By Ramphal Kataria
From Y. Puran Kumar to Rohith Vemula — How Caste Still Kills Inside India’s Institutions
The alleged suicide of IPS officer Y. Puran Kumar is not an isolated tragedy. It reveals how caste, hierarchy and complicity continue to corrode India’s administrative and moral core.
I. The Death that Exposed a System
For every Y. Puran Kumar whose story reaches the public, countless others remain unheard — clerks, constables, teachers, soldiers — quietly bearing indignity until it breaks them.
Seven days after Haryana IPS officer Y. Puran Kumar allegedly shot himself, his post-mortem remains pending. His wife, senior IAS officer Amneet P. Kumar, refuses to allow it until two accused — Haryana DGP Shatrujeet Kapur and former SP Rohtak Narendra Bijarniya — are arrested. In his final note, Kumar named these officers, accusing them of years of harassment and humiliation.
He wasn’t an exception — he was evidence. Evidence of how the Indian administrative system remains caste-marked, politically compromised, and institutionally cruel.
II. The Origins of Caste: From Order to Oppression
Caste in India began as a division of labour, but soon hardened into a division of dignity. What the Rig Veda once described as varna — based on function — became, by the time of the Manusmriti, a divine hierarchy of birth.
The Brahmin became sacred, the Shudra became polluted. Labour was enslaved, and learning monopolized. Caste turned from social identity into a technology of control — determining who eats with whom, who learns, who rules, and who obeys.
As Dr. B.R. Ambedkar warned in Annihilation of Caste, “Caste is not merely a division of labour; it is a division of labourers.” The hierarchy that once served religion now quietly serves the Republic.
III. Constitutional Promises, Bureaucratic Realities
India’s Constitution outlawed untouchability and promised equality. Articles 15, 16, and 17 were meant to end centuries of inherited humiliation. But laws cannot dismantle what lives inside people.
In theory, reservations created opportunity. In practice, they created resentment. Bureaucracies — especially the IAS and IPS — remain dominated by upper-caste networks that mask prejudice under procedural language.
Officers from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and OBCs report the same patterns:
Isolation in postings, especially in rural or non-prominent districts.
Stalled promotions despite seniority.
Character assassination disguised as “disciplinary observation.”
Transfers used to punish dissent.
The Indian bureaucracy mirrors society’s caste biases — modern in form, feudal in function.
IV. The New Caste Arithmetic of Politics
Post-independence India replaced the varna system with vote-bank sociology. Caste has been reborn not as stigma, but as strategy.
Every political party has mastered this calculus — Dalit mobilization, Yadav consolidation, Maratha assertion, Brahmin revivalism. Elections have turned caste into an instrument of power, not protest.
In 1956, Ambedkar warned that “political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy.” But modern politics has flipped that warning: it thrives precisely by keeping social divisions alive.
The neo-caste politics of today doesn’t seek annihilation of caste, it seeks management of caste — as a resource to win elections, not a wound to heal.
V. The Silence of the Marginalized
Why are voices like Puran Kumar’s rare? Because institutions teach survival, not dissent. The subaltern is told to be grateful, not vocal.
A Dalit or backward-class officer rising to senior rank still faces coded humiliation — whispered comments on “quota,” undermined authority, and exclusion from informal power circles.
In Kumar’s case, humiliation was institutionalized: junior officers defying his instructions, fabricated corruption allegations, and a deliberate administrative cold-shoulder. The goal was not to discipline him — it was to break him.
His story is not unique. It’s part of a pattern where caste violence adapts to modernity. It no longer kills only in villages; it kills in offices, universities, and police headquarters.
VI. When Caste Creeps into Everyday Life
Caste exploitation remains woven into India’s social fabric:
Rohith Vemula’s death in Hyderabad (2016) exposed the caste cruelty of academia.
Manual scavengers, mostly Dalits, still die in sewers every year despite mechanization laws.
Police discrimination in postings and promotions remains rampant — Dalit officers are kept away from key positions.
Atrocities in Haryana, Gujarat, and Uttar Pradesh show how social hierarchies survive under political patronage.
And now, the institutional death of Y. Puran Kumar — showing that even a top-ranking officer is unsafe from humiliation if he refuses to conform.
Caste in India has evolved — from a physical segregation to a psychological imprisonment.
VII. Religion and Caste: Twin Engines of Hate
Today, caste and religion are the twin fuels of political control. The same ideology that once sanctified hierarchy now sanctifies hate.
The rhetoric of “Hindu unity” cleverly blurs caste lines before elections — only to restore them after victory. Muslims are painted as the common enemy, while internal caste rivalries ensure that solidarity among the oppressed never consolidates.
The politics of hate needs caste as its silent ally. The more divided the society, the easier it is to rule.
VIII. Bureaucracy as a Mirror of Morality
The Indian bureaucracy is designed to appear neutral but operate hierarchically. Promotions, transfers, and postings are often decided by who aligns, not who performs.
Caste invisibly dictates mentorship networks and power cliques. Officers like Puran Kumar — honest, assertive, unaligned — become threats to the comfort of complicity.
His suicide note, naming his own seniors, is a document of courage — and a mirror to the rot that hides behind polished uniforms and protocol.
IX. Towards a Moral Reformation
Legal reform without moral transformation is like applying perfume over rot. To cleanse the system, India must:
1. Enforce accountability for caste harassment in bureaucracy and police.
2. Reform administrative training to emphasize Ambedkarite values of equality and fraternity.
3. Depoliticize caste through stronger electoral codes and civic education.
4. Empower media and civil society to document institutional discrimination.
5. Protect whistle-blowers and dissenting officers from retaliatory transfers.
A democratic state cannot coexist with a feudal soul. Until the bureaucrat becomes a citizen first and a caste later, no reform will be real.
X. Epilogue: The Constitution We Betrayed
The tragedy of Y. Puran Kumar is not his death; it is our indifference.
Every April, the nation garlands Dr. Ambedkar’s portrait, while every day it betrays his dream. The Constitution’s promises of equality echo in courts and speeches, but rarely in offices and police stations.
We must ask ourselves:
How many more Rohiths, Payals, and Purans must die before we acknowledge that caste still kills — silently, systematically, institutionally?
Until that reckoning comes, justice will remain procedural, and humanity optional.
References
1. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste (1936)
2. Arundhati Roy, The Doctor and the Saint (2014)
3. Christophe Jaffrelot, India’s Silent Revolution (2003)
4. Anand Teltumbde, Republic of Caste (2018)
5. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, The Burden of Democracy (2003)
6. The Tribune, “Why Did the System Let Puran Kumar Down” (October 2025)
7. The Hindu, “FIR Against Haryana DGP, SP in IPS Officer Suicide Case” (October 2025)
8. NCRB, Crime in India: Caste-based Atrocities Data (2023)
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