even as it floats a veneer of meritocratic neutrality.

But the dialectic is also an inherently unstable one. Every Khairlanji that turns into an issue of national interest, every corporate diversity report that whispers exclusion, every inter-caste marriage that invites ridicule is also a moment of rupture. In its varied avatars, it is Dalit politics that remains the sustained force challenging this division. The last struggle, as Ambedkar hoped, is not one for entry into the existing scene so much as to destroy the double stage itself, to establish a social order where the caste-based history and present are not some dirty secrets but an openly avowed basis for a common sense that is genuinely universalist and egalitarian. So long as that dialectic exists, caste in its morphed and schizophrenic form continues to survive.

(Note-An earlier version of this paper has appeared on SSRN E-Library, Elsevier.)

(The author teaches history at Shivaji College, University of Delhi. He can be reached at skandpriya@shivaji.du.ac.in)

References

Cohn, Bernard S. Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge. Princeton University Press, 1996.

Dirks, Nicholas B. Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton University Press, 2001.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Vintage, 1977.

Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. International Publishers, 1971.

Guru, Gopal. Humiliation: Claims and Context. Oxford University Press, 2009.

Guru, Gopal, and Sundar Sarukkai. The Cracked Mirror: An Indian Debate on Experience and Theory. Oxford University Press, 2012.

Pandian, M.S.S. Brahmin & Non-Brahmin: Genealogies of the Tamil Political Present. Permanent Black, 2007.

Rao, Anupama. The Caste Question: Dalits and the Politics of Modern India. University of California Press, 2009.

Rege, Sharmila. Writing Caste/Writing Gender: Narrating Dalit Women’s Testimonios. Zubaan, 2006.

Risley, H.H. (Sir). Census of India, 1901. Vol. I, India. Part I, Report. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India, 1903.

Teltumbde, Anand. The Persistence of Caste: The Khairlanji Murders and India’s Hidden Apartheid. Zed Books, 2010.

The Smritichandrika of Devanna Bhatta (Trans. J.R. Gharpure). 1948.

South Indian Inscriptions (Vol. III, Chola Inscriptions). Archaeological Survey of India.

[1] Prevention of Atrocities Act (1989)

Related:

The Anatomy of Humiliation: Defining caste violence in the Constitutional era

It is religion-based politics that refuses to root out caste: Baba Adhav in conversation with Teesta Setalvad

Caste and community creations of human beings, God is always neutral: Madras HC

The post The Double Stage: Caste’s Schizophrenic Modernity between Spectacle and Shadow appeared first on SabrangIndia.

On January 3, 1831, 176 years ago Savitribai Phule, arguably India’s first woman teacher and forgotten liberator was born. With the first school for girls from different castes that she set up in Bhidewada, Pune (the seat of Brahmanism) Krantijyoti Savitribai as she is reverentially known, by the Indian Bahujan movement, blazed a revolutionary trial. There have been consistent demands to observe January 3 as Teachers Day. Without her, Indian women would not have had the benefits of education.

To mark the memory of this remarkable woman we bring to you her letters to life partner Jyotiba. Jyotiba and Savitribai were Comrades in Arms in their struggle against the emancipation of India’s disenfranchised people.

Translated from the Original Marathi with an introduction Sunil Sardar Reproduced here are the English translation of three important Letters – (originally in Marathi and published in MG Mali’s edition of her collected works, Savitribai Phule Samagra Wangmaya) – that Savitribai wrote to her husband Jyotiba in a span of 20 years.

The letters are significant as they write of the wider concerns that drove this couple, the emancipation of the most deprived segments of society and the struggle to attain for them, full human dignity and freedom.

This vision for a new and liberated society – free from ignorance, bigotry, deprivation, and hunger – was the thread that bonded the couple, arching from the private to the personal.

Theirs was a relationship of deep and shared concerns, each providing strength to the other. When large sections of 19^th century Maharashtrian society was ranged against Phule’s reconstructive radicalism, it was the unfailing and shared vision and dedication of his life partner that needs have been emotionally sustaining.  In our tribute to this couple and the tradition of radical questioning that they harboured, we bring to our readers these letters.

1856. The first letter, written in 1856, speaks about the core issue: education and its transformative possibilities in a society where learning, had for centuries been the monopoly of the Brahmins; who, in turn, used this exclusive privilege to enclave, demoralize and oppress. Away at her parental home to recuperate from an illness, Savitri describes in the letter a conversation with her brother, who is uncomfortable with the couple’s radicalism.

October 1856
The Embodiment of Truth, My Lord Jyotiba,
Savitri salutes you!

After so many vicissitudes, now it seems my health has been fully restored. My brother worked so hard and nursed me so well through my sickness. His service and devotion shows how loving he really is! I will come to Pune as soon as I get perfectly well. Please do not worry about me. I know my absence causes Fatima so much trouble but I am sure she will understand and won’t grumble.

As we were talking one day, my brother said, “You and your husband have rightly been excommunicated because both of you serve the untouchables (Mahars and Mangs). The untouchables are fallen people and by helping them you are bringing a bad name to our family. That is why, I tell you to behave according to the customs of our caste and obey the dictates of the Brahmans.” Mother was so disturbed by this brash talk of my brother.

Though my brother is a good soul he is extremely narrow-minded and so he did not hesitate to bitterly criticize and reproach us. My mother did not reprimand him but tried instead to bring him to his senses, “God has given you a beautiful tongue but it is no good to misuse it so!” I defended our social work and tried to dispel his misgivings. I told him, “Brother, your mind is narrow, and the Brahmans’ teaching has made it worse. Animals like goats and cows are not untouchable for you, you lovingly touch them. You catch poisonous snakes on the day of the snake-festival and feed them milk. But you consider Mahars and Mangs, who are as human as you and I, untouchables. Can you give me any reason for this? When the Brahmans perform their religious duties in their holy clothes, they consider you also impure and untouchable, they are afraid that your touch will pollute them. They don’t treat you differently than the Mahars.” When my brother heard this, he turned red in the face, but then he asked me, “Why do you teach those Mahars and Mangs? People abuse you because you teach the untouchables. I cannot bear it when people abuse and create trouble for you for doing that. I cannot tolerate such insults.” I told him what the (teaching of) English had been doing for the people. I said, “The lack of learning is nothing but gross bestiality. It is through the acquisition of knowledge that (he) loses his lower status and achieves the higher one. My husband is a god-like man. He is beyond comparison in this world, nobody can equal him. He thinks the Untouchables must learn and attain freedom. He confronts the Brahmans and fights with them to ensure Teaching and Learning for the Untouchables because he believes that they are human beings like other and they should live as dignified humans. For this they must be educated. I also teach them for the same reason. What is wrong with that? Yes, we both teach girls, women, Mangs and Mahars. The Brahmans are upset because they believe this will create problems for them. That is why they oppose us and chant the mantra that it is against our religion. They revile and castigate us and poison the minds of even good people like you.

“You surely remember that the British Government had organised a function to honour my husband for his great work. His felicitation caused these vile people much heartburn. Let me tell you that my husband does not merely invoke God’s name and participate in pilgrimages like you. He is actually doing God’s own work. And I assist him in that. I enjoy doing this work. I get immeasurable joy by doing such service. Moreover, it also shows the heights and horizons to which a human being can reach out.”

Mother and brother were listening to me intently. My brother finally came around, repented for what he had said and asked for forgiveness. Mother said, “Savitri, your tongue must be speaking God’s own words. We are blessed by your words of wisdom.” Such appreciation from my mother and brother gladdened my heart. From this you can imagine that there are many idiots here, as in Pune, who poison people’s minds and spread canards against us. But why should we fear them and leave this noble cause that we have undertaken? It would be better to engage with the work instead. We shall overcome and success will be ours in the future. The future belongs to us.

What more could I write?

With humble regards,

Yours,

Savitri

The Poetess in Savitribai

The year 1854 was important as Savitribai published her collection of poems, called Kabya Phule (Poetry’s Blossoms).
Bavan Kashi Subodh Ratnakar (The Ocean of Pure Gems), another collection of what has come to be highly regarded in the world of Marathi poetry was published in 1891. (The Phules had developed a devastating critique of the Brahman interpretation of Marathi history in the ancient and medieval periods. He portrayed the Peshwa rulers, later overthrown by the British, as decadent and oppressive, and Savitribai reiterates those themes in her biography.)
Apart from these two collections, four of Jyotiba’s speeches on Indian History were edited for publication by Savitribai. A few of her own speeches were also published in 1892. Savitribai’s correspondence is also remarkable because they give us an insight into her own life and into the life and lived experiences of women of the time.

1868. The Second letter is about a great social taboo – a love affair between a Brahman boy and an Untouchable girl; the cruel behavior of the ‘enraged’ villagers and how Savitribai stepped in. This intervention saves the lives of the lovers and she sends them away to the safety and caring support of her husband, Jyotiba. With the malevolent reality of honour killings in the India of 2016 and the hate-driven propaganda around ‘love jehad’ this letter is ever so relevant today.

29 August 1868
Naigaon, Peta Khandala
Satara
The Embodiment of Truth, My Lord Jotiba,
Savitri salutes you!
I received your letter. We are fine here. I will come by the fifth of next month. Do not worry on this count. Meanwhile, a strange thing happened here. The story goes like this. One Ganesh, a Brahman, would go around villages, performing religious rites and telling people their fortunes. This was his bread and butter. Ganesh and a teenage girl named Sharja who is from the Mahar (untouchable) community fell in love. She was six months pregnant when people came to know about this affair. The enraged people caught them, and paraded them through the village, threatening to bump them off.

I came to know about their murderous plan. I rushed to the spot and scared them away, pointing out the grave consequences of killing the lovers under the British law. They changed their mind after listening to me.

Sadubhau angrily said that the wily Brahman boy and the untouchable girl should leave the village. Both the victims agreed to this. My intervention saved the couple who gratefully fell at my feet and started crying. Somehow I consoled and pacified them. Now I am sending both of them to you. What else to write?
Yours
Savitri

1877. The last letter, written in 1877, is a heart-rending account of a famine that devastated western Maharashtra. People and animals were dying. Savitri and other Satyashodhak volunteers were doing their best to help. The letter brings out an intrepid Savitri leading a team of dedicated Satyashodhaks striving to overcome a further exacerbation of the tragedy by moneylenders’ trying to benefit.  She meets the local District administration. The letter ends on a poignant note where Savitribai reiterates her total commitment to her the humanitarian work pioneered by the Phules.

20 April, 1877
Otur, Junner
The Embodiment of Truth, My Lord Jyotiba,
Savitri salutes you!
The year 1876 has gone, but the famine has not – it stays in most horrendous forms here. The people are dying. The animals are dying, falling on the ground. There is severe scarcity of food. No fodder for animals. The people are forced to leave their villages. Some are selling their children, their young girls, and leaving the villages. Rivers, brooks and tanks have completely dried up – no water to drink. Trees are dying – no leaves on trees. Barren land is cracked everywhere. The sun is scorching – blistering. The people crying for food and water are falling on the ground to die. Some are eating poisonous fruits, and drinking their own urine to quench their thirst. They cry for food and drink, and then they die.

Our Satyashodhak volunteers have formed committees to provide food and other life-saving material to the people in need. They have formed relief squads.
Brother Kondaj and his wife Umabai are taking good care of me. Otur’s Shastri, Ganapati Sakharan, Dumbare Patil, and others are planning to visit you. It would be better if you come from Satara to Otur and then go to Ahmednagar.

You may remember R.B. Krishnaji Pant and Laxman Shastri. They travelled with me to the affected area and gave some monetary help to the victims.

The moneylenders are viciously exploiting the situation. Bad things are taking place as a result of this famine. Riots are breaking out. The Collector heard of this and came to ease the situation. He deployed the white police officers, and tried to bring the situation under control. Fifty Satyasholdhaks were rounded up. The Collector invited me for a talk. I asked the Collector why the good volunteers had been framed with false charges and arrested without any rhyme or reason. I asked him to release them immediately. The Collector was quite decent and unbiased. He shouted at the white soldiers, “Do the Patil farmers rob? Set them free.” The Collector was moved by the people’s plights. He immediately sent four bullock cartloads of (jowar) food.

You have started the benevolent and welfare work for the poor and the needy. I also want to carry my share of the responsibility. I assure you I will always help you. I wish the godly work will be helped by more people.

I do not want to write more.
Yours,
Savitri

(These letters have been excerpted with grateful thanks from A Forgotten Liberator, The Life and Struggle of Savitrabai Phule, Edited by Braj Ranjan Mani, Pamela Sardar)

Bibliography:

Krantijyoti : Revolutionary flame
Brahmans: Priestly “upper” caste with a powerful hold on all fairs of society and state including access to education, resources and mobility (spelt interchangeably as Brahmins)
Mahars:The Mahar is an Indian Caste, found largely in the state of Maharashtra, where they compromise 10% of the population, and neighboring areas. Most of the Mahar community followed social reformer B. R. Ambedkar in converting to Buddhism in the middle of the 20th century.
Mangs: The Mang (or Matang -Minimadig in Gujarat and Rajasthan) community is an Indian caste historically associated with low-status or ritually impure professions such as village musicians, cattle castraters, leather curers, midwives, hangmen, undertakers. Today they are listed as a Scheduled Castes a term which has replaced the former the derogatory ‘Untouchable’
Satyashodhak Samaj:  A society established by Jyotirao Phule on September 24, 1873. This was started as a group whose main aim was to liberate the shudra and untouchable castes from exploitation and oppression
Shudra: The fourth caste under the rigid caste Hindu system; these were further made more rigid in the Manu Smruti
Ati Shudra: Most of the groups listed under this category come under the untouchables who were used for the most venal tasks in caste ridden Hindu society but not treated as part of the caste system.
Jowar: The Indian name for sorghum

How the Education for girls was pioneered

The Phule couple decided to start schools for girls, especially from the shudra and atishudra castes but also including others so that social cohesion of sorts could be attempted in the classroom. Bhidewada in Pune was the chosen site, a bank stands there today. There is a movement among Bahujans to reclaim this historic building. When the Phules faced stiff resistance and a boycott, a Pune-based businessman Usman Shaikh gave them shelter. Fatima Shaikh Usman’s sister was the first teacher colleague of Savitribai and the two trained teachers who ran the school. The school started with nine girl students in 1848.

Sadashiv Govande contributed books from Ahmednagar. It functioned for about six months and then had to be closed down. Another building was found and the school reopened a few months later. The young couple faced severe opposition from almost all sections. Savitribai was subject to intense harassment everyday as she walked to school. Stones, mud and dirt were flung at her as she passed. She was often abused by groups of men with orthodox beliefs who opposed the education for women. Filth including cow dung was flung on her. Phule gave her hope, love and encouragement. She went to school wearing an old sari, and carried an extra sari with her to change into after she reached the school. The sheer daring and doggedness of the couple and their comrades in arms broke the resistance. Finally, the pressure on her eased when she was compelled to slap one of her tormentors on the street!

Once the caste Hindu Brahmanical hierarchy who were the main opponents of female education realized that the Phule couple would not easily give in, they arm-twisted Jyotiba’s father. Intense pressure was brought by the Brahmins on Phule’s father, Govindrao, to convince him that his son was on the wrong track, that what he was doing was against the Dharma. Finally, things came to a head when Phule’s father told him to leave home in 1849. Savitri preferred to stay by her husband’s side, braving the opposition and difficulties, and encouraging Phule to continue their educational work.

However, their pioneering move had won some support. Necessities like books were supplied through well wishers; a bigger house, owned by a Muslim, was found for a second school which was started in 1851. Moro Vithal Walvekar and Deorao Thosar assisted the school. Major Candy, an educationalist of Pune, sent books. Jyotirao worked here without any salary and later Savitribai was put in charge. The school committee, in a report, noted, “The state of the school funds has compelled the committee to appoint teachers on small salaries, who soon give up when they find better appointment…Savitribai, the school headmistress, has nobly volunteered to devote herself to the improvement of female education without remuneration. We hope that as knowledge advances, the people of this country will be awakened to the advantages of female education and will cordially assist in all such plans calculated to improve the conditions of those girls.”

On November 16, 1852, the education department of the government organised a public felicitation of the Phule couple, where they were honoured with shawls.
On February 12, 1853, the school was publicly examined. The report of the event state: “The prejudice against teaching girls to read and write began to give way…the good conduct and honesty of the peons in conveying the girls to and from school and parental treatment and indulgent attention of the teachers made the girls love the schools and literally run to them with alacrity and joy.”

A Dalit student of Savitribai, Muktabai, wrote a remarkable essay which was published in the paper Dyanodaya, in the year 1855. In her essay, Muktabai poignantly describes the wretchedness of the so-called untouchables and severely criticizes the Brahmanical religion for degrading and dehumanizing her people.

The post Love-Letters like no other appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The resignation comes a day after the union government, on July 29, 2025, notified Gupta’s appointment as a judge of the Madhya Pradesh High Court for a two-year term. This appointment was made despite Sharma’s formal representations to the Supreme Court Collegium, the President of India, the Ministry of Law and Justice, and the Chief Justice of the MP High Court, opposing his elevation. Sharma had submitted that Gupta had subjected her to continued humiliation, discrimination, and casteist behaviour when he was her administrative superior.

A resignation letter that reads like an indictment

In her resignation, accessed and reported by The Print, Sharma declared she was resigning with the “ache of betrayal — not at the hands of a criminal or an accused, but at the hands of the very system I swore to serve.” She described being subjected to “unrelenting harassment, not merely of the body or the mind, but of my dignity, my voice, and my very existence as a woman judge who dared to speak up.”

Rejecting the notion that her resignation was an act of personal defeat, Sharma wrote, as reported by Hindustan Times, “I am resigning from judicial service, not because I failed the institution, but because the institution has failed me.” Her words were not just personal; they carried an institutional warning: “Let this letter haunt the files it enters. Let it whisper in the hallways where silence once reigned.”

Allegations ignored, harassment unchecked

Sharma’s allegations were not anonymous, nor unsupported. As The Print and Hindustan Times both confirm, she made detailed and documented complaints against Gupta—including incidents of public humiliation, caste-based insults, and interference in her professional assessments. She alleged that Gupta and his wife not only demeaned her, but also sought to control her social interactions, particularly objecting to her friendship with their daughter.

In her petition before the Supreme Court, filed earlier this year, Sharma accused Gupta of abusing his administrative position to downgrade her performance ratings and creating a hostile work environment during her tenure as a trainee judge. The harassment, she claimed, extended to personal insults and attempts to damage her reputation.

Yet, despite multiple representations, Sharma states there was no inquiry, no notice, no opportunity to be heard—a complete abandonment of even the most basic tenets of natural justice. “The same judiciary that sermonizes about transparency from the bench failed to even follow the basic tenets of natural justice within its own halls,” her letter reads, as per The Print.

A troubling elevation amid allegations

Notably, Gupta’s elevation had previously been blocked by the Supreme Court Collegium in 2023, headed by then CJI D.Y. Chandrachud, after it received Sharma’s and other complaints. The file was returned to the Madhya Pradesh High Court for further inquiry. However, after what appears to be a perfunctory probe, where Sharma was never even called to testify, according to The Print, Gupta was given a clean chit and his name re-sent for reconsideration in April 2025.

ThePrint also reported that Gupta faced multiple complaints from other judicial officers, including a Dalit judge who accused him of casteist harassment, and another senior judge who alleged intimidation and derogatory remarks about High Court judges. None of these complaints, Sharma notes in her resignation, were adequately investigated.

Supreme Court had earlier reinstated Sharma

In February 2025, Sharma won a significant legal victory when the Supreme Court set aside her 2023 dismissal, calling it “punitive, arbitrary and illegal.” A bench led by Justice B.V. Nagarathna noted that her appraisal had ignored critical factors, including a miscarriage and long COVID-related complications. The judgment emphasised institutional responsibility in supporting women judges, particularly during health crises or maternity.

Yet even after her reinstatement, Sharma said she continued to face subtle retaliation, including an “advisory” from the HC to mend her behaviour. Her attempts to convert her earlier complaint into a formal grievance were met with silence.

A system that rewards power, not truth

Throughout her letter, Sharma reiterates that her protest is not about revenge, but about accountability. “. Shri Rajesh Kumar Gupta who orchestrated my suffering was not questioned – was rewarded. Recommended. Elevated. Given a pedestal instead of a summons. Shri Rajesh Kumar Gupta the man I accused not lightly, not anonymously, but with documented facts and the raw courage only a wounded woman can Summon was not even asked to explain. No inquiry. No notice. No hearing. No accountability—is now titled Justice, a cruel joke upon the very word,” she wrote, as per ThePrint.

In a scathing indictment of the collegium system, she warned that rewarding impunity sends a chilling message to other whistleblowers within the judiciary. “In that silence, I saw the brutal truth of our times that integrity is optional, power is protection, and those who speak the truth are punished more severely than those who violate it,” she wrote. “The same institution that teaches equality before law handpicked power over truth.”

Senior Advocate Indira Jaising: A structural betrayal

Senior Advocate Indira Jaising, who represented Sharma in her SC challenge against dismissal, told ThePrint: that this is not the first time she was dealing with a case where a woman judge has been forced to resign. She added: “As she said, ‘the judiciary’s daughters’ have been let down by the judiciary itself. I agree. There is something very wrong with the process of appointing judges of the high court behind closed doors. Surprisingly, the judiciary and the government are on the same page”

Jaising argued that closed-door appointments without adequate scrutiny of complaints were symptomatic of institutional decay. She said, “We lost a very good judicial officer with an unblemished record of service. She won in the judicial side but lost on the administrative side.”

A call for institutional introspection

Sharma’s resignation is not merely a personal exit—it is a formal indictment of the judiciary’s failure to uphold its own principles. She closes her letter with piercing words:

“I leave now, with wounds that no reinstatement, no compensation, no apology will ever heal—but also with my truth intact. Let this letter haunt the files it enters. Let it whisper in the hallways where silence once reigned. Let it live longer than the reputations hastily protected, and the wrongs quietly buried. 

I sign off not as an officer of the court, but as a victim of its silence. 

Where were the rules then? Where was the revered transparency then? 

You refused to protect one of your own. 

You refused to uphold the principles you preach. 

You refused to be just where it mattered the most. 

And if this does not shake your conscience, then perhaps the rot runs deeper than we dare admit.

I leave this institution with no medals, no celebration, and no bitterness—only the bitter truth that the judiciary failed me. But worse—it failed itself. 

This letter of resignation is not closure. It is a statement of protest. Let it remain in your archives as a reminder that there once was a woman judge in Madhya Pradesh who gave her all to justice, and was broken by the system that preached it the loudest. 

And if even one judge, one registrar, one member of the Collegium reads this and feels unease then perhaps, my voice has done more justice than my robe ever could.”

Her act—bold, painful, and unflinchingly honest—now stands as a testament to how women in the judiciary are treated. It raises deeply troubling questions about the integrity of appointments, the erasure of women’s voices in power structures, and the danger of silencing dissent through procedural opacity.

Related:

Beed to Delhi: Lawyer beaten in Maharashtra, judge threatened in Delhi—what the path for justice means for women practioners in today’s India

When Courts Fail Survivors: How patriarchy shapes justice in sexual offence against women cases

Surviving Communal Wrath: Women who have defied the silence, demanded accountability from the state

‘We are considered servants, not humans’: Women of Jai Bhim Nagar reveal the violence of domestic work

The post Resignation in Protest: MP woman judge quits over elevation of senior she accused of harassment and discrimination appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Both cases have exposed the terrifying impunity with which caste- and tribe-based violence continues to unfold, and the utter failure of systems meant to protect vulnerable children. As outrage grows, questions are being raised not just about the perpetrators, but about a state structure that remains indifferent to the safety and dignity of its most marginalised.

10-year-old Adivasi girl stripped and burned

Even as outrage over the gang-rape case mounted, another incident emerged from a different part of Andhra Pradesh—this time allegedly involving a 10-year-old tribal girl from the Scheduled Tribe (ST) community. The child was falsely accused of stealing a mobile phone. In a disturbing act of mob violence and humiliation, she was allegedly stripped of her clothes and her body was burned with a hot stick, inflicting grievous injuries.

As per a report of NDTV, the child, Chenchamma, lived with her aunt, Sannari Manikyam, at the Scheduled Tribe Colony in Kuditepalem Kakarla Dibba of the district. Suspecting that Chenchamma stole a mobile phone from a nearby house, the neighbours allegedly burned her body with a hot iron rod and beat her. 

As per the report of the Indian Express, the police in Indukurupet Mandal in Nellore detained at least two people in connection with the alleged torture of the girl. Other neighbours heard the girl’s cries when she was allegedly being burnt with a hot iron rod on her cheeks. They rescued her and called the police before shifting her to a government hospital, where she was given treatment and discharged.

“The girl denied going to the neighbour’s house, let alone stealing a phone, and claimed innocence. We have registered an FIR and detained two people for questioning,’’ an officer from the Indukurupet police station said, as per the IE report.

Two years of silence: Minor Dalit girl raped for two years by 17 individuals

In a case that has exposed the horrific intersections of caste, gender, and institutional apathy, a 15-year-old Dalit girl from Sri Satya Sai district in Andhra Pradesh has been found eight months pregnant after allegedly being gang-raped by 17 individuals over a period of nearly two years. The abuse, police say, began when the girl was just 13 years old and continued in silence—unreported and unchecked—until earlier this month, when her mother finally approached the authorities.

Thirteen of the 17 accused have been arrested so far, including three minors. The main accused, who is believed to have initiated the cycle of abuse, remains absconding. All the adult accused have been remanded to judicial custody, while the minors are under the jurisdiction of the Juvenile Justice Board. A case has been registered under several stringent provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), and the Information Technology Act, 2000.

A cycle of exploitation and silence: According to the police investigation, the abuse began when the girl was studying in Class 8. After her father’s death three years ago, she and her mother—belonging to the Madiga (Scheduled Caste) community—had moved to a small village near the Karnataka border. The family, impoverished and socially marginalised, was struggling to survive.

As per the report of India Today, one day, after school, the girl and her SC classmate were reportedly photographed by a member of the local Boya community. The Boyas are a dominant and politically influential caste in the region. The accused used these images to blackmail the girl, threatening to release them on social media. Two men then sexually assaulted her. The incident was filmed and circulated among their acquaintances, leading to a pattern of repeated rape by at least 14 men over two years.

The remand report and survivor’s statement reveal that the blackmail, coercion, and threats never stopped. As per a report of the Indian Express, “It was her age, her caste, and her social vulnerability that made her easy prey,” said District Superintendent of Police V Ratna. “The exploitation was systematic and prolonged. This was not just one incident, it was organised abuse that continued for two years.”

The men who allegedly assaulted her are aged between 18 and 51. Most of them belong to the Boya community, while three others, including her classmate, are from the SC community and are being investigated for failing to report the abuse.

Arrests and charges: On June 9, police arrested six individuals:

• Achampalli Vardhan (21)
• Talari Murali (25)
• Badagorla Nandavardhan Raj alias Nanda (23)
• Arencheru Nagaraju alias Haryana Cheruvu Nagaraju (51)
• Boya Sanjeev (40)
• Budida Rajanna (49)

Seven others were arrested the following day, including minors. The main accused remains at large. Police say several of those arrested already have criminal records. A special investigation team has been formed under Dharmavaram subdivision to trace the absconding accused, as per The Week.

The case has been registered under sections related to rape, gang-rape, criminal intimidation, and the use of technology for exploitation. The police have also sought permission for a DNA test on the unborn child, which will be critical for the prosecution.

Systemic failure at every level

This case has laid bare deep institutional failings. Despite being a government school student, the girl dropped out of Class 10—a critical academic year—without her teachers raising any concern or notifying authorities. “It is unimaginable that a child disappears from school and nobody asks why,” said SP Ratna, as reported by IE. “Even after she became visibly pregnant, nobody in the village reported it.”

Local welfare structures, too, failed to intervene. The Grama Mahila Samrakshana Karyadarsi, a village-level cadre of women volunteers who serve as ‘Mahila Police’, did not conduct any welfare checks. Neither did Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) workers, who are supposed to monitor maternal and child health at the community level.

“We are looking into these failures. These systems are in place specifically to protect vulnerable children. Their inaction has consequences,” Ratna added, according to the IE report.

Caste, power and pressure to stay silent: According to local officials, who spoke with the IE, the caste dynamics in the village were crucial in enabling the silence. The survivor’s family belongs to the Madiga community, a Scheduled Caste group with minimal presence in the village. Of the 17 accused, 14 belong to the powerful Boya community. Police say that when the case began to unravel, Boya community leaders attempted to suppress it by pressuring the girl to marry her SC classmate—one of the minors now under investigation—to give the appearance of consent and close the matter.

“Despite the survivor being visibly pregnant, no one reported the crime. The silence of the village was not accidental—it was imposed through caste hierarchies and social fear,” said a senior official involved in the investigation as per the IE report.

Ongoing care and state protection: As per the report of Deccan Herald, the survivor is now under medical care at the Government General Hospital in Anantapur. Doctors have confirmed that abortion is not an option due to the advanced stage of pregnancy. The girl, who is anaemic and struggling with depression, is receiving counselling, nutritional support, and round-the-clock care.

She will not be sent back to the village after delivery. Instead, both mother and newborn will be shifted to a state-run women’s shelter. “We fear coercion. Even from jail, these men could pressure the family to withdraw the case,” the SP said, as per IE report.

The state has also moved to obtain court permission for DNA testing of the unborn child. Police say this will strengthen the case and help establish individual responsibility among the accused.

Political fallout: The case has triggered political controversy and public outrage. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu expressed shock over the incident, calling for swift investigation, speedy trial, and strict punishment for the accused. “Strong evidence must be collected to ensure that the guilty do not escape justice,” he said in a statement.

Opposition leader and former Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy of the YSR Congress Party, however, accused the TDP government of shielding perpetrators with political links. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Reddy wrote: “As an indicator of Govt’s insensitivity, the state has witnessed 188 rapes and 15 rape-murders in one year. Even recently, an Intermediate tribal student from Anantapur was found murdered and dumped in the woods after a brutal attack.”

He further questioned the TDP’s commitment to women’s safety, calling the situation “disgraceful” and “preposterous”.

Systemic negligence and caste impunity

The intersection of caste, poverty, and gender has made SC/ST girls disproportionately vulnerable to abuse. Both these cases reveal not just individual acts of brutality, but a pattern of systemic neglect, caste dominance, and institutional collapse. In the Dalit girl’s case, school teachers failed to follow up on her sudden dropout in Class 10. ASHA workers, Mahila Police volunteers, and child protection officials did not intervene despite visible red flags. In the tribal child’s case, the violence remained hidden until the neighbours raised an alarm.

The lack of early intervention, social stigma, and fear of dominant caste groups contributed to the silence in both cases. In the gang-rape case, Boya community leaders reportedly tried to pressure the survivor into marriage to close the matter. In the tribal girl’s case, no community elder stepped in to stop the torture or report the crime.

Related:

Rajasthan’s rape crisis: a string of horrific crimes challenges the state’s record on women’s safety

Encroachment or erasure? India’s demolition wave and the law

Mapping Hate: The Pahalgam Attack and its ripple effects

A Pattern of Impunity? This report details horrific crimes against Dalits in UP, Rajasthan, MP and beyond

The post Dalit and Tribal girls brutalised in Andhra Pradesh: Twin crimes lay bare caste violence and systemic collapse appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In Uttar Pradesh, a shocking incident in Bulandshahr saw eight teachers booked for brutally beating a Dalit Class 12 student over his haircut, while in Mainpuri, a Class 11 Dalit student was allegedly assaulted by a teacher for touching a water bottle, facing casteist slurs and physical harm. The state also witnessed the custodial death of a Dalit youth in Azamgarh, with his family alleging torture, and a Kasganj case where eight individuals were booked for the alleged murder of a Dalit girl following tensions related to her sister’s inter-caste relationship. Furthermore, in Basti, an SDM faces accusations of using casteist slurs and physically assaulting a Dalit woman seeking redress for a land dispute.

Tamil Nadu has also reported harrowing instances, including a Class 6 Dalit student brutally assaulted by a PT teacher, leaving him critically injured. In Thoothukudi, a 17-year-old Dalit student had his fingers chopped off in a caste-based attack while on his way to an exam, prompting NHRC intervention. A particularly shameful case in Coimbatore saw a Class 8 Dalit girl forced to sit outside during exams due to menstruation, leading to the principal’s suspension and a police complaint.

Madhya Pradesh witnessed blatant caste discrimination in Jabalpur, where Dalits were prevented from performing funeral rites on traditionally used land, and in Sehore, a Dalit family was violently stopped from building their house and subjected to a social and economic boycott.

In Bihar, an 80-year-old Dalit woman was reportedly gang-raped and brutally beaten in Gopalganj. Rajasthan, too, reported a deeply concerning incident where a police constable in Jaipur was arrested for allegedly raping a pregnant Dalit woman under the pretext of recording her statement. Additionally, Kota mourned the alleged suicide of a Dalit medical student who, according to fellow students, was deliberately failed and barred from exams.

These interconnected incidents across multiple states underscore the urgent need for stringent measures to combat caste-based discrimination and violence, ensure justice for victims, and safeguard the rights and dignity of Dalit individuals, especially students.

Uttar Pradesh

Dalit student beaten with sticks over haircut in Bulandshahr

In a shocking incident out of Bulandshahr, UP, eight teachers at a prominent school have been booked for allegedly assaulting a Class 12 Dalit student over his haircut, leaving the 17-year-old with severe injuries including head wounds requiring stitches and fractures in both hands.

The assault, involving sticks and casteist slurs, reportedly occurred on January 25, prompting the school to immediately suspend the accused teachers, who belong to another caste. The matter gained public attention on Friday after the victim’s parents, who initially made an “initial compromise under pressure,” were compelled to file a First Information Report (FIR) due to “repeated threats by the accused,” who allegedly even tried to prevent their son from taking his ongoing UP board exams that commenced in late February, reported the Times of India.

As per report, Circle officer Shobit Kumar stated that an FIR was registered on March 5th under various sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and the SC/ST Act against Sonu Kumar, Vipin Kumar, Deepak Kumar, Manoj Kumar (I), Manoj Kumar (II), Yogesh Kumar, Yogendra, and Prashant, assuring that “investigation is on and action will be taken accordingly” and that the student is “in stable condition and appearing in his exams.”

Those teachers were suspended and we’ll co-operate with the police in their investigation.” Recounting her son’s ordeal, the student’s mother, Maya Rani, explained that the teachers objected to his haircut in January, and “the next day (Jan 25) he was mercilessly beaten with sticks in school,” leaving him bedridden with trauma and injuries for over a month, hindering his exam preparations. She further alleged that they were initially pressured into a compromise, but “the accused teachers continued to threaten us and intimidate my son during his exams,” leaving them with no choice but to approach the police, demanding their arrest.

Class 12’s Dalit student brutally beaten by upper caste teacher for touching water bottle

In yet another harrowing instance of caste-based violence in Uttar Pradesh, a Dalit Class 11 student in Mainpuri was brutally assaulted by his teacher for merely touching a water bottle in the classroom.

The incident took place on March 29 at Narendra Pratap Singh Higher Secondary School in Haripur Catholic village. The 15-year-old, from Katheria village, was subjected to casteist abuse by biology teacher Mangal Singh Shakya, who locked him in a room and beat him so severely that two of his fingers were fractured. The teacher reportedly said, “How dare you touch the bottle? It’s untouchable now.”

#Casteism A Dalit youth of class 12th was brutally beaten by a caste Hindu teacher for touching a water bottle, his hand was broken, the incident is from Mainpuri, Uttar Pradesh.#DalitLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/PgtwwG7Z7A

— The Dalit Voice (@ambedkariteIND) April 3, 2025

The boy suffered injuries to his thigh, shoulder, and jaw. After being taken to the hospital by his family, the police allegedly refused to file a report, prompting them to approach the Superintendent of Police.

Dalit youth died in Azamgarh Police custody, family alleges torture

The custodial death of 20-year-old Dalit youth Sunny Kumar at the Tarwa police station in Azamgarh on Sunday night has ignited fierce protests from his family and local community. Demonstrations intensified on Monday, marked by the vandalism of a police vehicle and road blockades outside the station, prompting a significant police deployment to restore order.

Kumar, son of Harikant, was detained on Sunday following a sexual harassment complaint filed by a minor girl, alleging obscene gestures and vulgar songs played on his phone on March 28th. Tragically, late Sunday night, a police guard reportedly discovered Kumar’s body hanging by his pyjama drawstring in the police station bathroom. Despite Senior Superintendent of Police Hemraj Meena’s initial suggestion of suicide based on preliminary findings, Kumar’s family and local political figures, including Samajwadi Party MP Dharmendra Yadav, vehemently allege custodial torture and murder, as reported the Observer Post.

Dalit Youth Dies in Azamgarh Police Custody; Family Alleges Torture, Protests Erupt

Read:https://t.co/2KWqDe5G8u

— The Observer Post (@TheObserverPost) April 1, 2025

In response to the grave accusations, several police officers, including the station house officer, a sub-inspector, and a constable, have been suspended. District Magistrate Navneet Singh Chahal has also ordered a magisterial inquiry into the circumstances surrounding Kumar’s death. The post-mortem examination, conducted under tight security, reportedly showed no external injuries on Kumar’s body. However, authorities have stated that a comprehensive investigation will be conducted, exploring all possible aspects of the case.

Castiest abuse by UP official, victim Dalit woman approached Women’s Commission

In Basti, Uttar Pradesh, SDM Ashutosh Tiwari faces severe accusations of caste-based discrimination and misconduct against a Dalit woman who approached him for a land dispute resolution on March 6, 2025. The woman alleges that Tiwari used casteist slurs, calling her “lower caste” and “ill-mannered,” physically pushed her out of his office, and threatened to seize her land if she didn’t withdraw her complaint.

Despite reporting the incident to district authorities, she claims no action has been taken and that she faces continued harassment from tehsil employees pressuring her to retract her allegations. The victim has now appealed to the State Women’s Commission, demanding Tiwari’s immediate removal and the registration of a case against him, also seeking protection.

A member of the Commission has assured justice for the victim and strict punishment for the accused, confirming an ongoing investigation into the matter, reported the Mooknayak.

8 booked for murder of Dalit girl and kidnap of her elder sister in Kasganj

Meanwhile, in Uttar Pradesh’s Kasganj district, eight people have been booked for allegedly murdering a 14-year-old Dalit girl and staging it as suicide, following tensions over her sister’s relationship with an 18-year-old from another community.

#Horrific They came to kidnap a 14-year-old Dalit girl, when her younger sister resisted, they brutally murdered her, the accused Yadav is from the Hindu community, the elder girl is still missing, the incident is from Kasganj in Uttar Pradesh… pic.twitter.com/OuOyF9Njft

— The Dalit Voice (@ambedkariteIND) March 2, 2025

The elder sister, was reported kidnapped but later recovered by police. No arrests have been made yet. Kasganj ASP Rajesh Kumar Bhartiya said that, “We will get her medical examination conducted and record her statement before a magistrate. The girl might provide crucial details about what happened on Saturday afternoon,” said Kasganj ASP Rajesh Kumar Bhartiya” reported the Indian Express.

However, people from another caste were detained by local police on March 2, an FIR was registered under section 103(2) murder and 140 (1) (kidnapping with murderous intent) of the BNS along with the SC/ST Act against the villagers following a complaint by the victim’s father, as reported the Times of India.

As per report, victim’s father also alleged that influential people from the village took my elder daughter away and killed and hanged my younger one when she tried to save her sister.

Tamil Nadu

Class 6 Dalit student was brutally assaulted by PT teacher

In another incident at V. Akram Government High School in Tamil Nadu’s Villupuram district, a Class 6 Dalit student was brutally assaulted by a Physical Education (PT) teacher, reportedly causing severe head injuries that required surgery. The child, whose condition remains critical, also sustained stomach wounds requiring multiple stitches. The attack sparked widespread outrage after a photo of the boy’s post-surgery injuries went viral. Although the teacher is also from a Scheduled Caste, the brutality has drawn sharp criticism across the state.

#Horrific A Dalit student of class 6 of a government school was brutally beaten by a caste Hindu PT teacher, the condition of the boy is critical, this painful incident is from Villupuram, Tamil Nadu.#DalitLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/5ntcpHkR2O

— The Dalit Voice (@ambedkariteIND) March 29, 2025

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) condemned the assault and demanded swift action, calling out the inaction of authorities. Activist Shalin Maria Lawrence also criticised the DMK-led government for its failure to protect Dalit students in educational institutions. Despite growing public pressure, there has been no official response or action taken by the School Education Department or the police at the time of reporting.

Fingers of 17-year-old Dalit students chopped, NHRC takes suo moto action

In a horrifying incident rooted in caste-based violence, 17-year-old Dalit student Devendran Raj from Ariyanayagapuram village in Tamil Nadu’s Thoothukudi district was brutally attacked while on his way to appear for a Class 11 exam. Three upper-caste youths from a neighbouring village reportedly stopped his bus near Kattarimangalam, dragged him out, and assaulted him with a sickle, severing four fingers on his left hand—one of which is still missing. His father, Thanga Ganesh, a daily-wage labourer, was also severely injured while trying to protect his son.

The assault was allegedly driven by caste hatred and revenge, following a kabaddi match where Devendran’s team defeated a team from the attackers’ village. The brutal act has triggered widespread anger and calls for justice across the state. Doctors at Tirunelveli Government Medical College conducted a seven-hour surgery to reattach the severed fingers. Devendran’s condition remains critical. Activists including Shalin Maria Lawrence and VCK leader Thol. Thirumavalavan have demanded justice, immediate compensation, and better medical care.

A #Dalit student was attacked by a gang of unknown persons, and his fingers chopped, in #TamilNadu’s #Tirunelveli district while he was on his way to write an exam.

Devendran Raj, a Class 11 student and son of a day-wager Thanga Ganesh, was travelling from his residence to his… pic.twitter.com/q6lzTXPLvJ

— Hate Detector (@HateDetectors) March 11, 2025

NHRC takes suo moto cognizance

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has taken suo moto cognizance, terming the assault a grave human rights violation. Notices have been issued to the Tamil Nadu DGP and Thoothukudi District Collector. Police have arrested one accused, Lakshmanan, and detained two others. The case is being investigated under the IPC and the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, reported Maktoob Media.

Class 8 Dalit girl student made to sit outside classroom during exams after menstruation

A deeply disturbing incident of alleged caste- and gender-based discrimination has come to light from Senguttaipalayam village in Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore district. A minor Dalit student from the Arunthathiyar community, studying in Class 8, was reportedly forced to take her annual examinations outside the classroom simply because she had started menstruating. This discriminatory act was witnessed and recorded by the girl’s mother, whose video has since sparked widespread public outrage on social media, with calls for accountability echoing across platforms.

In pursuit of justice, the mother has formally appealed to the education authorities. The incident has also prompted local villagers to rally together and raise the issue with the Pollachi sub-collector. The minor was enrolled in Class 7 at the Swamy Chidbhavanda Matric Higher Secondary School in Senguttaipalayam village, located in Kinathukadavu Taluk.

According to the Hindu, Assistant Superintendent of Police Shristi Singh, who conducted a preliminary inquiry on Thursday, told reporters that “The mother of the student called the class teacher on the evening of April 6 around 5:30 p.m. and requested a special seating arrangement. The class teacher reportedly asked the mother to speak to the principal.”

She further added that “On April 7, Monday, while dropping off her daughter, the mother met the principal and asked that a separate arrangement be made to prevent infections. After she left, the student was made to sit outside the classroom to write the exam. That evening, she returned home and complained of leg pain from sitting on the floor. She did not attend the revision class the next day, and returned on Wednesday to write another exam. One of the relatives noticed her sitting outside, through the compound wall, and informed the parents. The mother rushed to the school and recorded a video of the incident” as reported

Principle suspended; girl’s father lodged complaint

Amidst the escalating outcry, the school correspondent has invoked Section 17 of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, issuing a suspension order to the school principal, citing the prohibition of physical or mental harassment of children. Adding to the legal pressure, the girl’s father lodged a formal complaint with the Negamam police on April 10.

Consequently, a case has been registered against the school’s Principal M. Anandhi, office assistant Shanthi, and Correspondent Thangavelpandian. They have been charged under Sections 3(1)(r) and 3(1)(za)(D) of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, acknowledging the girl’s Scheduled Caste status. Furthermore, the parents’ petition alleges that the accused also directed caste-based insults towards the girl’s mother when she confronted them about the discriminatory treatment, reported the Hindu

Madhya Pradesh

Dalits stopped from performing funeral rites in Jabalpur

In Madhya Pradesh’s Jabalpur district, members of the Dalit community were prevented from performing the last rites of a deceased elder due to caste-based discrimination. The incident took place in Chapod village, Pauri Panchayat, about 37 km from Jabalpur. When the Ahirwar community attempted to cremate 70-year-old Shivprasad Ahirwar on government land traditionally used for funerals, upper-caste locals objected, claiming the land as their own and citing standing crops. The family was forced to call the police, who intervened and arranged for the funeral to be held elsewhere.

The land in question, a government plot, has been used for cremations for generations. However, in recent years, members of the Patel family had allegedly encroached upon it for farming. Following public outrage and pressure from Scheduled Caste organisations, the District Collector ordered the removal of the encroachment and the construction of a permanent cremation ground.

Dalit rights groups have condemned the incident as not just a land dispute, but a blatant violation of constitutional rights. Former SC Commission member Pradeep Ahirwar called it a reflection of deep-rooted casteism and demanded strong legal action and justice for the affected family, as reported the Mooknayak.

Dalit family in Sehore attacked and boycotted for building a house

A Dalit family in Sehore district, Madhya Pradesh, was violently prevented from constructing their house by members of the dominant caste. As the family began building their home, upper-caste individuals not only stopped the construction but also subjected them to physical assault and casteist slurs.

मकान बना रहे दलित परिवार को जातिवादियों ने मकान बनाने से रोका, बंद किया हुक्का पानी, जातिसूचक गालियाँ देकर की मारपीट, दुकानदारों से कहा, “अगर दलितों को कुछ भी दिया तो देना पड़ेगा एक लाख का जुर्माना” घटना मध्य प्रदेश के सिहोर की है… #MadhyaPradesh | #Dalitnews | @MPPoliceDeptt pic.twitter.com/lkATR2rfRT

— Dalit Times | दलित टाइम्स (@DalitTime) March 4, 2025

Moreover, the attackers enforced a complete social and economic boycott — cutting off access to water and other basic services (referred to as “hukka pan band“). They also warned local shopkeepers and vendors not to sell anything to the Dalit family, threatening a fine of ₹1 lakh for non-compliance.

Bihar

An 80-year-old Dalit woman was gang-raped and brutally beaten up in Gopalganj

In a horrifying incident in Gopalganj, Bihar, an 80-year-old Dalit woman was reportedly subjected to a brutal gang rape and severe beating. The alleged perpetrators are stated to be individuals from the Muslim community.

#Horrific An 80-year-old Dalit woman was gang-raped and brutally beaten up in Bihar’s Gopalganj. All the accused are from the Muslim community.#DalitLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/tY5lCDwXbR

— The Dalit Voice (@ambedkariteIND) March 18, 2025

This deeply disturbing act of violence has likely sent shockwaves through the region, highlighting the vulnerability of marginalised communities to such heinous crimes and raising serious concerns about law and order

Rajasthan

Constable arrested for raping Dalit woman in Jaipur

A Rajasthan police constable stationed at Sanganer police station was apprehended on Sunday following a chilling allegation of rape. According to officials, Constable Bhagaram lured a pregnant Dalit woman away from her home on the pretext of recording her statement concerning a previous complaint she had filed. While her husband was at work, Bhagaram allegedly took the woman and her three-year-old child to a hotel room.

There, under the guise of needing to change clothes, he took her to a private room and reportedly committed the heinous act of rape, even threatening her with her husband’s imprisonment and warning her against reporting the crime when she resisted.

The victim’s husband filed a First Information Report (FIR) on Saturday night, detailing the horrific ordeal his wife endured in front of their young son. Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Vinod Kumar Sharma confirmed the arrest and stated that a medical examination of the woman has been conducted. This appalling incident has triggered significant political condemnation, with former Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot decrying the state of law and order under the current BJP government, especially as it occurred in the Chief Minister’s constituency around Women’s Day. Gehlot has demanded the constable’s dismissal and strict, exemplary punishment, reported the Observer Post.

Dalit medical student allegedly suicide as deliberately barred from exams

Rajasthan’s Kota is reeling after the alleged suicide of Dalit medical student Sunil Bairwa at a local medical college. Fellow students protesting for justice have asserted that Sunil was deliberately failed and barred from exams, pushing him into severe depression. This tragic claim has ignited outrage, leading to a demonstration where students surrounded Principal Dr. Sangeeta Saxena, demanding accountability.

Disturbing videos of the protest have rapidly circulated on social media, amplifying the calls for a thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding Sunil’s death and the allegations of discriminatory treatment that may have contributed to his despair.

राजस्थान : कोटा के मेडिकल कॉलेज में दलित स्टूडेंट सुनील बैरवा ने कि आत्महत्या, सुनील के लिए इंसाफ मांग रहे अन्य छात्रों ने बताया, “सुनील को जबरन फेल किया गया, एग्जाम में बैठने नहीं दिया जा रहा था..जिसको लेकर वो डिप्रेशन में था..” छात्रों ने प्रिंसिपल डॉ. संगीता सक्सेना का घेराव… pic.twitter.com/Faw4J0fwkW

— Dalit Times | दलित टाइम्स (@DalitTime) March 7, 2025

The incident has cast a shadow over the medical college and sparked concerns about the support systems available to students, particularly those from marginalised communities.

Related:

The alarming rise of anti-Dalit violence and discrimination in India: A series of gruesome incidents since July 2024

CJP Maharashtra: Surge in communal and caste-based violence with six incidents in January 2025

Caste-Based violence shakes Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh in alarming incidents

The post Statewide Attacks: A chilling chronicle of caste-based attacks across the country appeared first on SabrangIndia.

First Published on: 11 Apr 2016

On his 189^th Birth Anniversary, April 11, we bring to you excerpts from Jyotiba Phule’s path breaking work, severely criticising Brahminism and the Caste System

Jyotiba Phule was born on April 11, 1827

If a Bhat happened to pass by a river where a Shudra as washing his clothes, the Shudra had to collect all his clothes and proceed to a far distant spot, lest some drops of the (contaminated) water should be sprayed on the Bhat. Even then, if a drop of water were to touch the body of the Bhat from there, or even if the Bhat so imagined it, the Bhat did not hesitate to fling his utensil angrily at the head of the Shudra who would collapse to the ground, his head bleeding profusely.

On recovering from the swoon the Shudra would collect his blood- stained clothes and wend his way home silently. He could not complain to the Government Officials, as the administration was dominated by the Bhats. More often than not he would be punished stringently for complaining against the Bhats. This was the height of injustice!

It was difficult for the Shudras to move about freely in the streets for their daily routine, most of all in the mornings when persons and things cast long shadows about them. If a `Bhat Saheb’ were to come along from the opposite direction, the Shudra had to stop by the road until such time as the `Bhat Saheb’ passed by – for fear of casting his polluting shadow on him. He was free to proceed further only after the `Bhat Saheb’ had passed by him.

Should a Shudra be unlucky enough to cast his polluting shadow on a Bhat inadvertently, the Bhat used to belabour him mercilessly and would go to bathe at the river to wash off the pollution. The Shudras were forbidden even to spit in the streets. Should he happen to pass through a Brahmin (Bhat) locality he had to carry an earthen-pot slung about his neck to collect his spittle. (Should a Bhat Officer find a spittle from a Shudra’s mouth on the road, woe betide the Shudra!)…….

[[The Shudra suffered many such indignities and disabilities and were looking forward to their release from their persecutors as prisoners fondly do. The all-merciful Providence took pity on the Shudras and brought about the British raj to India by its divine dispensation which emancipated the Shudras from the physical (bodily) thraldom (slavery). We are much beholden to the British rulers. We shall never forget their kindness to us. It was the British rulers who freed us from the centuries-old oppression of the Bhat and assured a hopeful future for our children. Had the British not come on the scene (in India) (as our rulers) the Bhat would surely have crushed us in no time (long ago.)]]

Some may well wonder as to how the Bhats managed to crush the depressed and down-trodden people here even though they (the Shudras) outnumbered them tenfold. It was well-known that one clever person can master ten ignorant persons
(e.g. a shepherd and his flock). Should the ten ignorant men be united (be of one mind), they would surely prevail over that clever one. But if the ten are disunited they would easily be duped by that clever one. The Bhats have invented a very cunning method to sow seeds of dissension among the Shudras. The Bhats were naturally apprehensive of the growing numbers of the depressed and down- trodden people. They knew that keeping them disunited alone ensured their (the Bhats’) continued mastery ever them. It was the only way of keeping them as abject slaves indefinitely, and only thus would they be able to indulge in a life of gross indulgence and luxury ensured by the `sweat of the Shudras’ brows. To that end in view, the Bhats invented the pernicious fiction of the caste-system, compiled (learned) treatises to serve their own self-interest and indoctrinated the pliable minds of the ignorant Shudras (masses) accordingly.

Some of the Shudras put up a gallant fight against this blatant injustice. They were segregated into a separate category (class). In order to wreak vengeance on them (for their temerity) the Bhats persuaded those whom we today term as Malis (gardeners), Kunbis (tillers, peasants) etc. not to stigmatise them as untouchables.

Being deprived of their means of livelihood, they were driven to the extremity of eating the flesh of dead animals. Some of the members of the Shudras community today proudly call themselves as Malis (gardeners), Kunbis (peasants), gold-smiths, tailors, iron smiths, carpenters etc, on the basis of the avocation (trade) they pursued (practised), Little do they know that our ancestors and those of the so¬called untouchables (Mahars, Mangs etc.) were blood-brothers (traced their lineage to the same family stock).

Their ancestors fought bravely in defence of their motherland against the invading usurpers (the Bhats) and hence, the wily Bhats reduced them to penury and misery. It is a thousand pities that being unmindful of this state of affairs, the Shudras began to hate their own kith and kin.

The Bhats invented an elaborate system of caste-distinction based on the way the other Shudras behaved towards them, condemning some to the lowest rung and some to a slightly higher rung. Thus they permanently made them into their proteges and by means of the powerful weapon of the `iniquitous caste system,’ drove a permanent wedge among the Shudras.

It was a classic case of the cats who went to law! The Bhats created dissensions among the depressed and the down- trodden masses and are battening on the differences (are leading luxurious lives thereby).

The depressed and down­trodden masses in India were freed from the physical bodily) slavery of the Bhats as a result of the advent of the British raj here. But we are sorry to state that the benevolent British Government have not addressed themselves to the important task of providing education to the said masses. That is why the Shudras continue to be ignorant, and hence, their ‘mental slavery’ regarding the spurious religious tracts of the Bhats continues unabated. They cannot even appeal to the Government for the redressal of their wrongs. The Government is not yet aware of the way the Bhats exploit the masses in their day to day problems as also in the administrative machinery. We pray to the Almighty to enable the Government to kindly pay attention to this urgent task and to free the masses from their mental slavery to the machinations of the Bhats.

I am deeply beholden to Shri Vinayak Babji Bhandarkar and Rao Saheb Shri Rajanna Lingu for their continued encouragement to me in the writing of this treatise.

(From the Introduction to ‘Slavery’ by Mahatma Jyotiba Phule)
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The incidents documented here range, from communal targeting and inflammatory speeches to acts of inhuman violence and systemic discrimination, took place in the month of January till now. Public platforms and political events have been weaponised to spread hateful ideologies, with prominent leaders openly calling for boycotts, violence, and exclusion of minority communities. Vulnerable groups, particularly Muslims, Dalits, and tribals, have borne the brunt of this assault, facing economic sabotage, public humiliation, and even physical attacks.

This alarming trend is not just an affront to individual victims but a grave threat to Maharashtra’s legacy of cultural diversity and harmony. The state, once celebrated for its progressive movements and commitment to social justice, now finds itself mired in a toxic environment where fear, division, and hate dominate public discourse. These incidents expose the failure of the government to uphold the rule of law and protect its citizens, raising urgent questions about accountability and justice.

What follows is a detailed account of some of the most glaring incidents of hate and discrimination in Maharashtra in the month of January 2025. These accounts are not isolated events but part of a larger, systemic assault on the principles of secularism, equality, and human dignity. They demand immediate action and an unwavering commitment to restoring the ideals enshrined in India’s Constitution.

Detailed reports of hate incidents

• Targeting of Muslim-owned businesses in Yavatmal

On January 14, two Muslim-owned restaurants in Wani, Yavatmal, were forcibly shut down by members of the Bajrang Dal. The group accused the establishments of serving beef, leading to the police seizing the meat without providing any evidence or conducting a fair investigation. This incident underscores a worrying pattern of weaponising religious sentiment to economically and socially marginalise Muslims. Such acts not only deprive individuals of their livelihoods but also perpetuate a climate of fear and exclusion, eroding the rights of minority communities.

• Brutal assault on a tribal elderly woman in Amravati

In one of the most horrifying incidents, a 77-year-old tribal woman in Retyakheda village, Amravati, was subjected to medieval-style violence on December 30, 2024. While the incident occurred on December 30, it surfaced on January 5, 2025 after a police complaint was lodged by the victim’s son and daughter-in-law.

As per a report of Siasat, accused of practising black magic, the tribal woman was tied up, beaten with sticks, branded with hot iron rods, and forced to inhale chilli smoke. The assailants, led by the village head, further degraded her by making her consume urine and dog excreta and parading her through the village adorned with a garland of slippers. Despite the gravity of the attack, authorities have yet to invoke the Anti-Superstition Act, raising serious questions about the systemic apathy towards tribal and marginalised communities.

The victim’s family has since approached higher authorities, including the Maharashtra State Women’s Commission and the Inspector General of Police, seeking justice. While the district collector assured them of further investigations, such delays and the initial reluctance to file appropriate charges reflect a larger failure to deter such barbaric acts.

#Horrific An elderly tribal woman was tied with a rope, beaten and forced to eat dog excreta, burnt with a hot iron rod, incident took place in Amravati, Maharashtra. pic.twitter.com/GRd8bWe8sv

— The Dalit Voice (@ambedkariteIND) January 19, 2025

• Anti-Muslim rhetoric at Kurla event

At the “Samrast Yatra” event in Kurla, Mumbai, organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal, a Jain monk disseminated hate speech rife with anti-Muslim propaganda. He falsely attributed statements to Dr B.R. Ambedkar, claiming the Dalit leader had called for the expulsion of Muslims from India. Such deliberate distortions of history weaponise revered figures to justify communal hatred.

The monk’s speech also demonised Bangladeshi Muslims, referring to them as “lungiwallas” and inciting Hindus to take violent action against them. This open propagation of hate speech at a public event, without any fear of legal consequences, underscores the emboldenment of extremist voices under the current political climate.

• Minister Nitesh Rane’s hate-filled speech

Maharashtra cabinet minister Nitesh Rane has become a recurring figure in the spread of communal hatred. At the Hindu Jagran Sabha in Sangli on January 10, Rane openly called for the economic boycott of Muslims, accusing them of using their businesses to fund fabricated plots like “love jihad” and “land jihad.” He further stoked paranoia by claiming that Muslims aim to turn India into an Islamic nation by 2047.

As per multiple media reports, Rane also coined the communal slur “every vote against Mulla” as a divisive rallying cry. His speech, laced with inflammatory rhetoric and veiled threats, exemplifies how elected representatives are misusing their positions to deepen communal fissures, rather than promoting harmony and inclusivity.

• Sadhvi Ritambhara’s provocative speech in Dadar

At an event organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s Matrishakti and Durga Vahini in Dadar on January 5, Sadhvi Ritambhara delivered a speech designed to incite violence. She vilified historical Muslim figures as well as women, proclaiming that “women who give birth to people like Aurangzeb and Taimur can’t be our ideal women.” Such statements not only demonise entire communities but also perpetuate divisive stereotypes.

Ritambhara amplified the baseless conspiracy theory of ‘love jihad,’ urging Indian women to “poke out the eyes of love jihadis.” The event concluded with participants taking an oath against this fabricated menace, further cementing hatred against a specific group.

• Casteist slur by Shiv Sena MLA Sanjay Gaikwad

At a public gathering in Buldhana, Shiv Sena MLA Sanjay Gaikwad demeaned voters by accusing them of selling their votes for paltry amounts of money, alcohol, and meat. He shockingly stated, “Even a prostitute is better than that,” displaying an utter lack of respect for both voters, women and marginalised groups. Such derogatory remarks from a public representative not only degrade the dignity of citizens but also highlight the normalisation of casteist and classist language in political discourse.

While addressing a public gathering in #Maharashtra‘s #Buldhana, #ShivSena (#EknathShinde faction) MLA #SanjayGaikwad says, “The voters here were sold for 2-5 thousand rupees, alcohol, and meat. Even a prostitute is better than that” pic.twitter.com/MXKRf6bhy0

— Hate Detector (@HateDetectors) January 7, 2025

A dire need for accountability and action

These incidents are not isolated but part of a broader, systematic pattern aimed at normalising hatred, targeting minorities, and eroding India’s pluralistic ethos. What is particularly troubling is the state’s apparent complicity, whether through direct endorsement, tacit approval, or sheer apathy. Police inaction, delayed investigations, and the absence of legal consequences embolden perpetrators and send a dangerous signal that hate crimes and divisive rhetoric will go unchecked.

The rise in hate incidents also points to a calculated strategy to divert attention from pressing socio-economic issues by deepening communal and caste divides. Elected representatives and influential figures who engage in hate speech must be held accountable under the law? Furthermore, civil society must amplify its efforts to counter such narratives, and judicial interventions must be swift and decisive in upholding justice.

The escalation of hate incidents in Maharashtra underlines the urgent need for introspection and systemic reform. The state government must decisively act to restore public trust by cracking down on hate speech and violence, irrespective of the political or social standing of the perpetrators. Anything less would not only betray the ideals of justice, equality, and secularism but also embolden those seeking to dismantle the fabric of Indian democracy.

Related:

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CJP calls for electoral action against BJP leader’s hate speech at Rohini Chetna event

From fact-checking to chaos: How meta’s new moderation model risks eroding trust and democracy

Unity Beyond Religion: Stories of shared humanity and mutual respect

The post Maharashtra’s Descent into Hate: Six incidents reported in January 2025 highlight Maharashtra’s rising communal and caste-based violence appeared first on SabrangIndia.

This judgment demonstrates a narrowing of the SC/ST Act’s scope, potentially setting a dangerous precedent that could weaken its protective intent.  

The incident and the court’s findings  

According to the prosecution, on January 21, 2011, the second respondent, accompanied by other officials, visited a site to identify encroachments allegedly made by petitioner No. 1, Achal Singh, on public land. During the site measurement, the petitioners reportedly objected to the process and allegedly hurled abusive terms such as “Bhangi,” “Neech,” “Bhikhari,” and “Mangani” at the informant and others. They were also accused of committing physical assault.

“In the case on hand as referred above, the words used were not caste name nor there is allegation that the petitioners were known to the caste of the public servants, who had gone to remove the encroachments. Moreover, it is crystal clear on bare perusal of allegation that the petitioners were not intending to humiliate the…persons for the reason that they were members of Schedule Caste and Schedule Tribes rather act of the petitioners was in protest against the action of measurements being wrongly done by the public servants“. (Para 12)

Following an investigation, the police determined that the allegations were unfounded and submitted a negative report. However, upon the filing of a Protest Petition, the court took cognisance of the matter, and charges were subsequently framed against the petitioners.

The court, however, found the evidence insufficient to sustain these charges. Justice Kumar noted, “The words used were not caste name[s], nor is there [an] allegation that the petitioners were known to the caste of the public servants.” The court emphasised that the police investigation had already dismissed the allegations as untrue, with no independent witnesses to corroborate the complainant’s account. Furthermore, the court observed that the altercation arose from the accused’s dissatisfaction with the officials’ actions and not from caste-based animosity.  

“Learned counsel contends that there is no iota of evidence that the petitioners had knowledge about the caste of the informant and others. There is no material that the incident took place in the public view. Only the prosecution party are witnesses of the incident. Learned counsel next contends that it is a case of flagrant abuse of the provisions of law because the incident did not take place for the reason that petitioners were intending to humiliate the informant and others for their being members of the Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribes rather the incident took place for unfair measurements to decide any encroachment allegedly made by the petitioners.” (Para 8)

The decision also drew upon the Supreme Court’s precedent in Ramesh Chandra Vaishya v. State of Uttar Pradesh & Anr., where similar charges were dismissed due to the absence of public witnesses and the lack of direct caste references. The court ruled that the essential ingredients of intent to humiliate and public view, as required by the SC/ST Act, were not met in this case.  

The role of intent and context in caste-based abuse  

Central to the court’s judgment was its reliance on the absence of intent to humiliate the complainant based on caste. The accused contended that their frustration with alleged procedural irregularities in land measurement led to the altercation, and the court accepted this explanation. However, this approach fails to account for the socio-cultural significance of the language used.  

Terms like “Bhangi” and “Neech,” though not explicit caste names, are loaded with casteist connotations and have historically been used to demean and marginalise Dalits. Their use in any context perpetuates caste hierarchies and reinforces systemic discrimination, regardless of the alleged intent. By focusing narrowly on the intent of the accused, the court overlooked the broader impact of such language on the complainant’s dignity and the collective trauma of marginalised communities.  

This reasoning risks creating a dangerous precedent, where the use of casteist slurs may be excused as long as intent cannot be conclusively proven. Such an interpretation undermines the SC/ST Act’s purpose of addressing the structural and often covert nature of caste oppression.  

Narrow interpretation of “Public View”  

Another critical aspect of the judgment was its reliance on the absence of independent witnesses to dismiss the charges. The court interpreted the SC/ST Act’s requirement of “public view” to mean that the incident must have been witnessed by uninvolved third parties. Justice Kumar noted, “Only the informant and its officials are witnesses of the incident; no independent witness has turned up to support [the claims].”  

This interpretation reflects a restrictive and problematic view of public view. Many acts of caste-based abuse occur in semi-public spaces, where independent witnesses may be unwilling to come forward due to fear of retaliation or societal pressures. In such contexts, requiring independent corroboration places an unfair evidentiary burden on the victim, discouraging them from seeking justice.  

The problematic role of police investigations  

The court’s heavy reliance on the findings of the police investigation raises further concerns. The police had earlier dismissed the allegations as baseless, but their report was challenged by the complainant, leading to charges being framed. Justice Kumar’s acceptance of the police report as conclusive evidence overlooks systemic issues within law enforcement, where caste-based atrocities are often underreported or trivialised.  

The SC/ST Act was enacted precisely because of the entrenched biases within the criminal justice system, which often fail to address the grievances of marginalised communities. By leaning heavily on the police investigation without critically examining its methodology or potential biases, the court risked undermining the Act’s protective framework.  

Implications for the SC/ST Act  

The dismissal of charges under the SC/ST Act in this case reflects a broader trend of judicial interpretations narrowing the scope of the law. While the Act was designed to protect vulnerable communities from systemic discrimination, judgments like this one demonstrate how procedural hurdles and technicalities can erode its efficacy.  

By focusing on the absence of intent and public witnesses, the court’s decision risks emboldening those who perpetuate casteist behaviour. It also sends a discouraging message to victims, who may perceive the legal system as being indifferent to their lived experiences of discrimination.  

At a time when caste-based atrocities are on the rise, as evidenced by increasing reports from across India, the SC/ST Act’s robust enforcement is critical. Diluting its provisions through narrow interpretations not only weakens its deterrent effect but also undermines the broader fight for social justice and equality.  

The judgment underscores the urgent need for a more contextual and empathetic approach to cases involving caste-based discrimination. While procedural safeguards are necessary to ensure fairness, they should not come at the cost of justice for victims of systemic oppression. Courts must recognise that casteist abuse often occurs in subtle and insidious ways that do not always align neatly with rigid legal definitions.  

A broader interpretation of terms like “public view” and a more nuanced understanding of the socio-cultural impact of casteist language would better serve the SC/ST Act’s intent. Such an approach would not only uphold the law’s protective spirit but also affirm the judiciary’s commitment to safeguarding the dignity and rights of marginalised communities.  

In conclusion, while the Rajasthan High Court’s judgment raises troubling questions about its implications for caste justice. Moving forward, it is imperative that courts adopt a more comprehensive framework that balances procedural integrity with the broader goals of equality and social justice. Only then can the SC/ST Act remain a meaningful tool in the fight against caste-based atrocities.  

The complete judgment can be read here:

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The post Rajasthan HC finds no caste intent in words like ‘Bhangi’, ‘Neech’, ‘Bhikhari’, ‘Mangani’, drops SC/ST Act charges appeared first on SabrangIndia.