Equality on Paper, Subjugation in Practice: India’s Caste Trap

 

Dalits, Democracy, and the Moral Theater of Gandhi

-Ramphal Kataria

India, the so-called world’s largest democracy, parades its billionaires, startups, and space triumphs before the globe. Yet, under this glitter, caste continues to be the invisible architecture of inequality. It regulates where people live, the jobs they get, the schools their children attend, and even the water they drink.

The unresolved quarrel between Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar—over caste, untouchability, and the possibility of equality—remains not a historical footnote but the grammar of present-day politics. Every time Dalits are denied jobs under the pretext of “Not Found Suitable (NFS),” every time their women face sexual violence in villages, or every time they are forced to migrate from their ancestral homes under social boycott, the shadows of Gandhi’s paternal reformism and Ambedkar’s radical structuralism return.

Gandhi’s Ethical Reformism: Moral Cloak for Hindu Unity

Gandhi’s lifelong struggle against untouchability was undeniable. He called it a “blot” on Hinduism, renamed Dalits as Harijans, and urged upper castes to purify their consciences. Yet, he simultaneously defended the varna system as a natural division of labor. His defense of the village as the nucleus of Indian civilization ignored how those villages functioned as prisons for Dalits—spaces of bonded labor, humiliation, and systemic exclusion.

“Caste is the natural order of society. Hindus believe in varna which is only another name for duty.”
– M. K. Gandhi

Reform without redistribution is paternalism.

His approach was one of moral persuasion without structural dismantling. He demanded that upper castes reform themselves rather than demanding that Dalits acquire power and autonomy. In doing so, Gandhi created a paternalistic framework where Dalits were spoken for, but rarely allowed to speak for themselves. For the Congress Party, this vision was convenient: it kept Hindu unity intact against colonial rule, but at the cost of Dalit autonomy.

Ambedkar’s Radical Structuralism: Destroy, Not Reform

Ambedkar, born into the reality of untouchability, diagnosed caste as a graded system of inequality that could not be reformed but only annihilated. In his 1936 Annihilation of Caste, he declared that Hindu scriptures themselves sanctioned exclusion and humiliation, making moral cleansing futile.

“Caste is not just a division of labour, it is a division of labourers.”
– B. R. Ambedkar

His tools were not conscience or persuasion but rights, representation, and law. His insistence on reservations, political safeguards, and constitutional guarantees was not charity but justice. His eventual conversion to Buddhism was a political strike: if Hinduism offered only bondage, liberation had to be sought outside. Unlike Gandhi, Ambedkar rejected reconciliation; he demanded rupture.

The Poona Pact: National Unity, Dalit Defeat

The 1932 Poona Pact exemplified the asymmetry. The British Communal Award had proposed separate electorates for Dalits, a demand Ambedkar supported to protect Dalit political independence. Gandhi opposed it with a fast unto death, claiming Hindu society would fragment.

The compromise—scrapping separate electorates but expanding reserved seats within joint electorates—was hailed as a victory for Hindu unity. But in truth, it chained Dalits to the Hindu fold, denying them independent political voice. Ambedkar conceded under duress, fearing Gandhi’s death would unleash caste Hindu violence on Dalits. The Pact still casts its shadow, as Dalits remain symbolically included but substantively excluded from decision-making.

Caste as Capital: The Political Economy of Exclusion

Caste today functions less as ritual and more as capitalist machinery. Landholding, education, credit, and jobs remain overwhelmingly controlled by upper castes. Dalits, pushed out of land and denied quality education, are confined to precarious labor, sanitation, and other stigmatized occupations.

Reservation was designed as a corrective. Yet, it has become a double-edged sword—used to stigmatize Dalits as “undeserving” while simultaneously being denied to them through manipulative practices like Not Found Suitable (NFS) in recruitment. The outcome is a paradox: Dalits are present in numbers, but absent in power.

Representation and Power: The Numbers Tell the Story

Here is a snapshot of Dalit representation versus their population share in India’s power structures:

Domain	Dalit Share of Population (approx.)	Actual Representation (2024)
Lok Sabha (MPs)	16–17%	~9%
Rajya Sabha	16–17%	~7%
State Assemblies (average)	16–17%	~8%
Indian Administrative Service	16–17%	~4–5%
Indian Judiciary (HC/SC)	16–17%	<4%
Corporate Boards (NIFTY-500)	16–17%	<1%

Representation without power is tokenism.

These figures make visible the hierarchical trap: SCs are clustered at the bottom, somewhat visible in clerical ranks, but sharply excluded from the commanding heights of bureaucracy. This is precisely what Ambedkar feared when Gandhi forced the Poona Pact in 1932.

The Way Forward: Beyond Conscience, Beyond Tokenism

The persistence of caste requires more than moral appeals or symbolic gestures. It demands:

1.   Democratization of capital – land reforms, affordable education, and access to credit for Dalits.

2.   Expansion of reservations – into private sector jobs and higher judiciary.

3.   Accountability mechanisms – against Not Found Suitable (NFS) misuse and caste bias in recruitment.

4.   Cultural transformation – amplifying Dalit voices in literature, media, and academia.

The table of representation tells the story with brutal clarity: Dalits are overrepresented as sweepers and menial workers, partially present in clerical ranks, but almost absent from decision-making corridors where real power resides. Gandhi’s moral politics, which sought to cleanse Hindu society without dismantling its structures, could never have produced a different outcome. Conscience without power has only meant piety for the upper castes and continued humiliation for the Dalits. Ambedkar’s radical demand for annihilation was dismissed as too extreme, but the numbers prove he was right: Hindu society has absorbed reforms without surrendering hierarchy.

Ambedkar warned that political democracy would collapse without social democracy. Today, India’s democracy survives, but only formally; substantively, it is hollowed by caste. Gandhi gave India the vocabulary of shame, but Ambedkar gave it the blueprint of justice. Unless the nation finally confronts caste as the armature of capitalism — controlling land, jobs, and power — Gandhi’s conscience will remain a moral veil, and Ambedkar’s prophecy will continue to haunt our politics.

As long as Dalits remain present in statistics but absent in authority, the AGandhi–Ambedkar debate is not history. It is India’s present.

“Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy.”
– B. R. Ambedkar

Footnotes

1.   Sukhadeo Thorat and Nidhi Sadana Sabharwal, Caste Discrimination and Exclusion in Higher Education in India (Indian Institute of Dalit Studies, 2016).

2.   Judith Brown, Gandhi’s Rise to Power: Indian Politics 1915–1922 (Cambridge University Press, 1972), 431–432.

3.   M. K. Gandhi, Harijan, July 1936.

4.   Eleanor Zelliot, Ambedkar’s World: The Making of Babasaheb and the Dalit Movement (Navayana, 2013), 112–115.

5.   B. R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste (1936; reprint, Critical Quest, 2014), 14.

6.   Gail Omvedt, Dalits and the Democratic Revolution (Sage, 1994), 55–60.

7.   Christophe Jaffrelot, India’s Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India (Columbia University Press, 2003), 121–125.

8.   André Béteille, Caste, Class and Power: Changing Patterns of Stratification in a Tanjore Village (Oxford University Press, 1965), 45–49.

9.   Government of India, Census of India 2011, Ministry of Home Affairs; Sukhadeo Thorat and Nidhi Sadana Sabharwal, Caste Discrimination in Government Employment, Indian Institute of Dalit Studies, 2016.

10.  Department of Personnel & Training, Government of India, Annual Report on Representation of SCs in Central Government Services, 2024.

11.  Thorat and Sabharwal, Caste Discrimination, 2016; Béteille, Caste, Class and Power, 1965.

12.  B. R. Ambedkar, Speech at the Constituent Assembly, 25 November 1949, in The Essential Writings of B.R. Ambedkar (OUP India, 2002), 410.