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Introduction: The Campus as Double Stage

The University Grants Commission, on January 13, 2026, notified the Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions Regulations, a broad set of rules intended to counter caste discrimination in Indian universities. Within two weeks, the Supreme Court stayed the regulations, observing that they showed “complete vagueness” and might have “dangerous impacts” to “divide society.” In the meantime, and in the weeks that followed, Indian universities, particularly Delhi University, witnessed protests and counter-protests, violence, allegations of assault, cross-FIRs and, subsequently, a month-long ban on all demonstrations. SabrangIndia’s detailed story on the nationwide protests may be read here and here.

This debate goes beyond a simple policy debate. It is a point at which the underlying contradictions of caste in contemporary India have come face-to-face with the national arena. In my previous work, I introduced the concept of “schizophrenic modernity”, a condition in which a public official theatre of constitutional equality coexists with a dynamic social obscenity, wherein the hierarchy of caste is reinscribed through intimate sociability, bodily practices and moments of violence. The UGC controversy makes this schizophrenia explicit.

To gain a full understanding of the stakes, it is imperative to consult two scholars whose work helps to illuminate the underlying structure of this dispute. Anand Teltumbde’s work on the “camouflaged” presence of caste provides a framework for understanding how caste functions within modern institutions as a hidden system of social capital and exclusion, rather than as a visible ritualized hierarchy. Gopal Guru’s work on the scene/obscene dialectic of knowledge production, along with his imperative to theorize from the location of the obscene, supplies the methodological key to centering the Dalit experience in this argument. Together, they enrich and expand my Foucauldian-Gramscian framework, locating it within the particular intellectual traditions of Dalit Studies.

The article uses the framework to provide a thorough argument about the controversy. Part I will evaluate the rules as a scene of extending the constitutional scene into the obscene. Part II will locates the upper-caste reaction as a manifestation of “camouflaged” caste, as well as Gopal Guru’s reading of hegemonic denial. Part III will discuss the role of the Supreme Court as a moment of definitional politics. Part IV will analyse campus violence as a manifestation of obscene eruption, according to Teltumbde’s framework. Part V will evaluate the schizophrenic stance of the state. Part VI will explore Dalit counter-mobilizations as a moment of forcing the obscene back into the scene, according to Guru’s imperative to theorise from the location of the obscene. The conclusion will consider what this controversy tells us about the underlying architecture of caste power.

I. The Regulations: Extending the Scene into the Obscene

The UGC Equity Regulations 2026 have their roots in a specific set of events: a petition to the Supreme Court jointly filed by the mothers of Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi, both of whom took their own lives in the aftermath of alleged caste-based harassment on their respective college campuses. Vemula, a Dalit PhD scholar at the University of Hyderabad, died in 2016; Tadvi, a tribal medical student in Mumbai, died in 2019. Their deaths have been seen as symptomatic of the failure of institutional mechanisms to protect marginalised students.

Statistics shown by the UGC to a parliamentary committee show a 118.4% increase in reported cases of caste-based harassment over five years, from 173 in 2019-20 to 378 in 2023-24. Journalist Anil Chamadia said that this increase “is not merely about numbers; it is directly linked to growing awareness among marginalised students and the protection given to dominant caste ideologies.” When first-generation Dalit students enter universities in greater numbers, the dominant castes may resent their presence, leading to increased harassment.

The regulations created a complex administrative machinery for equity. They mandated that every higher education institution set up an Equal Opportunity Centre (EOC) to monitor policies for the disadvantaged. Equity Committees, mandated to include representatives from Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), Other Backward Classes (OBC), women and persons with disabilities, were tasked with complaints. Institutions were mandated to set up “equity squads” for constant surveillance, establish 24/7 hotlines and ensure time-bound redressal of grievances, committees were to meet within 24 hours of a complaint and submit a report within 15 days. Failure to comply would invite severe punishment, including withdrawal of UGC funding, exclusion from schemes, or suspension of degree programs.

Notably, the regulations introduced protection for the first time for OBCs, besides SC/ST students, faculty and staff. The concept of “caste-based discrimination” in Clause 3(c) was articulated as discrimination “only on the basis of caste or tribe against the members of the Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Other Backwards Classes (OBC).”

Based on the current framework, the regulations can be understood as an effort to operationalize the constitutional ban on caste discrimination as a pervasive social order. While the Constitution bans caste discrimination at the level of abstract jurisprudence, the regulations aimed to create capillary structures—committees, squads, helplines—that would penetrate the intimate spaces of caste discrimination: the classroom, the hostel, the mentor-mentee relationship and social networks. They aimed to make visible the everyday humiliations, exclusions and violence against Dalit students, which the “obscene” had hitherto made invisible.

As a UGC functionary explained, “The regulations aimed to institutionalize anti-discrimination policies rather than have a piecemeal approach and thus provide ‘marginalised students with an official platform to raise their concerns, which was often lacking before.’” This is the role of the scene: to make grievances speakable, visible, and actionable. The obscene, on the other hand, is that which is unspeakable, the casteist remark that is reduced to “just a joke,” the exclusion that is reduced to “personal preference,” the hostility that is reduced to “academic rigor.”

II. The Upper-Caste Backlash: Camouflaged Caste and the Hegemony of Denial

The regulations didn’t just face criticism; they walked into a firestorm. Upper-caste students, faculty and a chorus of social media voices came out swinging almost immediately. Protests erupted at Delhi University, Lucknow University and right outside the UGC office. But if you listen closely to what the protesters are actually saying, something interesting emerges. Their words reveal how privilege dresses itself up as fairness when its back is against the wall. To really understand what’s happening here, we need two thinkers: Anand Teltumbde and his idea of “camouflaged” caste, and Gopal Guru with his insights about who gets to theorise and whose experience counts as real.

Teltumbde: When Caste Puts on a New Suit

In The Persistence of Caste (2010), Teltumbde makes a deceptively simple argument that cuts through a lot of confusion. Caste hasn’t disappeared in modern India; it’s just changed its clothes. It no longer marches around in religious robes, declaring Brahmins superior and Dalits polluted. Instead, it’s dressed itself in the respectable attire of modernity. It speaks the language of merit, efficiency and professionalism, all while quietly reproducing hierarchy through who knows whom, who gets recommended for jobs, who feels comfortable in academic spaces.

This is exactly what we’re seeing in the UGC controversy. The upper-caste protesters aren’t defending traditional caste ideology. You won’t hear them argue that Brahmins are naturally smarter or that untouchability was ordained by the gods. That would be too obvious, too easy to counter. Instead, they’ve wrapped themselves in the language of universalism, due process, and merit. They’re not defending privilege, they’re defending fairness. Or so they claim. This is caste in camouflage, operating through the very discourses that supposedly left it behind.

Teltumbde argues this camouflage isn’t accidental. It’s caste’s survival strategy, its “genius,” he calls it, though he means it darkly. Caste is plastic. It can take any form religious, secular, modern, global while never losing its core purpose: maintaining graded inequality. If you go looking for caste in its traditional avatar, you’ll declare it dead. You’ll miss its vibrant new incarnations entirely.

The protesters who warn of “complete chaos” and insist that “victim can be anyone on campus” aren’t defending old caste. They’re defending its new form as common sense, as the natural order of things, as what any reasonable person would think. They are, in Teltumbde’s framework, caste’s latest incarnation.

Guru: Why the Obscene Matters

Gopal Guru gives us the other lens we need. In The Cracked Mirror (2012), written with Sundar Sarukkai, Guru makes a provocative argument about how knowledge itself is structured by caste. Upper-caste “theorists,” he argues, have historically occupied what he calls the “scene”, the privileged space of abstraction, theory and universal claims. Dalit-Bahujan thinkers, meanwhile, have been confined to the “obscene”, the messy, particular, experiential realm that supposedly isn’t fit for theory. Guru calls for “epistemic humility”, a willingness to theorize from the site of the obscene, to take seriously the knowledge that comes from lived experience of caste.

The UGC controversy plays out this dynamic in real time. The upper-caste protesters occupy the scene. They speak the language of due process, safeguards against false accusations, and the danger of dividing society. Their discourse presents itself as neutral, rational, concerned with everyone’s good. And the Dalit experience that made these regulations necessary in the first place, the 115 suicides, the daily humiliations, the systematic exclusion gets pushed into the obscene. It becomes merely anecdotal, particular and insufficiently theoretical.

When protesters claim that “victim can be anyone,” they’re not just describing reality. They’re prescribing how reality should be seen. They’re demanding that the scene remain blind to the actual direction of caste violence. The universal category of “anyone” erases the particular vulnerability of Dalit students. The scene refuses to see what the obscene knows.

The Hegemony of Denial in Action

Listen to Alokit Tripathi, a DU PhD student who told PTI the rules would create “complete chaos.” His concern? The burden of proof would shift to the accused, with “no safeguards for those wrongly accused.” And then this: “The definition of victim is already predetermined. Victim can be anyone on campus.”

This is Teltumbde’s camouflaged caste, speaking in perfect accent. The historically privileged group positions itself as potential victim. The structural violence documented in the 2007 Thorat Committee report on AIIMS, where Dalit students faced “avoidance, non-cooperation and discouragement” from faculty and peers simply vanishes. The actual power relations on campus, where faculty and administration remain overwhelmingly upper-caste, where informal networks quietly reproduce privilege all of it erased from the frame.

And its Guru’s hegemonic denial too. The universal “anyone” neutralizes the particular. The scene refuses to see.

The Myth That Won’t Die

Then there’s the false complaint narrative. It came up everywhere. Petitioners told the Supreme Court that without a provision penalizing malicious complaints, grievance mechanisms would become weapons. One counsel painted a vivid hypothetical: imagine a fresher who resists ragging from a Scheduled Caste senior. The senior files a false caste discrimination complaint. The fresher, without anticipatory bail under the SC/ST Act, could be imprisoned, his career ending on his “first day, first month and first year.”

As a Feminism in India analysis pointed out, this script is borrowed straight from Men’s Rights Activists. When women get legal protection, men declare the laws will be misused for petty revenge. When Dalits get protection, savarnas shout exactly the same thing. These narratives do something specific: they drag remedial measures from the societal and historical to the personal. They diminish systemic violence by obsessing over hypothetical misuse.

Now, to be clear: no legal mechanism is immune to misuse. But the exclusive focus on this possibility, without a whisper of concern for the actual violence Dalit students face daily, reveals what the narrative is really doing. It positions the upper-caste subject as the true victim, the one most at risk from a system supposedly designed to protect the vulnerable. This is Gramsci’s “common sense” at work. The dominant group’s experience gets naturalized as universal. The subordinate group’s experience becomes questionable, particular and obscene.

The Battle over Naming

The fiercest fight was over words. Clause 3(c) defined caste-based discrimination specifically as discrimination against SC/ST/OBC communities. Petitioners called this “completely exclusive.” It created, they argued, a “hierarchy of protection.” They pointed to Clause 3(e), a broader provision prohibiting discrimination on grounds of “religion, race, caste, gender, place of birth, disability, or any of them.” Why have both? Why was 3(c) necessary if 3(e) already existed?

The answer cuts to the heart of the matter. Clause 3(e) gives you formal equality, discrimination is wrong, period, and whosoever does it to whomever. Clause 3(c) recognizes substantive equality, the understanding that caste violence in India has direction. It flows historically and structurally from dominant castes to oppressed castes. As the Supreme Court observed in the Sukanya Shantha case, the Constitution itself is “the greatest testament against historical injustices done against the marginalised castes.” Substantive equality requires that “the law must endeavour to correct historical injustices.”

To refuse this naming, to insist on a “neutral” definition that ignores historical directionality is to push the actual structure of caste violence into the obscene. It is to demand that the scene remain blind to what it doesn’t want to see. The petitioners’ call for an “inclusionary” definition is, from this perspective, a demand for comfort. A demand that the scene not be forced to confront the asymmetrical reality it obscures.

III. The Supreme Court: Definitional Politics on the Scene

The Supreme Court’s interim stay of the regulations on January 29, 2026, did more than halt a policy. It laid bare what’s really at stake in this battle over the scene and the obscene. The Court’s questions, its concerns, even its well-intentioned interventions, all of them reveal how difficult it is for institutions to see what they’ve trained themselves not to see.

What Troubled the Court

The bench, led by Chief Justice Surya Kant, was genuinely worried. They weren’t wrong to be, regulations with “very sweeping consequences” deserve scrutiny. After 75 years of trying to build a caste-less society, the Chief Justice observed, policy that appeared “regressive” and might “divide society” gave him pause. You can hear the sincere concern in his words: after all this time, after everything we’ve tried, are we moving backwards?

Justice Bagchi focused on Clause 3 (c). Wasn’t it redundant alongside Clause 3(e)? Shouldn’t we measure these definitions against the constitutional vision of Article 15, the promise that the state shall not discriminate against any citizen? There was also worry about ragging, which one counsel described as the most common form of discrimination on campus. Why didn’t the regulations address that?

Then came the question that revealed everything. The Chief Justice asked whether the regulations covered caste-based discrimination “by reserved categories that are better situated than other reserved groups.” When counsel confirmed there was no such protection, the Chief pressed further: “Has anybody examined this aspect?”

Why the Scene Can’t See

From where we’re sitting, with Teltumbde and Guru as our guides, this question is illuminating. Not because it’s wrong to ask, in the abstract, it’s perfectly reasonable. But because of what it reveals about how the scene sees the world?

The question assumes symmetry. It imagines a level playing field where power flows in multiple directions, where a student from a “better situated” reserved category might discriminate against someone from a “lesser situated” one. And yes, theoretically, this could happen. Caste is complicated. Graded inequality means there are hierarchies among oppressed castes too, some OBCs are better positioned than some SCs, some SCs than some STs.

But here’s the thing about forests and trees. To focus on this internal hierarchy while ignoring the fundamental asymmetry between oppressed castes as a whole and the dominant castes that have historically controlled every institution—that’s not nuance. That’s blindness. The question “what about discrimination by reserved categories” sounds sophisticated. It sounds like careful, balanced thinking. But its function is to distract, to make the scene appear complex while actually preserving its refusal to see the main structure of violence.

The Court’s concern about “dividing society” works similarly. It assumes a unity that the regulations would disrupt. But as the Feminism in India analysis put it, “Their remark that the regulations might ‘divide society’ are a stark reminder of how those in privilege view the world around them. The fractures already exist, they have been put in place to sustain those at the top of the food chain.” The regulations didn’t create division. They simply named it. And naming division, for those who benefit from not seeing it, always feels like violence.

Jaising’s Attempt

Senior Advocate Indira Jaising tried to bridge this gap. Appearing for the petitioners in the original Vemula-Tadvi case, the case that had made these regulations necessary in the first place, she argued that the Court couldn’t consider this matter in isolation. There were directions in the Abeda Salim Tadvi proceedings that had to be honoured. The regulations, she insisted, existed “to create an inclusive society.” She tried to show how Clause 3(c) and Clause 3(e) worked together, not against each other. But opposing counsel kept interrupting. The connections she tried to draw kept getting lost.

Jaising reminded the Bench that the 2012 Regulations had been repealed. If the Court stayed the new ones, there would be nothing. A vacuum. The Court heard her and used its powers under Article 142 to direct that the 2012 Regulations continue in force until further orders. A practical solution, perhaps. But also a telling one: better the old framework, however inadequate, than the new one that actually named names.

The Warning

The Chief Justice ended with a warning to the petitioners: don’t turn this “into a political issue.” The instruction itself is revealing. It positions the Court as a neutral arbiter standing above politics, while the petitioners’ mobilization, their insistence that caste violence is real and must be addressed is framed as potentially illegitimate, as dragging law into the muck of politics.

But here’s what this framing misses: the Court’s own observations were deeply political. The question about reverse discrimination. The concern for the general category. The worry about dividing society. These aren’t neutral positions. They’re the scene’s attempt to manage the boundary between what can be seen and what must remain invisible, what can be spoken and what must stay unspeakable. They’re the scene’s way of preserving existing power relations while sincerely believing it’s just being reasonable.

The scene doesn’t see itself as political. That’s its power. It experiences its own perspective as simply how any reasonable person would see things. The obscene, by contrast, is always marked, always particular, always suspect. The Court’s warning not to make it political is, from this perspective, the most political gesture of all. It’s the scene telling the obscene: stay in your place. Let us decide what counts as real.

IV. The Campus: Violence and Its Representation

The confrontation at Delhi University on February 13, 2026 and its aftermath, brought something into sharp focus that the legal arguments had kept at a distance. The campus became a stage where the obscene, the violence that usually stays in the shadows, whispered about in hostels, experienced in everyday humiliations erupted into plain sight. And then, just as quickly, the scene moved to push it back into invisibility.

What Happened at Arts Faculty

The day started as a demonstration in support of the UGC regulations, organized by the All India Forum for Equity and backed by AISA, the left-wing students’ association. But by the time it ended, the Arts Faculty had become a battleground. Members of the ABVP, the RSS-affiliated student organization, were there too. The two sides faced off, and things turned ugly.

A YouTuber who identifies as a Brahmin journalist came forward with a harrowing account. She claimed she was assaulted and subjected to rape threats by what she described as “a mob of nearly 500 people.” According to her, the crowd turned on her after asking about her caste. She recounted: “The girls around me whispered rape threats in my ears just because I am a Brahmin; ‘aaj tu chal, tera nanga parade niklega,’ is what they said.”

But that’s not the only version of events. AISA activists and another journalist on the scene offered a different picture. They said the woman had made casteist remarks, had shoved another woman to the ground, had provoked the crowd. The Delhi Police, as they often do in such situations, registered cross-FIRs at the Maurice Nagar police station. Both sides got to file complaints. Both sides got to be victims. Sections related to molestation, assault and criminal intimidation were invoked. The official record would show that something happened, but not what, or why, or who bore responsibility.

When the Obscene Surfaces

This is exactly the kind of moment Teltumbde writes about in The Persistence of Caste. In his analysis of the Khairlanji massacre, he argues that violence against Dalits in contemporary India isn’t some leftover from a premodern past. It’s a modern phenomenon, the obscene erupting into visibility when the established order faces a genuine challenge.

Think about what happened at the Arts Faculty. The rape threats, whether whispered or shouted. The casteist remarks, whoever initiated them. The physical confrontation. None of this looks like the old spectacles of sovereign power, where kings or landlords publicly punished those who transgressed. This is different. This is clandestine, community-sanctioned violence, emerging in the chaos of a protest, later revealed through competing media narratives and activist accounts. It’s an attempt to violently reassert a crumbling local hegemony to remind certain people of their place.

Teltumbde puts it plainly: “The violence against Dalits is not a relic of the past but a contemporary phenomenon, rooted in the challenge that Dalit assertion poses to the social order. When Dalits refuse to accept their subordinate position—when they own land, seek education, assert their rights—the dominant castes respond with violence to restore the ‘common sense’ of hierarchy.”

This is what the UGC regulations represented: a challenge to the campus’s caste order. And the violence at Arts Faculty regardless of which account you believe, regardless of who struck first was the obscene striking back. It was an attempt to restore common sense, to remind everyone that some things don’t change.

The Ban

Four days later, on February 17, Delhi University imposed a month-long ban on all public meetings, processions and demonstrations. The official reason cited “information received indicating that unrestricted public gatherings… may lead to obstruction of traffic, threats to human life, and disturbance of public peace.” The order prohibited assemblies of five or more people, the shouting of slogans and the carrying of hazardous materials.

The vice-chancellor made a public appeal. He urged teachers and students to “maintain trust in the judicial process.” He emphasised that “social harmony is the greatest thing.”

On the surface, this is reasonable. After violence, a cooling-off period. After confrontation, a return to order. The university administration performs its proper role: neutral arbiter, guardian of peace, defender of harmony.

But as Mithuraj Dhusiya, an associate professor at Hansraj College, pointed out, the ban may be using “traffic concerns as a pretext to curb mobilisations over issues such as appointments… and the recent suspensions of teachers.” In other words, the official scene of administrative order becomes a mechanism for silencing the obscene eruption into visibility. Don’t protest. Don’t gather. Don’t shout. Trust the process. Have faith in the institutions.

The Double Stage

What the campus revealed in these weeks was its nature as a double stage. On the visible scene, everything is proper. The university issues statements. The police file cross-complaints. The vice-chancellor appeals for harmony. The ban is justified by traffic concerns and public safety. The official discourse is one of neutrality, balance, procedural correctness.

But beneath this scene, operating in the shadows, is the obscene of caste violence and its contestation. The whispered rape threats. The casteist remarks shouted in the heat of confrontation. The student organizations mobilizing along caste lines. The informal networks through which ABVP coordinates its response. The everyday humiliations that never make it into police reports. All of this operates off-stage, invisible to the official record, yet determining everything that happens on it.

The university, like the state more broadly, manages the boundary between scene and obscene. It decides what becomes visible and what remains hidden. It frames some things as political and therefore suspect, other things as administrative and therefore neutral. It preserves existing power relations while sincerely believing it’s just keeping the peace.

The obscene erupted at Arts Faculty on February 13. For a moment, it was visible. Then the scene moved quickly to push it back into invisibility. The ban. The appeal for harmony. The trust in the judicial process. All the familiar mechanisms for managing the boundary, for ensuring that what must not be seen stays unseen.

V. The State: Schizophrenia Institutionalized

The ruling BJP’s response to the controversy reveals something deeper than political calculation, though calculation is certainly part of it. What we see is the Indian state caught in a contradiction it cannot resolve, speaking out of both sides of its mouth because it is itself split down the middle. Anand Teltumbde has spent years analysing this condition, and his framework helps us understand what’s really going on.

The State’s Caste Character

In Republic of Caste: Thinking Equality in the Time of Neoliberal Hindutva (2018), Teltumbde makes an argument that should be obvious but somehow still needs saying. The Indian state is not some neutral arbiter floating above society, untouched by caste. It is itself constituted by caste relations. Its institutions, its personnel, its everyday practices all are shaped by the caste order. This is why the state can simultaneously enact progressive laws and fail to implement them. This is why it can speak the language of equality while quietly reproducing hierarchy.

The UGC controversy is a perfect illustration. Through the University Grants Commission, the state produced genuinely progressive regulations aimed at protecting Dalit, Tribal, and OBC students from the violence they face on campus. This was the state acting in its constitutional identity, the identity that promises substantive equality, that acknowledges historical injustice, that tries to make things right.

But then the Supreme Court stayed those regulations and the political leadership welcomed the stay. The same state that created the protections now celebrated their suspension. Two voices, coming from the same body. This is not hypocrisy in the simple sense. This is a deeper split—between what the state formally commits to and what it actually is.

The Forward-Backward Dilemma

The Indian Express captured this dilemma well in its reporting. The BJP, over the last decade, has worked hard to expand its base beyond the upper castes that traditionally supported it. Since the 1990s, upper-caste communities in northern, western and central India have preferred the BJP, while OBCs, SCs, and STs tended toward Congress or regional parties. But under Narendra Modi, the party has made serious inroads into these communities, through higher representation in candidate lists and ministerial positions, through appointing Dalits and Tribals to top constitutional posts like President and Vice-President, through linking Hindutva issues to caste optics.

As Seshadri Chari, former editor of the RSS-linked magazine The Organiser, put it: “The BJP’s Ram Temple, Article 370 and other issues were basically an expression of cultural nationalism… However, the Opposition continued to come out with strategies to counter it. The Congress has recently decided to counter the BJP’s Hindutva cultural nationalism by playing on the caste fault line. The BJP has answered this by putting its core agendas within a caste framework.”

This is the context in which the UGC regulations landed. They put the government in a genuine quandary. An ABVP insider noted that even some pro-Hindutva influencers—like author Anand Ranganathan—have been critical of the BJP on this count. “The Congress’s criticism does not matter that much,” the insider said, “but such voices are taken seriously by common middle-class supporters of the BJP and the Sangh.”

The dilemma is real. If the government supports the regulations, it risks alienating the upper-caste base that still forms the core of its support. If it opposes them, it undermines its carefully cultivated image as a party that cares about OBC and Dalit interests. There is no clean solution, only management of the contradiction.

Two Voices, One State

Watch how the state speaks in this controversy. Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan offered what was described as a “blanket assurance”, the regulations would not be misused, and no one would face harassment. This is the constitutional voice, affirming protection, promising fairness, addressing the scene.

But simultaneously, the government welcomed the Supreme Court stay that suspended the regulations. The ABVP national organizing secretary, Ashish Chauhan, explained that the organization had welcomed the stay because “some words were unclear,” adding that “the groups to be protected need protection” while “other groups should not fear any misuse.”

This is the political voice, addressing the obscene. It acknowledges the anxieties simmering among the upper-caste base. It reassures them that their fears are heard. It frames the stay not as a defeat for equality but as a clarification, a fine-tuning, a protection against misuse.

Two voices, speaking from the same state, to different audiences, about the same regulations. They cannot be reconciled because the state itself cannot be reconciled, split between its constitutional identity and its actual embeddedness in caste society. This is what Teltumbde means when he says the state is not above caste but constituted by it. It cannot simply decide to be neutral. It speaks out of both sides of its mouth because it has two mouths.

The Ambedkar Parallel

Outlook India drew a parallel that’s worth sitting with. When B.R. Ambedkar proposed the Hindu Code Bill in parliament, he faced “aggressive resistance” that reflected, in the magazine’s words, “an attempt to preserve a conservative social order rather than uphold constitutional values.” When Jawaharlal Nehru eventually withdrew the bill, the mouthpiece of the Arya Mahila Hitkarini Mahaparishad celebrated it as the “victory of divine forces over demonic forces.”

Then as now, reforms aimed at addressing structural inequality were framed as attacks on tradition. Then as now, they were called divisive, threatening to social harmony. Then as now, the state retreated in the face of upper-caste mobilization.

The parallel is instructive because it shows how little has changed. The specific issues are different—the Hindu Code Bill addressed women’s rights within family law, the UGC regulations address caste discrimination in higher education. But the underlying dynamic is the same. The constitutional promise of equality collides with the social reality of hierarchy. And when that collision happens, the state, constituted as it is by that hierarchy finds ways to manage the collision without resolving it.

Nehru withdrew the bill. The Supreme Court stayed the regulations. Different times, different institutions, same outcome. The state speaks its two voices, and the obscene continues its work, mostly unseen.

VI. Dalit Counter-Mobilisation: Forcing the Obscene into Visibility

Against all of this, the Court’s blindness, the state’s split voice, the violence on campus, the ban on protest, Dalit students, activists and their allies keep organising. They keep forcing the obscene into visibility. This is not just activism. It is, in Guru’s terms, theorizing from below. In Teltumbde’s, it is counter-hegemonic assertion.

Guru: Knowledge from the Obscene

In The Cracked Mirror, Guru makes a claim that cuts deep. Dalit experience is not raw material waiting to be processed by upper-caste theorists into proper knowledge. It is itself a site of knowledge production. The people who have been pushed into the obscene see things that the people on the scene cannot. Not because they’re smarter, but because of where they stand.

“The experience of humiliation is not just an object of analysis but a source of critical insight,” Guru writes. “Those who have been pushed into the obscene have a perspective on the scene that those who occupy it cannot access. Theorizing from the obscene is not a supplement to mainstream theory but a challenge to its very foundations.”

Think about what this means. The mothers’ petition. The Dalit student protests. The work of scholars like Anil Chamadia. These are not just people demanding things. They are producing knowledge. They are refusing to let Dalit experience be dismissed as anecdotal, as merely personal, as insufficiently theoretical. They are insisting that the scene confront what it has worked so hard to exclude.

The Mothers who wouldn’t disappear

The UGC regulations exist because of this struggle. They exist because Radhika Vemula and Abeda Tadvi, mothers of Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi, filed a joint petition in the Supreme Court. They didn’t have to do that. They could have grieved privately, quietly, the way the scene prefers. Instead, they dragged the reality of campus discrimination into the national eyes cape.

Their lawyers submitted a number: 115 students took their own lives between 2004 and 2024. Many of them Dalit. The UGC itself filed an affidavit in October 2023 admitting that caste discrimination against Dalit students was not some “unfounded presumption” but an actual, documented reality.

The mothers’ petition made visible what the obscene had rendered invisible. The suicides. The daily humiliations. The institutional failures that everyone knew about but no one named. The regulations were the state’s response, inadequate, contested, and now stayed, but a response nonetheless. Forced visibility produces results, even if those results are then rolled back.

Refusing to Disappear Again

The Supreme Court stayed the regulations. DU banned protests. The scene did what it always does: tried to push the obscene back into invisibility. But organizations like AISA keep mobilizing. Students keep protesting. They refuse to let the obscene return to comfortable darkness.

Feminism in India put it plainly: “The decision to halt the regulations is just another attempt at denying basic dignity to Dalits and keeping the caste system in place.” The counter-protests are an answer to this. They say: we saw what you tried to hide. We’re not going to un-see it just because you’re uncomfortable.

Teltumbde: Why Mobilisation Matters

Teltumbde, writing about the protests after the Khairlanji massacre, captures what’s at stake in this kind of mobilization. He says the protests weren’t really about getting justice for one family, though that mattered too. They were about something bigger: forcing the state and society to confront the reality of caste violence that the official scene works so hard to deny. They were an attempt to shatter the hegemony of denial, to make the obscene visible.

The same is true here. The mobilizations around the UGC regulations are not just about supporting a particular policy. They’re about the fundamental question of whether caste will be permitted to continue its hidden work, or whether it will be forced into visibility and thereby into contestation.

What the Numbers Mean

Anil Chamadia pointed to something striking: reported discrimination cases went up by 118.4%. The scene might look at this and see a problem, too many complaints, too much disruption. But Chamadia sees it differently. The increase, he says, is “directly linked to growing awareness among marginalised students.”

When Dalit students enter universities in larger numbers. When they refuse to accept humiliation silently. When they organise and protest and demand accountability. The obscene gets forced into visibility. The numbers go up. And then the backlash comes, the violence, the protests bans, and the Supreme Court stays. This is the dynamic Teltumbde describes. Dalit assertion provokes upper-caste violence, which provokes further Dalit mobilization. The boundary between scene and obscene becomes a site of continuous struggle.

The Intellectual Work

None of this happens in a vacuum. The “growing awareness” Chamadia talks about is produced, in part, by the intellectual work of scholars like Guru and Teltumbde themselves. They have given language to experiences that were previously suffered in silence. They have provided theoretical frameworks, like the scene/obscene dialectic that help people understand their situation and act upon it.

This is what Guru means by theorising from the obscene. Not just describing oppression. Producing the conceptual tools for overcoming it. Dalit students now have a vocabulary for naming what they experience. They have legal categories, “caste discrimination,” “hostile environment,” “institutional failure” that were forged through decades of struggle. They have frameworks that help them see that their individual humiliation is not just personal bad luck but structural violence.

The UGC controversy is, in part, a testament to the success of this intellectual project. The backlash is real, the violence is real, the stay is real. But so is the visibility. So is the mobilisation. So is the refusal to disappear.

The obscene keeps erupting. The scene keeps trying to push it back. That struggle—unequal, ongoing, with no guaranteed outcome—is where we are.

VII. Theoretical Synthesis: The Controversy as Exemplar of Caste’s Schizophrenic Modernity

The UGC controversy illustrates every dimension of our theoretical framework, now enriched by the insights of Teltumbde and Guru:

The controversy reveals that caste’s modernity is not defined by its disappearance but by its strategic disaggregation. Power flows by maintaining the split between a disavowing public scene and a vibrant private obscene. The UGC regulations attempted to extend the scene’s reach into the obscene, to make the state’s power felt in the intimate spaces where caste actually lives. The backlash was the obscene defending itself, refusing to be illuminated.

The Supreme Court’s intervention, staying the regulations, questioning their definitional logic suspended the outcome. But the dialectic continues. Every protest, every counter-protest, every legal argument, every editorial, is a skirmish on the boundary between scene and obscene. And as our framework teaches us, that boundary is where power does its most important work.

Conclusion: The Dialectic’s Latest Act

The UGC controversy is not an isolated policy dispute. It never was. It is the latest act in the long drama of caste’s schizophrenic modernity—the permanent, unresolved tension between a constitutional scene that promises equality and a social obscene that quietly, persistently reproduces hierarchy.

The regulations did not emerge from nowhere. They came from a specific genealogy of struggle. The mothers of Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi, who could have grieved in private and instead filed a joint petition in the Supreme Court. The 115 student suicides between 2004 and 2024, many of them Dalit, each one a story the scene preferred not to see. The 118 percent increase in reported discrimination, which the scene reads as disruption but which really measures growing awareness, growing refusal to suffer in silence. The regulations were an attempt to create mechanisms that would penetrate the obscene, that would make visible what the scene had rendered invisible. They were an attempt—flawed, contested, but genuine—to fulfil the constitutional promise of substantive equality.

The backlash revealed the power of the obscene. It was not organized in any formal sense, not announced in advance, not easy to document. That is precisely its strength. Upper-caste students mobilized through informal networks, through what Teltumbde calls “social capital”, the connections that operate off-stage, invisible to the official record. They framed themselves as victims, as the truly vulnerable ones. And they succeeded. They convinced the Supreme Court that regulations designed to protect Dalit students actually threatened “social harmony.” The narrative of false complaints, of reverse discrimination, of the general category as the real victim—this is the hegemony of denial operating at full capacity. This is what Teltumbde means by “camouflaged” caste, what Guru analyses as the scene’s epistemic violence. It does not need to defend hierarchy openly. It only needs to make hierarchy invisible, to make the structures that produce vulnerability disappear, to make the vulnerable look like the powerful.

The state, caught between its constitutional obligations and its political base, did what it always does in such moments. It spoke with two voices. One voice assured the constitutional audience that protections would remain, that no one would be harassed. The other voice, quieter but more decisive, welcomed the judicial stay that rescued the government from its dilemma. Two voices, same state. The schizophrenia is not a bug; it is the feature.

The campus revealed itself as a double stage. On the visible scene, the university administration performed neutrality, issuing statements, filing cross-FIRs, appealing for harmony, banning protests in the name of traffic. Beneath this scene, the obscene did its work: the confrontation at Arts Faculty, the whispered rape threats, the casteist remarks, the informal mobilization along caste lines. And when the obscene erupted into visibility on February 13, the scene moved quickly to push it back. The protest ban was not about traffic. It was about management. It was about re-establishing the boundary.

And throughout, Dalit students, activists, and intellectuals continued the work of forcing the obscene into visibility. They organized, protested, theorised and refused to let the moment pass. This is what Guru calls “theorizing from the obscene”, not supplementing mainstream theory but challenging its foundations. This is what Teltumbde analyses as counter-hegemonic assertion and not just demanding inclusion but shattering the terms of exclusion. It is the work of breaking the double stage.

The Supreme Court will hear the matter again in March 2026. Whatever it decides, the controversy has already revealed something fundamental about the architecture of caste power in contemporary India. It has shown that the boundary between “scene” and “obscene” is not natural. It is political. It is constantly contested, constantly renegotiated. It has shown that the struggle for caste equality is, at its heart, a struggle over visibility. Over what can be seen, what can be spoken, what can be named. Over who gets to define reality.

As long as the schism persists, as long as the official scene disavows what the social obscene reproduces, caste will endure in its schizophrenic modern form. It will adapt, mutate, camouflage itself. It will learn new languages, wear new clothes, inhabit new institutions. But its very adaptability is also its vulnerability. Each time it is forced into visibility, each time the obscene is dragged into the scene, the possibility of transformation opens. Each eruption is also an opportunity.

The project of annihilation, as Ambedkar envisioned it, requires nothing less than the demolition of the double stage. Not just reforming the scene. Not just documenting the obscene. But destroying the architecture that keeps them separate. The UGC controversy is one battle in that long war. Not the first, not the last. But a battle nonetheless.

Teltumbde writes that “caste’s genius lies in its plasticity.” He is right. But plasticity cuts both ways. What can adapt can also be broken. What can mutate can also be killed. Each moment of forced visibility is a wound. The question is whether enough wounds can be inflicted, enough times, in enough places, to bring the whole structure down?

Guru teaches us that this struggle must be waged not only on the streets and in the courts but in the realm of theory itself. Theorising from the obscene, centering Dalit experience, refusing the scene’s abstractions, insisting on the specificity of caste violence is not a supplement to political work. It is political work. It is the work of producing the conceptual tools that make visible what the scene works so hard to hide. This article has attempted to contribute to that project, using the tools of Foucault and Gramsci while remaining grounded in the intellectual traditions of Dalit Studies. The scene/obscene dialectic, enriched by Teltumbde’s analysis of camouflage and Guru’s insistence on theorizing from below, offers a framework for understanding not only this controversy but the broader condition of caste in contemporary India.

The double stage still stands. Its foundations hold, for now. But they are cracking. Every protest, every petition, every act of theorising from below is another crack. The question is not whether the structure will fall—all structures fall, eventually. The question is whether we will be the ones to bring it down, and what we will build in its place.

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

References

Chamadia, Anil. Interview with University World News, 2026.

Feminism in India. “What The 2026 UGC Regulations Revealed About Caste, Merit and Savarna Victimhood.” February 9, 2026.

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

The Hindu. “As SC stays UGC equity rules, protection to marginalised castes came from a Constitutional promise to end ‘historical oppression’.” January 30, 2026.

Hindustan Times. “Protests, counter-FIRs, now a ban at DU: Campus on the boil over UGC rules against caste discrimination | Explained.” February 16, 2026.

India Today. “Travesty of UGC Campus Rules 2026: They turn a protective shield into a deadly sword.” January 29, 2026.

The Indian Express. “As UGC row simmers, why BJP dilemma over ‘forward vs backward’ has deepened.” February 18, 2026.

Outlook India. “The Socio-Cultural Debate Over the UGC’s Equity Regulations.” February 16, 2026.

Supreme Court Observer. “Supreme Court stays 2026 UGC equity regulations.” January 29, 2026.

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

Teltumbde, Anand. Dalits: Past, Present and Future. Routledge, 2016.

Teltumbde, Anand. Republic of Caste: Thinking Equality in the Time of Neoliberal Hindutva. Navayana, 2018.

Thorat Committee Report on AIIMS Discrimination, 2007.

University World News. “New rules aim to tackle campus-based caste discrimination.” January 20, 2026.

University Grants Commission (Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions) Regulations, 2026. The Gazette of India.

Zee News. “Delhi University enforces 30-day curbs on protests after UGC unrest.” February 17, 2026.

Related:

The Double Stage: Caste’s Schizophrenic Modernity between Spectacle and Shadow

The Elephant in the Mud: Crisis of Identity Politics and BSP

UGC Guidelines 2026: AISA Protest at Delhi University followed by sexual abuse allegations amid police presence

The post The Double Stage on Campus: Caste, crisis & UGC equity regulations (2026) controversy 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.

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Following my blog “AAP’s rising star in Gujarat or guardian of patriarchy? The Gopal Italia dilemma”, I received an interesting comment from social activist Sudhir Kariyar, who works among tribal workers in Gujarat. The blog discusses how Italia, who won a by-election, wrote a letter to the Gujarat chief minister claiming that, on getting involved in love affair, young girls are being “lured” and “trapped” by wedding mafias across the state, urging the authorities to take legal action against this.

In his message, Kariyar said that the well-known Gujarati writer Pannalal Patel’s novel, written in 1931, “about the inter-caste love story between Patel and Barber caste individuals,” should be sent to Gopal Italia. He referred to a social media post by Dalit rights leader Raju Solanki, whom I have known for some time, which featured the cover of Patel’s novel Malela Jeev (Meeting Souls).

I looked up Raju Solanki’s timeline and found that he not only shared the novel’s cover but also posted a write-up on it. In his powerful piece—without once mentioning Italia by name—Solanki dismantles the AAP rising star’s contention that love marriages are an organized racket. Solanki titled his post Balela Jeev (Burnt Lives), a pun on Malela, symbolically referring to Italia.

Let me quote Solanki. He calls Malela Jeev a remarkable novel, recommending it to anyone who has not read it. The novel, he says, tells the “love story of Kanji, from the Patel caste, and Jeevi, from the Valand caste. Because of caste restrictions, they cannot marry. On the advice of his friend, Kanji convinces Jeevi to marry Dhulo, an ugly man from her village, so that she can remain close to him.”

Jeevi agrees and marries Dhulo. “A suspicious and violent man, Dhulo beats Jeevi daily. Kanji moves to the city for work, while Jeevi, weary of her life in the village, one day tries to commit suicide by mixing poison into bread. By mistake, Dhulo eats it and dies. Widowed Jeevi becomes the subject of public slander and eventually loses her sanity. Kanji returns from the city and takes her away with him. The story ends there.”

Providing historical context for when Pannalal Patel wrote the novel (1941), Solanki says, “it was still 14 years before the system of ganot (forced agricultural labor) would be abolished. The Patels were ganotiya (bonded labourers) of the landlords. In the Sarth Gujarati Dictionary, Kanbi was defined as slave and Valand as useless person. Thus, at that time, both Patels and Valands were considered Shudra castes of equal status, yet marriage between them was unthinkable. It still is today.”

Solanki quotes Kanhaiyalal Maneklal Munshi, a well-known Gujarati litterateur, as telling the Gujarati Sahitya Parishad in 1934 that among Gujaratis “men outnumber women,” pointing out that in the Bombay region, which included Gujarat, for every 1,000 men there were 900 women; in India as a whole, there were 950; but as for the Patel community, “there were only 772 women for every 1,000 men.”

Adds Solanki, “Because of this shortage of women, Patels became a gender-challenged caste. Patel youths married tribal girls, and even fairs were held to bring brides from the Kurmi caste of far-off Bihar.” Yet, alluding to Italia’s opposition to love marriages, he adds, “When it comes to their own daughters marrying for love, they oppose it.”

He wonders, “In 1941, Pannalal Patel wrote a great novel on the theme of love marriage. Who today will write about the burnt lives who oppose love marriages?”

Praising Malela Jeev in an online lifestyle journal, one Snehal Parmar writes, as a “huge fan” of romantic Gujarati novels, that in Malela Jeev Pannalal Patel “illustrates the power of true love: it always lasts, always wins, and always has won. In contrast, false love quickly fades and cannot stand up to the power of true love.” Parmar adds, “The writer expresses the difficulty of finding and sustaining true love in today’s age.”

Indeed, Pannalal Nanalal Patel (1912–1989) is renowned for his seminal novels Malela Jeev (1941) and Manvini Bhavai (1947), having written over 61 novels and 26 short story collections. He is celebrated for using the local dialect and idioms of the Sabarkantha region, making his characters and settings feel vividly authentic.

Keen observers note that the timeless tragedy of Pannalal Patel’s Malela Jeev resonates with chilling relevance in today’s Gujarat, particularly in light of recent remarks by AAP MLA Gopal Italia concerning inter-caste love marriages. Italia’s controversial statements, questioning the social harmony of such unions and suggesting they sow discord within communities, starkly contradict the core message woven into Patel’s classic.

It is pointed out that Italia’s assertion that inter-caste love marriages lead to “social and community tensions” attempts to shift blame from the entrenched caste system and its proponents to the individuals daring to defy it. Malela Jeev, by contrast, powerfully refutes this notion by demonstrating that the tension does not arise from love itself, but from the judgmental, exclusionary responses of the community.

Courtesy: Counterview

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The case was heard by Justice N. Anand Venkatesh, who was responding to a writ petition filed by Venkatesan, seeking permission for himself and fellow community members to worship and perform rituals during the temple festival—an event traditionally open to the local public.

Despite resistance from certain quarters, including the submission by a Special Government Pleader that the temple was not under the administration of the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) Department, the Court maintained that religious access cannot be determined by departmental control but by the principles of constitutional equality and human dignity.

Caste and community are creations of human beings; God is always neutral: HC

In his order, Justice Venkatesh observed that any temple open to the public acquires the status of a public temple, regardless of whether it is managed by the HR&CE Department or not.

In such a scenario, the judge said, “irrespective of the caste or community of the devotees, they must be permitted to offer their prayers to God. Caste and community are the creations of human beings; God is always considered to be neutral.”

The court further emphasised that denying access to a place of worship on the basis of caste is not only unconstitutional but an affront to human dignity. It violates the foundational values of the Indian Constitution and the spirit of inclusiveness in Hinduism.

“This can never be permitted in a country governed by the rule of law,” the Court stated, firmly anchoring its view in legal precedent and social justice.

Referring to Section 3 of the Tamil Nadu Temple Entry Authorisation Act, 1947, the judge reiterated that “Every Hindu, irrespective of the caste or sect to which they belong, shall be entitled to enter any Hindu temple and offer worship therein—notwithstanding any law, custom, or usage to the contrary.”

All classes of Hindus are permitted to enter into the temple and participate in the festival: HC

The Court went on to clarify that any restriction imposed on entry based on caste constitutes an actionable wrong—one that can invite both civil and criminal liability. Justice Venkatesh reminded that “the Act was brought into force as a policy decision by the State Government to remove the disabilities imposed on certain classes of Hindus with respect to entry into Hindu temples.”

The High Court directed the concerned authorities to ensure that all Hindus, irrespective of caste or community, are allowed full access to the temple and its associated rituals during the festival. The Court made it clear that any obstruction or discrimination must be met with immediate legal action.

It also instructed the local administration to ensure law and order is maintained, and that no disturbance is created under the guise of religious custom or tradition.

This ruling is not just a legal order, but a reaffirmation of the principle that faith transcends caste. In a time when discrimination still exists in subtle forms, the Court’s stand serves as a reminder of India’s constitutional promise—that equality and dignity are not privileges but rights for all.

The Order of Madras High Court Dated 17.07.2025 can be read here:

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It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn’t received much attention from India’s education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

When Kumar — who is said to have been the main mind behind Prof Yashpal’s seminal report “Learning Without Burden” — mentioned Gijubhai, I vaguely recalled my father, Jagubhai Shah, also referring to him as a great Gandhian educationist. As often happens in youth, I didn’t pay much attention to what my father said about him. I vaguely remember my father telling me he had been associated as an art teacher at Ghar Shala, or perhaps Dakshinamurti Balmandir, both founded by Gijubhai for his educational experiments.

My recent interest in Gijubhai, also known as “Mucchadi Maa” (mother with moustaches), stems from a contact I received from someone in Pune — of Mamata Pandya, my school classmate. I was told she is Gijubhai’s granddaughter and had created a site: https://gijubhaibadheka.in. After leaving school in 1970, I met her sometime in the early 1990s after I joined The Times of India, Ahmedabad, as assistant editor. It was at the Centre for Environment Education (CEE), where I had been invited to speak on media and the environment. I was told she had spent around 35 years at CEE.

This prompted me to recall two contrasting viewpoints on Gijubhai that exist in Gujarat today. One, a critical perspective, is from top Dalit rights leader Martin Macwan, who had written a critique of Gijubhai objecting to his views on Dalits several years ago.

During a recent interaction with Macwan, I asked him specifically about his objections. He said that while Gijubhai’s contributions to pedagogy were unparalleled (“he used the Montessori method of teaching in Indian circumstances”), he suffered from the same casteist attitudes that plagued most Gandhians of his time.

“My article was published in the journal Naya Marg (now defunct), edited by the late Indubhai Jani,” he said, and went on to describe a story written by Gijubhai for children. “The story is about a princess who falls in love with what Gijubhai calls a bhangi. The term itself is derogatory. The boy wants to marry the princess.”

Macwan continued, “Her brother, the prince, lays down a condition: she can marry the boy if he wins a gambling game. The prince loses, and the princess marries the boy, who lives in a low-lying area inhabited by so-called untouchables. She is unhappy with the place. Seeing her distress, the king attacks the locality, destroys it, and ‘frees’ the princess. The story ends with the ruler’s family living happily ever after.”

“What message does this give, especially to young minds?” Macwan asked, adding, “Such views can be found in other stories by Gijubhai as well. I read many to understand his perspective.” A similar view, he said, is shared by Joseph Macwan, a well-known Gujarati litterateur, “who has also written critically about Gijubhai.”

Martin Macwan, Sukhdev Patel

 

He added, “And to those who say Gijubhai should be seen in the context of his times, I
want to remind them that the couple Jyotiba and Savitribai Phule, also educationists and living a generation earlier (in the 19th century), strongly opposed untouchability and passionately advocated for Dalit and women’s rights in Maharashtra.”

The other viewpoint comes from Gujarat’s well-known child rights leader Sukhdev Patel, who once told me that branding Gijubhai as casteist “overlooks” his immense contribution to pedagogy. A look at Gijubhai’s work suggests that while he opposed social discrimination and advocated inclusive education, there are no direct quotes in which he explicitly denounces caste discrimination.

At the institutions he established in Bhavnagar, it is said that Gijubhai promoted the inclusion of marginalized groups, encouraged Dalits to join in, and facilitated education for all, regardless of caste. His educational philosophy was centred on child-centric learning, freedom, and respect — challenging the rigid and discriminatory norms of his time.

However, the farthest he went was to say things like: “Every child has the right to a quality education, regardless of their background or circumstances,” “Education is not a privilege; it’s a fundamental human right,” or “Children are not vessels to be filled with knowledge but lamps to be lit.”

Gijubhai also said, emphasizing the need for schools to adapt to children’s diverse needs: “It is not that they are unfit for the school. Rather, the school is unfit for them. The school is unable to teach them what they have the aptitude for.” He was, his defenders point out, critical of the conventional, exam-driven schooling system that treated children as passive recipients, and instead advocated activity-based learning, storytelling, music, and hands-on experiences — something Prof Yashpal’s report “Learning Without Burden” also emphasized.

It is precisely for this reason, it is pointed out, that Krishna Kumar, in a paper titled What is Worth Teaching?, laments: “We have failed to give Gijubhai the place he deserves in the national narrative of educational thought. His experiments in Bhavnagar were a far more radical challenge to colonial schooling than many better-known reform efforts.”

Courtesy: CounterView

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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 Coronation …

“By the beginning of 1673 the idea of a public coronation began to materialize, and when preparations were fully completed, the event took place at fort Raigad, on Saturday 5 June 1674, the day of the sun’s entering the constellation Leo.

The orthodox Brahman opinion was not favourable to Shivaji’s claim to be recognised as a Kshatriya by blood, although he had proved this claim by action. More than a thousand years had passed since such a ceremony was last performed, and on that account men’s memories had been entirely dimmed. All ancient learning of the Deccan had migrated to Benares after the invasion of Ala–ud–din Khilji and the Muslim conquest of the Deccan.

Ancient families noted for hereditary learning like the Devs, the Dharmadhikaris, the Sheshas, the Bhattas, the Maunis, had left their hearths and homes at Paithan, with all their sacred books, and opened their new university of letters on the bank of the holy Ganges. The ignorant unthinking folks of Paithan had now no voice of authority left in them. Benares now began to dominate Hindu thought and learning. So Shivaji had to negotiate with Gaga Bhatt of Benares, a learned representative of that school of Hindu law–givers. He was invited to Raigad to arrange the details in such a way as to suit the needs of the present moment as much as to conform to ancient usage.”

(New History of The Marathas, Govind Sakharam Sardesai).

(Archived from the October 2001 issue of Communalism Combat)

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Through a critical analysis of media narratives, state interventions, and cultural rhetoric, the article examines how the term “Love Jihad” taps into historical anxieties about caste boundaries and sexual control over Hindu (upper-caste) women. Additionally, it highlights how this narrative operates within a broader framework of Hindutva politics that seeks to maintain socio-religious boundaries and reinforce patriarchal control, therefore, its impact on the everyday lives of women in society.

Locating the violence

Behind the meticulous task of monitoring and verifying hate crime cases compiled by Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), integral to the organisation’s ‘Hate Hatao’ program across India, a trend can be discerned over the past four to six years. This regular monitoring is reflected in the Nafrat ka Naqsha (map) that meticulously depicts such classified incidents for ready reference. There have been multiple cases of crimes related to disrupting interfaith marriages, attacking Muslim men for “hanging out with Hindu women,” and vice versa by accusing couples involved in this association of “love jihad.”[1] For instance, on January 20, 2023, in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, a 24-year-old Hindu woman was celebrating her birthday with her friends when a mob, allegedly comprised of Bajrang Dal men, barged into the house and started assaulting the Muslim men on allegations of “Love Jihad.”[2] These Muslim men were later taken to the MIG Colony police station, where they were put in custody. The video of this incident went viral the next day.

In another case, on June 30, 2024, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal members[3] created a disturbance outside a Police station in protest against an interfaith marriage between a Hindu and Muslim couple after they applied to register the marriage in Uttar Pradesh’s Bijnor. A Hindu woman and a Muslim man had decided to get married and followed the appropriate legal procedure by applying for their marriage registration under the Special Marriage Act of 1954. As soon as the news of the couple’s application to register their marriage spread,[4] an appropriately readied mob hit the streets, staging aggressive demonstrations and making inflammatory statements to stop the marriage. The mob accused a couple of engaging in ‘love jihad,’ a conspiracy theory propagated by Hindu right-wing organisations to convey that Muslim men are luring Hindu women into both marriage and conversion. The mob threatened the police with aggravating communal tensions in the city if the marriage was not stopped! The couple had followed all legal procedures, submitting the necessary documents to the authorities in a move that should have been straightforward. However, their decision to marry was met with outrage from local right-wing Hindu groups. This incident also highlights the fragility of communal relations and the deep-seated biases that persist within Indian society.

In a fictional world, back in 2020, the jewellery brand Tanishq, part of the esteemed Tata Group, created an advertisement titled “Ekatvam,” a Sanskrit term that translates to “Unity.” The ad showcased the story of an interfaith couple, specifically, a Hindu woman who had married into a Muslim family. The narrative unfolded around a baby shower ceremony organised by the Muslim in-laws to honour their Hindu daughter-in-law, highlighting themes of acceptance, harmony, and the blending of different cultural practices. The advertisement was intended to convey a message of inclusivity, celebrating the unity of cultures through gestures of love and familial support. However, the ad faced a significant backlash on social media, particularly from organised right wing trolls associated with specific segments of Hindu nationalist groups and right-wing activists, who accused the brand of promoting an agenda referred to as “love jihad,” the alleged encouragement of Muslim men to marry Hindu women to convert them.[5]

This criticism so far escalated (or was made to escalate!) on social media — hashtags like #BoycottTanishq began to trend—leading to panic in the corporate entity that had put out the ad, attempting a message of social cohesion. With calls for a boycott of the brand gaining momentum online, Tanishq was forced to withdraw the advertisement in response to the mounting pressure. The entity issued an official apology, clarifying that they had aimed to spread a message of peace and togetherness, not “to provoke or offend.” In a post truth India, messages of harmony and cohesion are considered offensive! The same ultra-nationalists who had previously admired Tata’s philanthropic contributions during the COVID-19 pandemic, even dubbing the Tata group “true nationalists” saw no problem in this violent and stark reaction to the Tanishq ‘Ekatvam’ ad, an ad which aimed to promote social harmony through the portrayal of a Hindu-Muslim family. Despite Tata’s well-crafted reputation for supporting communities in need, some viewers criticised Tanishq’s message of cultural inclusivity, viewing it through the lens of ‘Love Jihad.’ A similar controversy emerged after the series ‘The Suitable Boy’ aired on Netflix, which has the lead character, a Hindu girl called Lata, passionately kissing a Muslim boy against the backdrop of a temple. Politician Gaurav Tiwari from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) youth wing had claimed that this scene “hurt religious sentiments” of Hindus and demanded Netflix to remove the ‘objectionable’ scene and apologise for encouraging ‘love jihad.’ He also called for a boycott of the Netflix streaming platform.[6]

Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) has documented several cases illustrating the growing controversy and societal tension surrounding interfaith relationships in India as part of its Hate Watch initiative across India. Monitoring, acting on hate complaints and depicting trends is core to this programme. All these cases reveal a concerning trend in which couples from different faith backgrounds face increasing hostility, driven by strong currents of intolerance and division within society. This hostility is not isolated; instead, it reflects an organized and systematic effort to stigmatize and communalize interfaith unions. This article examines these patterns and explains the ideological connections to Brahmanical patriarchy behind such divisive societal practices.

‘Love Jihad’ and the organised nature of anti-Muslim hate narrative:

It is a well-established fact that interfaith and inter-caste marriages, regardless of the religion of the individuals involved, have been vehemently opposed in India. This opposition is not limited to Hindu-Muslim marriages. There are numerous instances where couples belonging to different faiths, including Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Sikhs, Jains, and also sub-castes of the same religion faced difficulties going ahead with their interfaith and inter-caste relationships. In 2009, the Kerala Catholic Bishops Council (KCBC),[7] a prominent body within Kerala’s Catholic Church, played a significant role in amplifying the narrative of ‘love jihad.’ The KCBC claimed that approximately 4,500 Christian women had been manipulated or ‘conned’ into relationships that resulted in their conversion to Islam.[8] These assertions by the Catholic Church in Kerala became a central point in discussions around the ‘love jihad’ controversy, contributing to its prominence in both state and national discourse. The BJP and various Hindutva organisations have escalated this issue by terming it a systematic agenda of the Muslims as a religious community to lure Hindu women and convert them to Islam as part of their larger goal of achieving demographic imbalance in South Asia through Ghazwa-e-Hind.[9]

Going back to its origin, the term “love jihad” first came into prominent public discussion in the states of Karnataka and Kerala. The “Hindu Janajagruti Samiti,” a Hindu nationalist organisation, first used the term “love jihad” in the year 2007 during their campaign of policing interfaith couples in public places.[10] However, it was not very popular in public discourse. After the cases emerged from Kerala in the year 2009, where two non-Muslim girls were converted after marriage to their respective Muslim partners, the term “love jihad” resurfaced. In those cases, girls who eloped with their Muslim partners initially expressed their desire to remain with their respective partners; later, they changed their statements and wished to return to their parents. This was the first time the term got an official mention of judicial proceedings while hearing the bail petitions of two Muslim youths involved. The judge ordered a police investigation to know in detail about the alleged “love jihad” movement.[11] However, the police inquiry did not find any substantial evidence proving the alleged “love jihad” movement among Muslims. These attempts to revive “love jihad” as a conspiracy theory did not gain much currency until 2014.

After the BJP came into power in 2014, they (and their offshoot organisations who work as the ‘brown shorts of the regime’) started utilising selective incidents of gender violence to divide the communities further and polarise them on communal lines for the political advantages, where victims belonged to the Hindu community and accused Muslims. In the recent past, in 2022, in Shraddha Walkar’s case- the gruesome murder of Shraddha Walkar by her live-in partner Aftab Poonawala in Chattarpur, Delhi, political leaders were seen peddling the conspiracy theory of “love jihad.” Poonawala admitted his crime in which he strangled Walker, chopping her body into 35 pieces, storing them in a refrigerator, and dumping them in the Mehrauli forest for 18 days.[12] Politicians like Giriraj Singh, BJP MP from Bihar, while referring to Walkar’s case, said, “Under a conspiracy, non-Muslims and Hindu girls are being targeted through love affairs, and if they refuse religious conversion, they face the fate that Shraddha faced. This is a heinous crime, and such incidents have forced the people of India to think.” Another BJP politician, Ram Kadam, an MLA from Maharashtra, wrote a letter to the Delhi Police Commissioner, seeking a proper inquiry into Shraddha’s case, investigating a possible ‘love jihad’ angle.

In another incident, Nitesh Rane, also a BJP MLA from Maharashtra, was also seen giving hate speeches after the tragic death of Yashashree Shinde, a Dalit girl from Uran, Maharashtra, who was a victim of gender violence committed by a Muslim youth, Dawood Shaikh.[13] Yashashree’s case also reveals how incidents involving Hindu-Muslim dynamics are manipulated for political purposes, but often in selective and inconsistent ways. In her case, the accused was a Muslim man, which initially sparked interest among Hindutva leaders and right-wing groups. In his inflammatory remarks, Rane has called for the “elimination” of Muslims who are involved in relationships with Hindu women, painting Muslims broadly as a threat to Hindu women’s safety, connecting and blaming the entire community for the crime committed by an individual.

By framing incidents of gender violence within a Hindu-Muslim narrative, political leaders like Giriraj Singh, Ram Kadam, and Nitesh Rane capitalise on communal fears (these are also regularly stoked and based on irrational misgivings), side-lining the actual issues of gendered violence and social justice. Human rights lawyer Asim Sarode has pointed out on his social media post that once the Yashashree case began receiving (and had a socially disruptive impact) attention for its Hindu-Muslim angle, Hindutva leaders exploited it to polarise communities and further fuel communal tensions. That is until the case remained a “hot topic of discussion” in a pliant and un-discerning media. Subsequently, no Hindutva leader cared for the individuals affected; the case was “dropped” with no consistent follow-up and financial help to the victim’s family. In fact, Sarode’s consistent follow-up ensured the government released help grants to the victim’s family.[14]

This pick-and-dispose attitude for propaganda purposes, followed by abandonment, reflects these leaders’ selective concern, often guided more by communal interest than genuine empathy or a commitment to justice for the victim. Yashashree’s case, especially in light of the selective outrage demonstrated by Hindutva leaders, rather than addressing the underlying issues of gender violence or caste-based discrimination, is exploited for political advantage, amplifying religious and communal divides. This approach highlights the instrumental use of gender violence cases within a polarising agenda that focuses less on justice and more on advancing communal agendas.

Hate speeches by influential right-wing leaders, politicians, and organisations have fuelled this rhetoric, painting Muslims as predators and stirring up fear among Hindu families about the safety and honour of their daughters. Such speeches often emphasise “protecting Hindu daughters,” drawing on the cultural symbolism of women as bearers of community honour. This narrative feeds into long-standing communal stereotypes and pre-existing biases, deepening societal divisions. These speeches deliberately aggravate tensions, fostering mistrust and hostility between communities. This rhetoric not only vilifies Muslim men but also contributes to a culture where Hindu women are seen as needing “protection” from supposed threats outside their community.

This trend of prevalent insecurities among parents over their daughter’s choice to marry Muslim men can also be observed in the case of Hadiya, formerly Akhila Asokan, a Hindu-born medical student from Kerala who converted to Islam and married a Muslim man named Shafin Jahan. Hadiya became a focal point of the “Love Jihad” controversy in 2017, the discourse around denying her both agency and autonomy.[15] After Akhila Asokan adopted Islam and her new name, Hadiya, her father, K M Asokan, contested her marriage in the Kerala High Court, alleging that she had been coerced into conversion. In response, the court “invalidated Hadiya’s marriage” and placed her in her parents’ custody, against her wish, a decision that reflected a broader societal suspicion toward interfaith marriages involving Muslim men and rejecting the agency for women to make decisions in her life.

Shafin Jahan took the matter to the Supreme Court of India, arguing that Hadiya had converted and married him to her wish. In a landmark ruling in March 2018, the Supreme Court overturned the Kerala High Court’s decision, asserting Hadiya’s right to freedom of religion and choice in marriage. However, the Supreme Court’s directive for an investigation by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) into the alleged “love jihad” aspect further highlighted the alarming trend of public pressure on judicial and investigating agencies rooted in the upper caste anxieties around interfaith relationships in India. Significantly, in October 2018, the NIA found no evidence of a coordinated conspiracy aimed at converting non-Muslim women to Islam through marriage. Therefore, ‘love jihad’ is very systematically created categories by right-wing ideologies across the religious and political spectrum, who presently enjoy proximity to those in power, in the union, and several states.

Love Jihad Laws: criminalising personal choices through state-endorsed Islamophobia.

In a widely shared video on social media, Pravin Togadia, president of the far-right extremist group Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), is seen administering an oath to hundreds of Hindus. The offender in the video uses Hate Speech when addressing a big audience and saying that they need to work on getting a Population control law, a “love jihad” law, and kicking out Bangladeshis (often a reference to Muslims) out of India. The incident was reported in the Palwal district of Haryana on 24^th January 2023.[16] Members of Hindu Janakrosh Morcha held three public rallies and processions in February 2023 in Maharashtra’s Vashi, Solapur, and Vasai towns, raising slogans in demand of “Hindu Rashtra” and making calls for laws against ‘love jihad’ and also raised slogans demanding capital punishment for interfaith marriages and alleged forceful conversions by calling “Hang Love Jihadis” repeatedly amidst a busy street.[17]

This narrative framed around the allegation that Muslim men are systematically converting non-Muslim women through marriage has become a powerful political tool, and its influence was evident in the judicial and legislative responses, which are not limited to one region or state; it has a more profound impact and consequences across the country. Such tales of organizing protest marches and mobilizing people around fake narratives of ‘love jihad’ to influence the state have paved the way for a slew of new State laws that penalise interfaith marriages under the guise of preventing forced conversions despite no credible evidence to support the prevalence of “love jihad.” The BJP-ruled states brought out laws that restricted individuals from converting to marry someone from other religions. The acts passed by the states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh were the first to introduce a clause regarding marriages. Uttarakhand’s Freedom of Religion Act, 2018 prohibits conversion by misrepresentation, force, fraud, undue influence, coercion, allurement, or marriage. Its punishment ranges from a jail term of one to five years and a fine, making it a non-bailable offense. Himachal Pradesh also passed a similar law in 2019. These laws are popularly called “love jihad” Laws.

Interestingly, legal history points to the fact of the existence of the Freedom of Religion Acts passed by different State governments in India at various points in time before BJP-ruled States passed these ‘love jihad’ laws. For example, the Orissa Freedom of Religion Act came into existence in 1967, the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act in 1968, the Chhattisgarh Freedom of Religion Act in 1968, and the Arunachal Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act in 1978. These acts, brought in at the time of the United Front governments, including the Jan Sangh in the 1960s, were limited to the issue of proselytization and conversion. They did not enter the terrain of the private lives of individuals. Recently passed laws directly violate fundamental freedoms and interfere with people’s choice of marrying someone from a different faith and religion.

In this context, the right to choose (and autonomy) of every other adult woman who either cohabited or married by choice, either through conversion or not, to another faith is prone to be questioned to the point that these choices are even criminalized. They are deemed invalid by the state and judiciary, which not only negates their right to marry but also places women under their parents’ custody. In December 2020, a video clip that showed a group of men, with orange scarves draped around their necks, mocking a woman in Moradabad town in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh went viral. “It’s because of people like you that this law had to be enacted,” one of the men scolds her. The hecklers were from Bajrang Dal, a hardliner Hindu group that supports the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The law they were talking about was the ‘Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance,’ which the Uttar Pradesh state has recently brought in to target ‘love jihad.’ The incident in the video took place on 5^th December. The Bajrang Dal activists handed over the 22-year-old woman, her husband, and his brother to the police, who then sent her to a government shelter and arrested the men.[18]

These legal enactments, all brought in by states governed by the BJP, restrict the movement and have forced adult women to live against their own will. Such laws reflect an implicit bias. They also reflect the patriarchal mind-set of our system that believes women cannot convert nor marry off their own free will, violating their fundamental rights guaranteed by our constitution. Such policy interventions underscore the tendency for state bodies to act paternalistically in cases of interfaith relationships, mainly where the individuals involved belong to a Muslim minority group and a Hindu majority group. Such proceedings set a troubling precedent that individual autonomy can be overruled if society or family alleges coercion, especially when the decision involves crossing religious boundaries.

Hadiya’s legal struggle brings to light the deep-seated challenges surrounding individual autonomy and fear of losing the honour of the family and the community due to interfaith relationships in India, mainly when such relationships involve religious conversion. However, her case symbolised the broader debate on the right to personal choice versus societal and familial pressures. This conflict has only intensified with the rise of the “love jihad” narrative.

On December 15, 2020, a 32-year-old labourer named Nadeeb faced accusations of “trapping” a married Hindu woman in a “net of love” with the intent of converting her. The Allahabad High Court stepped in, temporarily halting the arrest of a Muslim man from Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, under the state’s newly implemented anti-conversion law. In its ruling, the court asserted that both Nadeeb and the woman are adults who possess a “fundamental right to privacy” and are fully aware of the implications of their alleged relationship. The court further highlighted that “Article 25 of the Indian Constitution guarantees all individuals the freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practice, and propagate their religion, subject to public order, morality, and health, along with other provisions specified in Part III of the Constitution, which encompasses fundamental rights.”[19]

Such Court rulings, including the one in Hadiya’s favour, were a landmark for personal freedom, affirming the right to religious and marital choice. However, the Supreme Court’s decision to involve the National Investigation Agency (NIA) added a layer of surveillance and complexity. By directing India’s top counter-terrorism agency to investigate Hadiya’s marriage for any “love jihad” motives, the Court acknowledged, though indirectly, the influence of the “love jihad” discourse. This move illustrated how easily personal choices, such as conversion and marriage, can be transformed into matters of national security under a climate of Islamophobia, where Muslim motives are scrutinised under the assumption of potential threat. Despite the NIA’s eventual conclusion that there was no conspiracy, the investigation itself highlighted the extent to which individual relationships can become subject to governmental scrutiny when framed within communal narratives.

Legislative and judicial responses in such cases represent the struggle between individual rights and social or political agendas. When state and legal mechanisms are influenced by narratives like “love jihad,” personal freedoms, specifically for individuals from minority communities, are compromised under the guise of protecting societal interests. This politicisation of personal decisions reflects a government-endorsed Islamophobia that subtly sanctions anti-Muslim biases in the guise of public order, using such cases to fuel stereotypes and communal distrust. These “love jihad” cases stand as a reminder of the precarious position of individual autonomy within a framework where interfaith relationships become fodder for divisive narratives, affecting the personal lives of countless individuals. They also illustrate the potential for personal decisions, such as religious conversion and marriage, to become politicised under a climate of State-endorsed Islamophobia. These cases underscore the impact of “love jihad” narratives, which, despite lacking substantiation, have influenced state policies and judicial proceedings.

Love Jihad: upholding caste endogamy to preserve caste hierarchies by opposing conversion through marriage

The narratives surrounding interfaith marriages, often referred to as “love jihad,” and the associated anti-conversion campaigns aim to restrict social mobility by opposing conversions that arise from these marriages. Stemming from Hindutva ideology and its non-missionary religious practices, the antipathy of privileged sections to depressed castes who have historically converted (aspiring to a life of dignity) is evident. Historically, religious conversion among marginalised communities has been problematized and questioned. Though an act of active real and spiritual affirmation, ‘conversions’ have been reduced to acts of allurement.’ Caste being a brute reality of Hindu faith and practice, the historical notion of conversion is anathema as the act of conversion would snatch away the power of dominant caste hierarchies to maintain a cruel and exclusivist status quo. At the root of the resonant insecurities and accusations stems, therefore, from the non-missionary nature of the Hindu religion.

In the Hindu fold, there is no option of becoming part of the faith through conversion, and the only way to be Hindu is to be born in one of the thousands of castes that are segregated and placed in vertical hierarchies. Any individual leaving this religious order by quitting their caste membership and joining some other religious order directly affects the existence of Hinduism as a religion. Therefore, the religious conversions to other missionary religions, such as Islam and Christianity in the Indian context, are termed “violent acts” and are accused of “disturbing the social fabric and age-old traditions and culture in local communities.” Conversion has also been described as a conflict between “local and foreign religions.” These arguments try to portray Hinduism as a peaceful, non-missionary religion that never disrupts the socio-cultural fabric of other religious faiths, as it is alleged that other missionary religions do to Hinduism.

Arguably, however, defending the non-missionary nature of Hinduism is like effectively enforcing caste-based hierarchies, as there is no other way to transcend these caste boundaries within Hinduism. These narratives position Hinduism as a “non-missionary” religion and portray missionary religions as violent disruptors of local culture; they, however, conveniently overlook the violence and oppression inherent in enforcing caste and the social order it sustains. The claim of Hinduism as a non-missionary religion, rather than being peaceful, serves as a tool to confine individuals to their birth-determined caste and religion, ensuring no opportunity for social mobility or escape from marginalized positions. The politically coined ‘ghar wapasi’ (return to the fold) concept coined by a militant Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) is a product of the 1990s. It is also an effort to bring back converted Hindus to their “home” religion, but again to their respective caste. Inter-caste and interfaith marriages are ways people could transgress these rigid boundaries. Therefore, this rigidity of opposing inter-caste and interfaith marriages favours those born into privileged castes, as it reinforces their social advantage while keeping lower castes in a disadvantaged role.

In this context, Hindutva’s stance against “love jihad” and religious conversion extends beyond claims of cultural preservation; it represents a deliberate strategy that limits individual freedoms, mainly targeting those seeking dignity and equality outside the traditional caste framework. By framing interfaith relationships and conversions as threats, this stance works to preserve the status quo of caste hierarchies, blocking pathways for social mobility and preventing individuals from escaping their designated social roles. This restriction is incredibly oppressive for women, who are often cast as the bearers of the family’s honour. Within this ideology, a woman’s body, choices, and movements are policed to ensure she remains within the bounds set by her family and community, reinforcing control over her autonomy. Their decisions—especially in choosing life partners or religious identities—are scrutinized and, when seen as violations, are punished severely.

In India’s rigidly hierarchical caste structure, the “upper caste,” for instance, has often taken extreme measures to prevent alliances that would challenge caste boundaries. Numerous tragic cases reveal the extent to which upper caste families are willing to go to “protect” their caste’s perceived honour, with parents or other relatives sometimes resorting to the ultimate violence of honour killings of the low caste men. In March 2024, a couple belonging to the dominant Vellalar Gounder caste in Erode, Tamil Nadu, attempted to murder their Dalit son-in-law, J Subhash- an Adi Dravidar Man. The Vellalar Gounder couple Chandran and Chitra rammed their pick-up truck into a Dalit man’s bike while he was out to drop his younger sister Harini to school, intending to kill him for marrying their daughter, and ended up killing his sister.[20] In another case, on 14^th July 2024, a Dalit man, Amit Murlidhar Salunkhe, was attacked with sharp weapons by his father-in-law and brother-in-law belonging to the dominant OBC caste in the Sambhaji Nagar city of Maharashtra. He was immediately admitted to a local hospital, where he passed away on July 25.[21] His wife, Vidya Kirtishahi, told the police that her parents had cited the plot of the popular Marathi-language film Sairat while warning her against the marriage. Nagraj Manjule’s film, released in 2016, tells the story of a dominant-caste girl who falls in love with and eventually marries a lower-caste boy. They are hacked to death by members of the girl’s family in retaliation.

Though these instances frequently target low-caste men for marrying upper-caste women, there are also cases in which both partners have been killed for defying caste boundaries; in one of the cases where the whole Jat village of Ballah in Haryana is proud of the “honour killing” of a young couple. It was a dreadful killing of 21-year-old Sunitha, who was three weeks pregnant, and her 22-year-old husband, Jasbir Singh.[22] Their bodies, half-stripped, were laid out on the dirt outside Sunita’s father’s house for all to see, a sign that the family’s “honour” had been restored by their cold-blooded murder. An entire village stands united behind the act, proud and defiant, to teach the lesson to the couples thinking of entering into marital ties with upper-caste women of the same village.

In another case, in September 2024, a couple from the same upper castes married each other in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. The 19-year-old woman had to pay the price for it as her family members allegedly murdered her, as they disapproved of her relationship with a man who belonged to the same community and village as theirs. It is considered taboo for a man and woman of the same village to marry. Although the couple were unrelated, they were considered brothers and sisters in the community to which they belonged. The Kanbha police booked five people, including the woman’s father, uncles, and cousins, for not only killing her but also for trying to dispose of her body by secretly burning it in their Bakrol village in Daskroi tehsil.[23]

While honour killings are often associated with rigid practices among certain upper-caste families, similar cases have also been documented among so-called lower-caste and non-Hindu tribal communities. Recently, in September 2024, a tragic incident took place in the Koppal district of Karnataka, where the in-laws of a 21-year-old woman from the Madiga community, classified as Scheduled Caste (SC), was killed by poisoning her food.[24] This cruel act, which occurred after her marriage to a man from the Scheduled Tribe (ST) community, was unequivocally an act of honour killing that must be condemned. Such heart-breaking incidents are one of many reminders of the deep-seated violence women face, often rooted in the oppressive structures of a patriarchal society. While caste-based discrimination played a role in this case, the underlying issue speaks to a broader societal problem: the control exerted over women’s autonomy and choices in a male-dominated culture.

Like inter-caste marriages, interfaith marriages also challenge societal norms and religious boundaries, often provoking similar violent responses. The tragic case of Yagnik Dudharejiya, a Hindu man from the Devbhumi Dwarka district of Gujarat, exemplifies this. Yagnik was reportedly murdered by the relatives of his Muslim wife, who disapproved of their union.[25] Incidents like this highlight the difficulties young couples face in defying traditional expectations. Inter-caste and interfaith marriages, therefore, irrespective of one’s identity, have long been symbolic of the courage required to bridge societal divides and challenge entrenched norms. These unions are often seen as bold steps toward a more inclusive society, where individuals are free to marry based on love and personal choice rather than the constraints of caste, religion, or community expectations. However, these choices can come with profound challenges and risks of honour killing. Such deaths underscore the intense social pressures and familial opposition when they choose to defy traditional expectations, especially in conservative communities where boundaries between caste and religious identities remain deeply entrenched.

These incidents shed light on a broader societal issue: the resistance to relationships that cross religious or caste lines, driven by cultural traditions, fear of community backlash, and the perceived threat to family honour revolving around women. For such families, preserving cultural purity is women’s duty. It outweighs the importance of their personal happiness or individual choice. Couples who cross these lines have to endure social ostracism, harassment, and even violence, highlighting the intense polarization that persists around matters of marriage. Such violent reactions reflect a broader resistance to relationships that cross perceived social and cultural boundaries, demonstrating that the outrage often ascribed to “love jihad” is part of a larger pattern of controlling individual choices in the name of preserving the community’s “honour.” In reality, both interfaith and inter-caste couples challenge rigid social structures. They are met with hostility, suggesting that the fundamental resistance is to individual autonomy and choice, irrespective of religious affiliation. By selectively framing only interfaith relationships involving Muslim men as a “threat,” the “Love Jihad” narrative manipulates public sentiment and leverages communal tensions, ultimately side-lining the rights and autonomy of individuals. In this context, it becomes clear that “love jihad” is not a genuine social issue but rather a political farce designed to incite fear and demonize a particular community, obscuring the deeper societal problems that perpetuate discrimination and violence in the name of honour and tradition.

Conclusion:

Both interfaith and inter-caste couples present a challenge to entrenched social structures, facing hostility and violence for asserting their autonomy. This hostility symbolizes the fundamental resistance to individual freedom, irrespective of religious affiliation. The framing of “love jihad” as a threat allows for the selective targeting of Muslims while deliberately ignoring genuine issues of social and caste-based discrimination. In reality, the “love jihad” narrative serves as a political tool rather than a social issue, designed to fuel division, incite fear, and demonize Muslim communities while concealing the systemic caste-based hierarchies that restrict social mobility and perpetuate inequality. By branding conversion and interfaith marriage as threats, the Hindutva agenda seeks not to protect cultural values but to reinforce a caste-based system that ensures the continued subordination of marginalized communities, ultimately privileging the status quo under the guise of defending Hinduism.

Women from all social locations, irrespective of caste or class and religion, endure oppression and abuse due to the pervasive influence of patriarchy. A woman’s desire to make choices, especially in interfaith marriage, often faces fierce resistance from those who view her autonomy as threatening traditional power structures. In this case, the people’s choice of marriage out of faith was deemed unacceptable by right-wing political forces, highlighting how, for many women, the right to choose a life partner remains conditional on external approval. This serves as a sad reminder of the compounded barriers faced by women at the intersection of caste, gender, and religion, underscoring the urgent need for societal change to end these cycles of violence and discrimination.

[1] The term jihad, itself, within Islamic religious discourse signifying a positive struggle forward, was politically perverted after the Taliban amplified their ugly politics by the blowing up of the ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan in March 2001.

[2] https://sabrangindia.in/article/bajrang-dal-barges-birthday-celebration-thrashes-muslim-friends-hands-them-over-police

[3] VHP and Bajrang Dal, both are right wing organizations indulged in far-right politics, identify themselves with conservatism and ultra-nationalism.

[4] This itself draws attention to Para 47 of the 2021 single bench judgement in Safiya Sultana v/s State of Uttar Pradesh, where the High Court (Allahabad) had mandated that while giving notice under Section 5 of the Act of 1954 it shall be optional for the parties to the intended marriage to make a request in writing to the Marriage Officer to publish or not to publish a notice under Section 6 and follow the procedure of objections as prescribed under the Act of 1954.

[5] https://theprint.in/india/after-severe-backlash-tanishq-pulls-down-ad-accused-of-promoting-love-jihad/522593/

[6] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/27/netflix-india-version-vikram-seth-novel-stirs-love-jihad-suspicions-rows

[7] Kerala Catholic Bishops Council is an apex body of the Bishops of the various catholic rites in Kerala.

[8] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kochi/now-catholic-priest-warns-against-ignoring-love-jihad/articleshow/73648625.cms

[9] https://t.me/hindutvawatchin/495

[10] https://www.outlookindia.com/national/the-roots-and-evolution-of-the-myth-of-love-jihad-in-kerala-news-277712

[11] https://bridge.georgetown.edu/research/factsheet-love-jihad-conspiracy-theory/

[12] https://www.newsclick.in/Shraddha-Murder-Case-Turns-Communal-Right-Wingers-Term-Love-Jihad

[13] https://swarajyamag.com/society/love-jihad-case-dawood-shaikh-arrested-for-brutally-killing-hindu-girl-in-navi-mumbai-was-accused-under-pocso-act

[14] https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10161905258640185&set=a.10152241411140185

[15] Krishnan, S. (2023). Carceral domesticities and the geopolitics of Love Jihad. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 41(6), 995-1012. https://doi.org/10.1177/02637758231212767

[16] https://sabrangindia.in/article/hundreds-can-be-seen-repeating-communal-and-anti-muslim-oath-administered-pravin-togadia

[17] https://sabrangindia.in/article/maharashtra-vasai-navi-mumbai-solapur-3-rallies-held-hindu-jan-aakrosh-morcha-demanding

[18] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-55314832

[19] https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/1/15/indias-love-jihad-laws-another-attempt-to-subjugate-muslims

[20] Couple arrested for attempting to murder their Dalit son-in-law, fatally running over his sister in Erode – The Hindu

[21] Maharashtra: Dalit man killed by in-laws, wife says parents cited plot of movie ‘Sairat’ as warning

[22] Upper Caste Village in Northern India Proud of “honour Killing” of Couple

[23] 19-year-old woman murdered in Gujarat honour killing; father among 4 arrested | Ahmedabad News – The Indian Express

[24] https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/woman-killed-by-in-laws-in-hate-crime-say-cops-101725391190659.html

[25] https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/man-killed-by-wife-s-kin-over-interfaith-marriage-101722882513212.html

The post 2024: Love Jihad – A Socio-Political Weapon: Caste, Endogamy, and Hindutva’s Grip on gender and social boundaries in India appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Introduction

Despite efforts to redefine these identities, with, for example Mahatma Gandhi’s introduction of the term “Harijan,” meaning “children of God,” the stigma persists. The term has often been underlined through a normalization, further entrenching discrimination. Other abusive terms targeting Dalits, such as “Bhangi,” “Chamar” and “Quota Khane Wale” not only demean individuals but also perpetuate a cycle of segregation and inequality. These derogatory terms reinforce societal hierarchies, leading to systemic discrimination and social ostracism. The societal sanction behind the use of such language fosters an environment where Dalits are targeted, marginalised, often resulting in boycotts from local communities, leading to both social and economic exclusion.

The repercussions extend beyond an individual humiliation or insult; they contribute to ghettoization and reinforce the stigma surrounding Dalit identities. Understanding the profound impact of these slurs is essential in dismantling the structures of inequality that continue to affect millions.

Common derogatory phrases, such as “Kya Bhangi Ki Tarah Kapde Pahna Hai?” (Do you wear clothes like a Bhangi?), “Bhangi Ki Tarah Lag Rahe Ho” (Commenting on someone’s unusual attire.) highlight the ongoing prejudice and stereotype against the Dalits. These stereotypes portray Bhangis as inherently “dirty,” and “Impure” fit only for menial labour, and lacking in intellect, reinforcing systemic oppression through the derogatory vocab. The linguistic and cultural marginalization faced through these slurs exemplifies the broader challenges confronting Dalits in their struggle for dignity and equality in a caste-driven society.

Abuse against Dalits:

Stereotypes and slurs against Harijans (Dalits) and Bhangis (a term often used for certain groups within the Dalit community) reflect deep-seated prejudices and can vary regionally. Here are some common stereotypes and derogatory phrases associated with these groups:

Phrases reflecting this stigma include:

• “Kya Bhangi Ki Tarah Kapde Pahan Rakhe hai?” (Referring to someone wearing awkward clothing.)
• “Bhangi Ki Tarah Lag Rahe Ho” (Commenting on someone’s unusual attire.)
• “Ye kaam sirf mehtar ka hai” (Implying that a task is fit only for a sweeper.)
• “Mujhe Bhangi Jaisa Nahi Dikhna” (Expressing a desire not to appear like a Bhangi.)

Stereotypes:

1. Impurity: The belief that Harijans and Bhangis are inherently “dirty” or “impure,” leading to social ostracism.
2. Menial Work: The stereotype that they are only fit for low-status jobs, such as sweeping, cleaning, or manual labour.
3. Criminality: The unfounded assumption that members of these communities are more likely to engage in criminal behaviour.
4. Ignorance: The belief that they are uneducated or incapable of intellectual achievement due to systemic barriers.
5. Cultural Inferiority: The idea that their traditions and lifestyles are inferior to those of higher castes.

Normalisation of casteist slurs and the severe damage to Dalit’s identity:

This normalization of derogatory language perpetuates systemic oppression, marginalising Dalits both linguistically and culturally. Historically, the term “Bhangi,” associated with one of the lowest sub-castes of Valmiki, translates to “broken identity” and reflects the derogatory nature of its usage. This label is commonly applied to individuals traditionally tasked with scavenging and cleaning work. Throughout history, certain castes in India have been relegated to occupations deemed “impure,” including sweeping and handling dead bodies. As a result, communities labelled as Bhangi, along with others like Mehtar and Chamar, Dedh etc., occupy the lower echelons of the social hierarchy and are officially recognized as Scheduled Castes in India.

Similarly, the term “Chamar,” once associated with skilled leather workers, has been weaponized into a derogatory label, inflicting significant damage on Dalit identity. Phrases like “Kya Chamar Jaisa Kapde Pahna Hai?” (Do you wear clothes like a Chamar?) and “Ye Chamaaro Ka Ghar Hai” (This house belongs to Chamars) reinforce harmful stereotypes that equate caste with inferiority. This transformation from a caste identifier to an insult illustrates the social stigma attached to the Chamar community, perpetuating a narrative of humiliation and exclusion. Additionally, the slur “Chori-chamari Na Karna” (Don’t steal like the chamars) shows the negative associations, linking criminality to an entire community.

The Supreme Court’s observations in Swaran Singh & Ors. vs. State thr’ Standing Counsel & Anr. (2008) 12 SCR 132 underscore the term “Chamar” offensive nature, emphasizing that its use is not merely about caste but a deliberate act of derogation.

Notably, Justice Markandey Katju in Swaran Singh (Supra) observed that;

“21. Today the word ‘Chamar’ is often used by people belonging to the so-called upper castes or even by OBCs as a word of insult, abuse and derision. Calling a person Chamar’ today is nowadays an abusive language and is highly offensive. In fact, the word Chamar’ when used today is not normally used to denote a caste but to intentionally insult and humiliate someone.

“23. Hence, in our opinion, the so-called upper castes and OBCs should not use the word Chamar’ when addressing a member of the Scheduled Caste, even if that person in fact belongs to the Chamar’ caste, because use of such a word will hurt his feelings.”

Similarly, the Meghwal community, a specified Scheduled Caste in Rajasthan, Haryana and Gujrat known for their expertise in weaving, embroidery, and traditional crafts, faces systemic oppression through the derogatory casteist slur “Dedh“, originating from Sanskrit “Dhed” (washer/cleaner), like “saale dedh” (a slur used for SCs, especially Meghwals), “dedho ke guru” (to refer to Dr B R Ambedkar), “aukat dikha di” (showed them their place), “dhari bichhane wale” (to refer to Dalits who are tasked with spreading family bedding on the floor), reflect a broader cultural devaluation of Dalit identities, fostering a sense of inferiority, These damaging narratives not only fragment community solidarity but also obstruct pathways to dignity and empowerment, making it imperative to challenge and dismantle such derogatory language.

Moreover, contrary to popular belief, caste oppression is not limited to those from the most privileged category of castes; it is also perpetuated by communities classified as Other Backward Castes (OBCs). This highlights the complexity of caste dynamics, where discrimination can arise from various social groups, complicating the narrative of privilege and oppression.

Casteist Slurs in daily life: ongoing impact on Dalit community

Casteist slurs permeate daily life, leading to significant repercussions for Dalit communities. In 2017, the Supreme Court of India declared that calling people ‘dhobi’ or ‘harijan’ was offensive. Dhobi is used as a generic name for all washermen. The term Dhobi is mostly used to denote the Washerman. Generally Muslim washermen are identified by the term Hawari and, in West Bengal they have been recognised as an Other Backward Class.

The derogatory and casteist phrases such as “Dhobi Ka Kutta, Na Ghar Ka Na Ghat Ka” reduce individuals to a state of limbo, stripping them of dignity and belonging. Similarly, the slur “Kameena” carries connotations of low character, reinforcing negative stereotypes about certain communities by using the slur “Kitna Kamina Insan hai” (What a low person he is!).

Terms like “Kanjar” reflect the marginalisation faced by a nomadic ethnic group, framing them as untrustworthy and criminal through derogatory phrases that perpetuate Dalits in undignified manner while includes the casteist slur like “Kya Kanjarkhana Bana Rakha Hai” (What kind of brothel have you set up?) “Kanjarkhana Khol Rakha Hai” (You have opened a brothel.)

Many misconception and fake narratives that Kanjars are inherently dishonest or involved in criminal activities, which supports social discrimination. Additionally, the Kanjar cast categorised as the Scheduled Cast in Rajasthan, Bihar, UP, Jharkhand, MP, West Bengal, Chhatisgarh, Uttarakhand and Delhi.

In Punjab, the term “Chura” serves as a casteist slur for Dalit Sikhs, also known as Mazhabi (Balmiki Mazhabi), a Scheduled Cast in Punjab, with real-world consequences such as restrictions on entry to gurudwaras and segregation during Langar (community meal). Likewise, “Pallan” in Tamil Nadu is used not only to denote a caste but also as an insult, which is legally recognized as an offense under the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act. Overall, these terms encapsulate a broader pattern of linguistic discrimination.

Justice Markandey Katju observed in Para 10 of the Judgement in Arumugam Servai vs. State of Tamil Nadu, [SLP (Crl.) No. 8084 of 2009] that “It is just unacceptable in the modern age, just as the words ‘Nigger’ or ‘Negro’ are unacceptable for African-Americans today (even if they were acceptable 50 years ago,”

Boycott as a weapon: the cost of survival for Dalits

It’s not strange and unfamiliar in  our surrounding that when a Dalit rape victim lodges a complaint against an accused from the privileged castes, the repercussions often extend beyond the immediate trauma of the crime. In many instances, the Dalit victim’s family faces severe social boycott, fine, ban on temple entry, beating up and expulsion from their community and village, enforced by local “Panchayats.” These informal councils may impose fines on the victim’s family, further entrenching their marginalization. The cost of survival for Dalits is disproportionately high, as they navigate not only the trauma of violence but also the stigma and repercussions of seeking justice.

Just a month before, in September, 2024, 50 Dalit families faced social boycott in Karnataka’s Yadgir for pursuing a POCSO complaint against an accused belonging to an upper caste and in a similar incident occurred in Karnataka village people from Lingayat and Caste Hindu communities were imposed a ban on Dalits from entering their localities after they brutally assaulted 28-year-old Dalit youth, Arjun Madar. In Andhra Pradesh a 55-year-old mother from Dalit community tied to a tree and thrashed as her son married a girl from another caste. These incidents starkly illustrate a criminal mind set and deep-seated bias against the Dalit community.

A detailed report of Sabrang India can be read here

Casteist propaganda perpetuated a negative stereotype about Dalits, reinforcing their status as “untouchables” that led to normalization of derogatory words against the Dalits and as a tool of segregation. This long-standing social hierarchy devalues the dignity of Dalit individuals, leading many to choose silence over the risk of ostracism. The interplay of violence, social stigma, and economic penalties creates a vicious cycle that traps Dalits in a system of oppression from a period of time despite the enforcement of stringent laws like the Schedule Caste/ Schedule Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities Act), 1989 was introduced to combat persecution and discrimination against Dalits and Adivasi (tribal) people.

Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP)’s “Is Caste name calling not an offence under the SC/ST Act? may be read here.

Misconception of unworthiness: the slur “Quota Khane Wale”

The slur “quota khane wale” (these “quota people” are stealing our seats) epitomizes the misconception that Dalits are unworthy recipients of affirmative action through reservation on the basis of caste. This derogatory label implies that their achievements are solely the result of quotas rather than merit, reinforcing harmful stereotypes and societal biases. By dismissing the struggles and contributions of Dalits and the historical untouchability and injustice faced by the members of Dalit community, this language perpetuates anger and prejudice against the Dalits. Such rhetoric not only undermines the purpose of reservations—designed to rectify historical injustices—but also devalues the talents and efforts of individuals within the Dalit community.

Uttar Pradesh tops in cases of Dalit atrocities

The SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act reports thousands of cases annually. Normalizing derogatory language fuels this violence, making it imperative to challenge and dismantle such language to promote dignity and safety for Dalit communities.

As reported in Sabrang India, States ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) top in high number of cases registered under the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, (PoA Act) in the year 2022. A union government report published by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment reveals that Uttar Pradesh, reported a staggering 12,287 cases accounting for 23.78% of the total 51,656 cases registered under the PoA Act (97.7 % atrocity cases against Dalits). Following this, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh are positioned on top in registration of cases of atrocities against Dalits. The report’s findings are a grim reminder of India’s ongoing struggle with caste-based violence and discrimination against marginalised communities.

The union ministry report also reveals that, 52,866 cases of atrocities against Scheduled Castes (SCs) and 9,725 cases of Scheduled Tribes (STs) were registered in year 2022 under the PoA Act. The majority of these cases, a staggering 97.7%, were recorded in just 13 states, with BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh topping the list. In 2022, out of 51,656 cases registered under the PoA Act, Uttar Pradesh reported 12,287 cases accounting for 23.78% of the total 97.7 % cases of atrocities against Dalits in 2022 was reported in 13 states. Following this, Rajasthan reported second highest atrocities cases of Dalits with 8,651 cases (16.75%), while Madhya Pradesh had 7,732 cases, making up 14.97%. Other states with a significant number of cases include Bihar with 6509, Odisha with 2902 cases and Maharashtra with 2276 cases.

Full report of Sabrang India may be read here.

Related

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The post From Slur to Segregation: the language of abusive stigma, sketches concentric circles of rank exclusion for India’s Dalits appeared first on SabrangIndia.