Has History Vindicated Ambedkar?

 A Century-long Empirical Test of Castes in India (1916) in Constitutional India

By Ramphal Kataria

 

Abstract

In May 1916, a young B.R. Ambedkar presented a paper at Columbia University titled Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development. Unlike earlier ethnologists who explained caste through race, occupation or religion, Ambedkar advanced a strikingly different proposition: caste survives because it institutionalises endogamy, enabling it to reproduce itself across generations. More than a century later, independent India provides an unparalleled opportunity to examine the continuing explanatory power of this proposition. Rather than treating Castes in India as a historical text, this article treats the period between 1916 and 2026 as a century-long empirical test of Ambedkar's theory. It examines whether constitutional democracy, abolition of untouchability, affirmative action, industrialisation, urbanisation, educational expansion, demographic transition and electoral politics have weakened the principal mechanism identified by Ambedkar or merely altered its institutional expression. Drawing upon constitutional developments, demographic evidence, marriage studies and contemporary sociological scholarship, the article argues that while the Republic fundamentally transformed the legal and institutional manifestations of caste, it did not dismantle its principal mechanism of social reproduction. Endogamy continues to regulate marriage, kinship, inheritance and community identity despite unprecedented political and economic change. Simultaneously, democracy has transformed caste from a ritual hierarchy into a powerful instrument of political representation and electoral mobilisation, allowing caste to adapt rather than disappear. The article concludes that the enduring significance of Castes in India lies less in its historical explanation of caste origins than in its remarkably prescient theory of social reproduction. A century after its presentation at Columbia University, Ambedkar's first sociological essay remains one of the most compelling analytical frameworks for understanding the unresolved tension between constitutional equality and social hierarchy in contemporary India.

Keywords: B.R. Ambedkar; Castes in India; Endogamy; Constitutional Democracy; Social Reproduction; Caste Politics; Marriage; Social Hierarchy.

This article is neither a textual commentary on Castes in India nor an intellectual biography of B.R. Ambedkar. It adopts a historically comparative approach by treating the period between 1916 and 2026 as a century-long empirical test of Ambedkar's principal sociological propositions. The analysis proceeds proposition by proposition, comparing Ambedkar's original arguments with the constitutional, demographic, political and sociological realities of contemporary India. Wherever possible, the discussion distinguishes between three levels of analysis: first, Ambedkar's original propositions as articulated in Castes in India; second, empirical evidence accumulated over the last century; and third, the author's interpretation of that evidence. The purpose is neither to canonise Ambedkar nor to reject his theory, but to evaluate its explanatory power after one hundred years of India's constitutional and democratic experience.

Introduction

The Republic Changed; Did Society?

There are few examples in modern history of a society undergoing transformations as extensive as those witnessed by India during the last century. Between 1916, when B.R. Ambedkar presented Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development before the Anthropology Seminar of Professor Alexander A. Goldenweiser at Columbia University, and the India of today, almost every institutional pillar of society has been transformed. Colonial rule gave way to political independence. An imperial administration was replaced by a sovereign democratic republic. Universal adult franchise converted subjects into citizens. The Constitution guaranteed equality before law, abolished untouchability, prohibited discrimination on grounds of caste and created an unprecedented framework for affirmative action. Industrialisation weakened hereditary occupations; urbanisation and migration loosened the hold of village economies; education expanded beyond privileged social groups; and economic liberalisation created opportunities unimaginable in Ambedkar's time.

Judged by the conventional assumptions of modernisation theory, these developments should have substantially weakened inherited social identities. Classical sociology anticipated that industrialisation, mobility, education and democratic citizenship would progressively replace status with achievement, birth with merit and inherited hierarchy with contractual social relations. If any society possessed the institutional capacity to dismantle an ancient system of social stratification, it was independent India.

Yet caste persists.

Not merely as a cultural memory or a symbolic identity, but as an enduring principle organising marriage, kinship, community affiliation, political mobilisation and access to social capital. Its outward forms have changed. Its legal legitimacy has disappeared. Its occupational foundations have weakened. Yet its capacity to reproduce itself across generations remains strikingly resilient.

This paradox constitutes one of the defining contradictions of the Indian Republic. The State has undergone a democratic revolution; society has experienced a far more uneven transformation. Constitutional citizenship has expanded dramatically, but social citizenship continues to be mediated by inherited identities. The Republic has been remarkably successful in regulating the relationship between the individual and the State. It has been considerably less successful in transforming the relationship between the individual and society.

It is this contradiction that necessitates a return to Ambedkar's first sociological work.

When Castes in India was written, scholarly explanations of caste largely revolved around race, occupation, religion or tribal origins. Ambedkar departed radically from these approaches. Rather than asking where caste originated, he asked how it survived. In one of the earliest and most original sociological analyses of Indian society, he argued that the defining characteristic of caste was not occupational specialisation or ritual hierarchy, but endogamy—the institutional regulation of marriage within socially enclosed groups. Endogamy, he argued, was not simply one characteristic of caste; it was the mechanism through which caste continuously reproduced itself. Once a social group successfully enclosed its marriage circle, caste became self-perpetuating.

This insight fundamentally shifted the study of caste. Ambedkar was less interested in historical origins than in social reproduction. The significance of this distinction cannot be overstated. Origins explain how an institution begins; mechanisms explain why it survives. The latter question remains relevant long after the former has become a matter of historical debate.

More than a century has passed since Ambedkar advanced this proposition. During this period, India has experienced constitutional democracy, planned development, affirmative action, mass education, industrialisation, urbanisation, economic liberalisation and the digital revolution. No previous generation has witnessed transformations of comparable magnitude. If these developments have substantially weakened endogamy, Ambedkar's theory requires reconsideration. If they have not, then Castes in India demands to be read not merely as an important historical text but as an enduring sociological framework for understanding contemporary India.

This article therefore advances a simple but demanding proposition. It treats the century between 1916 and 2026 as a natural experiment in social change. The question is not whether Ambedkar accurately described caste in colonial India. The more important question is whether one hundred years of constitutional democracy have falsified—or confirmed—his central theory of caste.

The argument developed here is that the Republic has profoundly transformed the institutional architecture of caste without dismantling its principal mechanism of reproduction. Independent India has substantially weakened institutional caste—the legal disabilities, civic exclusions and occupational restrictions historically associated with the caste order. It has been far less successful in transforming reproductive caste—the regulation of marriage, kinship, inheritance and social identity through endogamy. Consequently, caste has not disappeared under modernity; it has adapted to it.

This distinction has implications extending beyond the study of caste itself. It compels a reconsideration of the relationship between constitutional democracy and social transformation. It raises a larger question that lies at the heart of the Indian constitutional project: Can a society become genuinely egalitarian if the principal institution through which social boundaries are reproduced remains substantially intact?

It is this question—not merely the history of caste—that gives Castes in India its enduring contemporary relevance.

From Origins to Mechanism: Ambedkar's Intellectual Break with Earlier Theories of Caste

One reason Castes in India continues to invite fresh readings is that it is frequently approached as an early essay on caste rather than as a methodological intervention in sociology. Such a reading underestimates both its originality and its ambition. Ambedkar did not merely offer another explanation of caste; he challenged the very questions through which caste had hitherto been studied. His intellectual innovation lay in shifting the inquiry from the origin of caste to the mechanism of its reproduction. That shift, though deceptively simple, transformed the analytical framework within which caste could be understood.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, scholarship on caste was dominated by colonial ethnologists and Indologists such as Herbert Risley, Émile Senart, J.C. Nesfield and S.V. Ketkar. Their explanations differed in emphasis. Some traced caste to racial distinctions, others to occupation, religion, tribal organisation or the evolution of social customs. The underlying assumption, however, remained largely the same: to understand caste, one had first to discover its historical origin. Ambedkar considered this approach inadequate, not because historical origins were unimportant, but because they could not explain the extraordinary durability of the institution. An institution survives for centuries not merely because of the circumstances that created it, but because of the mechanisms through which it continually reproduces itself. It was this question that Ambedkar placed at the centre of his inquiry.

The distinction deserves emphasis. A historian asks how an institution came into existence; a sociologist asks how it continues to exist. Ambedkar deliberately privileged the second question. He recognised that even if historians disagreed about the precise origin of caste, the more pressing analytical challenge was to explain why caste had displayed a resilience unmatched by most other systems of social stratification. Why had successive political regimes, economic transformations and religious movements failed to dissolve it? Why had an institution whose material foundations had repeatedly changed continued to reproduce itself with remarkable regularity?

Ambedkar's answer represented a decisive departure from prevailing explanations. He argued that the defining feature of caste was not occupation, ritual hierarchy or even religious doctrine. These characteristics could be found, in varying degrees, in many societies. What distinguished caste, in his view, was its success in enclosing the marriage circle. His oft-quoted formulation remains the conceptual cornerstone of the essay: "Endogamy is the only characteristic that is peculiar to caste." Once endogamy was superimposed upon an already existing system of exogamous clans, caste acquired the capacity to reproduce itself indefinitely. The question of caste, therefore, became fundamentally a question of marriage.

This proposition was intellectually radical for at least three reasons.

First, Ambedkar rejected the common assumption that caste should be understood primarily as an occupational system. Occupations could and did change over time. Economic development, technological innovation and migration constantly altered the division of labour. If caste depended solely upon occupation, it should have weakened as occupational mobility increased. Ambedkar instead argued that occupational restrictions were secondary consequences of a more fundamental institution. The decisive boundary was not the workshop or the marketplace but the marriage circle. Occupations might diversify, yet caste would remain intact so long as marriage remained socially enclosed.

Second, Ambedkar shifted attention from hierarchy to social closure. Later sociological interpretations—notably Louis Dumont's influential emphasis on ritual hierarchy in Homo Hierarchicus—would foreground the ideological ordering of purity and pollution. Ambedkar's analytical concern was different. He asked how groups maintained their separateness over time. Hierarchy explained ranking; endogamy explained continuity. A hierarchical order might weaken or change, but a system that successfully regulated marriage possessed the capacity to regenerate itself across generations. In retrospect, Ambedkar's emphasis on social closure anticipated later sociological concerns with the reproduction of group boundaries far more than it resembled the classificatory anthropology of his contemporaries.

Third, Ambedkar located women at the centre of the sociology of caste. This aspect of Castes in India has often been overshadowed by later debates, yet it remains one of the essay's most original contributions. If endogamy is the defining characteristic of caste, then the regulation of women's sexuality, marriage and reproduction becomes indispensable to the preservation of caste boundaries. Customs such as enforced widowhood, child marriage and sati were interpreted not simply as religious practices but as institutional devices developed to preserve endogamy under conditions of demographic imbalance. They were, in Ambedkar's analysis, mechanisms for managing what he called the problem of "surplus men" and "surplus women" within an enclosed marriage market. Whether every historical explanation he advanced withstands contemporary scrutiny is open to debate; what remains striking is his insistence that caste could not be understood without analysing gender relations and the control of reproduction.

It is precisely here that Castes in India transcends its immediate historical context. Ambedkar was not merely describing a set of customs peculiar to Hindu society; he was constructing a general sociological proposition. Every durable institution, he implicitly suggested, requires a mechanism through which it reproduces itself. In the case of caste, that mechanism is the regulation of marriage. The implication is profound. Political authority may change, economic structures may evolve and legal systems may be rewritten, yet the institution will survive if its reproductive mechanism remains intact.

This distinction between institution and mechanism forms the conceptual foundation of the present article. Institutions are historically contingent; mechanisms may endure through changing institutional forms. Independent India abolished untouchability, dismantled many hereditary occupational restrictions and introduced constitutional equality. These were transformations of the institution. Whether they altered the mechanism identified by Ambedkar is a different question altogether. It is entirely possible for the outward architecture of caste to change while its reproductive logic remains substantially intact.

This insight also clarifies why Castes in India cannot be read merely as a work on caste. At a deeper level, it is a theory of social reproduction. Long before the vocabulary of social closure, cultural reproduction and symbolic power became prominent in twentieth-century sociology, Ambedkar had recognised that societies reproduce themselves not only through economic relations or political institutions but also through the regulation of intimacy, kinship and marriage. Caste was his empirical illustration; the analytical principle possessed a much wider sociological significance.

The originality of Ambedkar's intervention therefore lies not simply in identifying endogamy as the essence of caste, but in recognising that the persistence of any social order depends less upon its historical origin than upon the institutions through which it reproduces itself. That proposition now becomes the central hypothesis to be tested. If a century of constitutional democracy, industrialisation, urbanisation, educational expansion and social reform has substantially weakened endogamy, Ambedkar's theory requires revision. If, however, endogamy continues to regulate marriage and kinship despite these transformations, then the explanatory power of his sociological insight remains remarkably intact.

The remainder of this article proceeds from that premise. It does not ask whether caste has survived in exactly the same form as in 1916. That would be historically implausible. Instead, it asks the more fundamental question that Ambedkar himself taught us to ask: Has the mechanism through which caste reproduces itself survived the constitutional transformation of India?

A Century as a Natural Experiment: Can History Falsify Ambedkar?

Social theories are rarely subjected to empirical tests extending over an entire century. Most are evaluated against particular events, limited datasets or specific historical periods. Castes in India presents a rare exception. Written in 1916, before Indian independence and before the birth of the constitutional republic, Ambedkar's central proposition can now be examined against more than one hundred years of social, political and economic transformation. Few sociological arguments have enjoyed such an extensive historical laboratory.

This article deliberately treats the period between 1916 and 2026 as a natural experiment. The expression is used here in its historical rather than statistical sense. Independent India did not consciously set out to test Ambedkar's theory of caste. Yet the cumulative transformations that followed Independence created precisely the conditions under which that theory could either be validated or disproved. If caste was primarily sustained by legal disabilities, occupational immobility or religious authority, then constitutional democracy, industrialisation and modern education should have substantially eroded it. If, however, Ambedkar correctly identified endogamy as the principal mechanism through which caste reproduces itself, then caste should demonstrate an extraordinary capacity to adapt to changing institutions while preserving its reproductive logic.

This proposition deserves careful consideration because no other society has attempted social transformation on a comparable constitutional scale. The Indian Republic did not merely proclaim equality as an abstract ideal; it embedded equality within the constitutional structure itself. Articles 14, 15, 16 and 17 fundamentally redefined the legal relationship between the individual and the State by guaranteeing equality before law, prohibiting discrimination and abolishing untouchability. Universal adult franchise simultaneously transformed political participation, extending equal voting rights irrespective of caste, gender, religion or property. Affirmative action sought to correct historical exclusions through representation in legislatures, education and public employment. Few post-colonial constitutions attempted a social revolution with comparable ambition.

Beyond constitutional reform, the century also witnessed transformations that classical sociological theory has long associated with the weakening of inherited social identities. Industrialisation disrupted hereditary occupations. Urbanisation reduced dependence upon village-based social organisation. Migration weakened local community controls. Educational expansion enlarged opportunities for individual mobility. The liberalisation of the Indian economy after 1991 accelerated occupational diversification, while digital communication transformed social interaction across geographical boundaries. In theory, these developments should have reduced the salience of inherited status and expanded the sphere of individual choice.

The cumulative effect of these changes is difficult to exaggerate. The India of 2026 bears little institutional resemblance to the India that Ambedkar analysed in 1916. The colonial state has disappeared. The economy has shifted from agrarian predominance to increasing diversification. Literacy has expanded from a small elite to the overwhelming majority of the population. Millions have migrated across districts, states and even national boundaries. Women participate in education and public employment at historically unprecedented levels. Constitutional courts have repeatedly reaffirmed equality as a basic constitutional commitment. Every major structural condition that might reasonably have been expected to weaken caste has undergone profound transformation.

If, despite these developments, caste continues to organise the sphere of marriage and kinship, then the explanation cannot simply lie in the persistence of tradition. It must lie in the resilience of the mechanism that reproduces tradition.

It is important, however, to define what constitutes validation or falsification of Ambedkar's theory. The present article does not argue that every historical explanation advanced in Castes in India must necessarily withstand contemporary scrutiny. Ambedkar's discussion of the historical origins of caste, the role of Brahmins in initiating endogamy, and the specific institutional devices adopted to preserve caste remain subjects of continuing historical and anthropological debate. Later scholars has refined, questioned and, in some respects, challenged aspects of these explanations. The validity of a sociological theory, however, is not measured by the permanence of every historical illustration. It is measured by the continuing explanatory power of its central proposition.

That central proposition is remarkably clear. Ambedkar argued that caste is an "enclosed class", created through the superimposition of endogamy upon an already exogamous society, and that "endogamy is the only characteristic that is peculiar to caste." If this proposition remains empirically demonstrable after a century of constitutional and social transformation, then the analytical core of his theory survives irrespective of debates concerning particular historical details.

This distinction between historical explanation and analytical proposition is crucial. Historical explanations concern how institutions emerged; analytical propositions explain why they endure. Ambedkar's lasting contribution lies less in reconstructing the remote origins of caste than in identifying the mechanism through which caste reproduces itself. Indeed, his own essay repeatedly shifts attention away from speculative debates about origins towards the more fruitful question of institutional continuity. He explicitly states that by the "origin of caste" he means "the origin of the mechanism for endogamy," thereby redefining the problem itself.

The methodology adopted in this article therefore proceeds proposition by proposition rather than chapter by chapter. Each major proposition advanced by Ambedkar is treated as a hypothesis to be examined against contemporary evidence. Did constitutional democracy weaken endogamy? Did economic modernisation dissolve caste boundaries in marriage? Did urbanisation transform kinship sufficiently to erode caste reproduction? Did democratic politics diminish caste consciousness or reorganise it? Has demographic transition altered the institutional logic identified by Ambedkar, or merely changed its outward manifestations? These questions transform Castes in India from a historical document into an object of empirical evaluation.

Such an approach also distinguishes the present article from much of the existing literature. Many studies seek either to celebrate Ambedkar's intellectual legacy or to critique particular aspects of his historical interpretation. Both approaches have value, but they leave unanswered a larger sociological question. What happens when a theory formulated under colonial conditions is examined against the evidence generated by an independent constitutional democracy over an entire century? The answer to that question cannot be found in textual interpretation alone. It must be sought in history itself.

History, however, is an exacting examiner. It rarely confirms theories in their entirety, nor does it reject them wholesale. Institutions adapt; societies innovate; political systems create new incentives; economic change produces unintended consequences. The proper question, therefore, is not whether caste in 2026 resembles caste in 1916 in every respect. The more searching question is whether the principal mechanism that Ambedkar identified continues to organise the reproduction of caste under fundamentally altered historical conditions.

It is to that empirical examination that the discussion now turns.

The First Proposition Tested: Endogamy as the Reproductive Core of Caste

The first and most fundamental proposition advanced by Ambedkar in Castes in India is that endogamy constitutes the defining characteristic of caste. Every other feature commonly associated with caste—occupation, hierarchy, ritual status or notions of purity and pollution—might vary across regions and historical periods. Endogamy alone, he argued, distinguished caste from every other form of social organisation. "Endogamy is the only characteristic that is peculiar to caste," he wrote, reducing an apparently bewildering institution to a single reproductive principle. The strength of this proposition lies precisely in its clarity. It can be tested against empirical evidence. If endogamy has substantially weakened after a century of constitutional democracy, Ambedkar's theory loses much of its explanatory force. If it remains intact despite profound social transformation, the central mechanism identified by Ambedkar stands remarkably vindicated.

The evidence accumulated over the last hundred years points overwhelmingly towards the latter conclusion. Although India has experienced constitutional equality, universal education, rapid urbanisation, industrialisation, large-scale migration and unprecedented economic mobility, marriage continues to remain one of the least transformed social institutions. Analyses based on the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) estimate that as recently as 2011 only about 5.82 per cent of marriages were inter-caste, implying that more than ninety-four per cent continued to occur within caste boundaries. More significantly, educational attainment of the spouses themselves showed little independent effect on the likelihood of entering an inter-caste marriage. The expectation that higher education would automatically dissolve caste boundaries in marriage found little empirical support.

This finding is sociologically far more important than the percentage itself. It demonstrates that modernisation has altered many aspects of individual life without fundamentally transforming the institution through which caste reproduces itself. Individuals increasingly select their occupations, migrate across regions, acquire higher education and participate in democratic politics irrespective of caste. Yet when the question of marriage arises, the overwhelming majority continue to negotiate within caste boundaries. The sphere in which constitutional modernity has advanced the least is precisely the sphere that Ambedkar regarded as decisive.

Marriage occupies this central position because it performs functions extending far beyond companionship. It regulates inheritance, determines kinship, consolidates social capital, preserves networks of reciprocity and transmits cultural identity from one generation to the next. In most societies, marriage is simultaneously a personal relationship and a mechanism of social reproduction. Ambedkar recognised this long before the vocabulary of "social reproduction" became common in sociology. His argument implied that whoever controls marriage controls the continuity of the social order. Consequently, caste could survive the transformation of occupations, political institutions and economic structures so long as it retained control over the marriage market.

Independent India illustrates this proposition with remarkable clarity. Hereditary occupations have weakened substantially. The son of a potter is no longer expected to become a potter; the daughter of a priest is under no legal obligation to remain within a priestly occupation. Occupational mobility has become an accepted feature of Indian society. Yet occupational mobility has not translated into marital mobility. The marriage market continues to display a degree of social closure unmatched by almost any other institution. In this sense, Ambedkar's distinction between occupation and endogamy acquires renewed significance. Occupation has become increasingly individualised; marriage remains overwhelmingly communitarian.

The resilience of endogamy becomes even more striking when viewed against the transformation of the Indian family. The last century witnessed the gradual decline of the joint family, increasing urban residence, delayed marriage, women's higher education, growing female participation in the labour market and the expansion of digital communication. Conventional theories of modernisation predicted that these developments would enlarge individual autonomy in spouse selection. While they have undoubtedly increased personal interaction across caste boundaries, they have not fundamentally displaced family authority in marriage decisions. Studies on marriage practices continue to show that parental involvement remains substantial and that inter-caste marriages are considerably more common where individuals exercise greater autonomy in spouse selection than where parents retain the decisive role.

The emergence of digital matrimonial platforms provides an especially revealing illustration of caste adaptation. At first glance, online matchmaking appears to represent the triumph of modern technology over traditional social barriers. A closer examination suggests the opposite. Most matrimonial platforms permit prospective spouses to filter potential matches by caste, sub-caste, religion, language, region and community. Technology has therefore not abolished endogamy; it has digitised it. Community networks that once relied upon local intermediaries, kinship circles and caste associations now employ algorithmic filters and nationwide databases. Digital modernity has expanded the geographical reach of endogamy while leaving its underlying logic substantially unchanged. Research based on hundreds of thousands of online matrimonial profiles likewise finds that openness to inter-caste marriage remains limited and that caste continues to shape partner preferences, even among younger and highly educated users.

The persistence of arranged marriage further reinforces this continuity. Contrary to the popular assumption that India is witnessing a linear transition from arranged marriages to "love marriages", sociological research indicates a more complex pattern. Increasing individual participation in spouse selection has not necessarily displaced parental approval or family negotiation. Rather, new forms of "assisted choice" have emerged, where individual preferences operate within boundaries broadly defined by family and community. Such negotiated autonomy often expands personal freedom while simultaneously preserving caste compatibility. The institution evolves without abandoning its reproductive function.

The significance of these developments becomes even clearer when viewed comparatively. Modernisation has undoubtedly weakened many traditional institutions in India. Joint families have become smaller; fertility has declined; educational attainment has expanded; occupational inheritance has diminished; village economies have become increasingly integrated into national and global markets. Yet endogamy has proved exceptionally resistant to these transformations. This uneven pattern of change cannot be explained by appealing simply to "tradition". Many traditions have disappeared or adapted beyond recognition. Endogamy has endured because it continues to perform a structural function in maintaining group boundaries, regulating inheritance and preserving community identity.

This distinction enables us to refine Ambedkar's original insight. Caste has not survived because Indians remain attached to every traditional custom associated with it. It has survived because the institution responsible for reproducing caste has proved capable of adapting to changing historical circumstances. The mechanism has displayed greater resilience than the institution itself. Endogamy has become detached from several of its earlier supports while acquiring new organisational forms. The language of ritual purity may have weakened in many contexts, but the social preference for marriage within caste continues to enjoy widespread legitimacy. The outward justification has evolved; the underlying practice has remained remarkably stable.

This conclusion also requires a critical qualification. The persistence of endogamy should not be interpreted as evidence that Indian society is static or incapable of change. Inter-caste marriages have increased modestly in some regions, urban centers and among younger cohorts, and there is evidence of gradual but uneven movement away from rigid sub-caste boundaries. The issue is one of degree rather than absolutes. The question before this article is not whether endogamy has weakened at the margins, but whether it has ceased to function as the principal mechanism through which caste reproduces itself. On the available evidence, the answer appears to be in the negative.

One hundred years after Castes in India was written, the first proposition advanced by Ambedkar therefore survives empirical scrutiny with remarkable force. Constitutional democracy has transformed the legal status of the citizen; economic modernisation has transformed the occupational structure of society; technological change has transformed communication and mobility. Yet none of these developments has fundamentally displaced the institution of endogamous marriage. If caste continues to reproduce itself across generations, it does so not because history stood still, but because its principal reproductive mechanism successfully adapted to history's movement.

The Second Proposition Tested: Demography, the Marriage Squeeze, and the Adaptation of Endogamy

If endogamy constituted the central mechanism of caste, Ambedkar immediately confronted the practical problem that every endogamous society must solve: how does an enclosed marriage market maintain numerical equilibrium between marriageable men and women? An endogamous group cannot indefinitely preserve itself unless it can continuously match eligible men with eligible women from within its own boundaries. The slightest demographic imbalance threatens the integrity of the system. It was this demographic logic that led Ambedkar to one of the most original sections of Castes in India.

He argued that every strictly endogamous community inevitably confronts the problem of "surplus women" and "surplus men." A widow represented a surplus woman because, if she remarried outside the caste, she would breach endogamy; a widower represented a surplus man because he too required a wife from within the same enclosed group. Ambedkar interpreted practices such as sati, enforced widowhood, child marriage and the remarriage of widowers to very young girls as institutional devices designed to preserve numerical balance within the marriage circle rather than merely as isolated religious customs. Whether one accepts every historical illustration or not, the analytical insight is unmistakable: demography matters because endogamy is ultimately a demographic institution. 

A century later, this proposition invites fresh scrutiny. Many of the institutional devices identified by Ambedkar have disappeared or been legally abolished. Sati is prohibited; child marriage has sharply declined, even if it has not been eliminated; widow remarriage carries no legal disability; and constitutional equality has profoundly altered the legal status of women. At first sight, these developments appear to weaken Ambedkar's argument. If the historical institutions he described have largely disappeared, has the demographic problem itself also disappeared?

The answer appears to be no. The institutions have changed; the demographic logic has not.

Indeed, contemporary India confronts a demographic challenge that Ambedkar himself could scarcely have anticipated. Instead of producing surplus widows through mortality, modern India has produced, in many regions, a structural shortage of women through a long history of son preference, sex-selective discrimination and distorted sex ratios. Historical census records already revealed regional deficits of women in the early twentieth century, while post-independence demographic studies demonstrate that these imbalances continued in many northern states.

The demographic consequences are profound. A persistent deficit of women inevitably produces what demographers describe as a marriage squeeze—a situation in which significant numbers of men are unable to find spouses because there are simply fewer marriageable women available. Studies of Indian marriage markets have shown that son preference and skewed sex ratios generate long-term shortages of brides, with consequences extending well beyond family formation. The persistence of regional differences in marriage outcomes over nearly a century suggests that demographic imbalance is not a temporary fluctuation but a structural phenomenon.

At this point, however, Ambedkar's theory requires an important refinement.

Ambedkar assumed that every caste would attempt to solve demographic imbalance within its own institutional boundaries. Twenty-first-century India demonstrates a more complex adaptation. Instead of abandoning endogamy altogether, many communities seek to preserve it as far as possible while selectively relaxing geographical boundaries. In several districts of Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh and parts of Punjab, cross-regional marriages have become increasingly common because of the shortage of locally available brides. Women from Assam, West Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar and other eastern states marry into households in north-western India. These marriages are popularly described in Haryana as molki (or paro) marriages and have generated a substantial body of sociological research.

Yet these developments reveal something more significant than demographic adaptation. They illustrate the extraordinary resilience of endogamy itself.

The shortage of brides has not generally produced a widespread social movement in favour of inter-caste marriage within the same locality. In many regions, local caste councils, kinship networks and community institutions continue to discourage marriages across caste boundaries even while accepting marriages across linguistic, cultural and geographical boundaries when demographic necessity demands it. The social distance of several hundred kilometres often proves more negotiable than the symbolic distance separating neighbouring castes.

This paradox deserves emphasis because it directly strengthens Ambedkar's central insight. The crisis created by bride shortages has not fundamentally dissolved caste boundaries; instead, it has compelled caste to adapt. Geography has become negotiable; caste often remains less so. The institution modifies its external practices while preserving its reproductive core.

The Haryana experience is especially instructive. Persistent deficits in the female population have produced measurable changes in marriage patterns over the last three decades. Cross-region marriages have increased, and these marriages frequently involve women entering entirely unfamiliar linguistic and cultural environments. Yet these adaptations have not generally been accompanied by an equivalent acceptance of local inter-caste marriages. The continued influence of caste panchayats and kinship networks in regulating matrimonial norms demonstrates that demographic pressure alone does not necessarily erode caste ideology. It may instead compel caste to innovate institutionally while preserving its internal logic.

At this stage, another clarification becomes essential. Public discourse often attributes phenomena such as sexual violence, trafficking, commercial sex work or extra-marital relationships directly to the shortage of brides. Such explanations should be approached with caution. Sexual violence, trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation are complex social phenomena shaped by multiple factors, including gender inequality, policing, social norms, economic vulnerability and impunity. Existing research does not establish that demographic imbalance alone causes these outcomes. What demographic studies do support is a more limited but important conclusion: persistent shortages of women alter marriage markets, increase the proportion of involuntarily unmarried men in some regions, and create new forms of cross-regional marriage and family formation.

This distinction is important because it strengthens rather than weakens Ambedkar's analytical framework. His enduring contribution does not lie in every historical example he used but in recognising that endogamy is inseparable from demography. An institution that regulates marriage must inevitably confront demographic realities. What history demonstrates is that caste has repeatedly adjusted its institutional practices to changing demographic conditions without surrendering its commitment to social closure.

The verdict on Ambedkar's second proposition is therefore more nuanced than the first. His historical explanations for practices such as sati, compulsory widowhood and child marriage belong to a specific historical context and remain open to historical debate. His broader sociological proposition, however—that the preservation of endogamy requires continuous demographic management—has acquired renewed significance in twenty-first-century India. The instruments have changed, the demographic context has changed, and the legal order has changed. The underlying challenge identified by Ambedkar has not.

The Third Proposition Tested: Political Democracy Did Not Dismantle Caste; It Reorganised It

When Ambedkar wrote Castes in India in 1916, India had not yet become a democratic republic. Universal adult franchise, electoral competition, affirmative action, political parties and representative legislatures belonged to the future. Consequently, his analysis concentrated almost exclusively upon the social mechanisms through which caste reproduced itself. Independent India introduced an entirely new variable that Ambedkar could not fully evaluate in 1916—the relationship between democracy and caste.

The expectation of many nationalist leaders was straightforward. Political democracy would gradually weaken social divisions. Equal citizenship, common electoral participation, constitutional rights and economic development were expected to create new solidarities that would progressively replace inherited identities. Democracy, in this vision, would become the solvent of caste.

History followed a more complex path.

Political democracy undoubtedly weakened many institutional disabilities associated with caste. Untouchability became unconstitutional. Public employment and education were opened through constitutional guarantees and reservation policies. Legislatures, universities, civil services and public institutions gradually became more representative than they had ever been under colonial rule. Millions from historically excluded communities entered public life through constitutional mechanisms. These achievements constitute one of the greatest democratic transformations in modern history and cannot be understated.

Yet democracy simultaneously performed another function.

Instead of eliminating caste as a political category, it reorganised caste as a democratic resource.

Rajni Kothari captured this transformation in his influential formulation of the "politicisation of caste." He argued that democracy did not simply inherit caste; it drew caste into the arena of electoral competition, where both politics and caste were transformed through their interaction. Politics found in caste an already existing network for organisation and mobilisation, while caste discovered in democracy an unprecedented opportunity for political assertion and access to state power.

Christophe Jaffrelot extended this analysis by demonstrating how democratic competition facilitated what he described as the political rise of historically subordinated castes. Electoral democracy enabled new social groups to challenge upper-caste dominance, particularly after the implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendations and the expansion of regional politics. Democracy therefore democratized political representation even as it deepened the political salience of caste identities.

These scholars rightly demonstrated that democracy transformed caste.

The present article advances a different, though complementary, proposition.

Democracy transformed the political function of caste but left largely untouched the social mechanism through which caste reproduced itself.

This distinction is fundamental.

Political mobilisation is not the same as social transformation.

A voter may support a candidate belonging to another caste and yet refuse to permit his son or daughter to marry outside the caste.

A legislator may invoke constitutional equality in Parliament while simultaneously negotiating marriages within rigid caste boundaries.

Political modernity and social conservatism may coexist within the same individual.

The ballot crosses caste boundaries more readily than the marriage invitation.

That paradox lies at the heart of contemporary India.

The Constitution attempted to construct a Republic founded upon the principle of equal citizenship. Electoral politics, however, necessarily requires the aggregation of social interests into voting blocs. Where caste already constituted one of the most durable forms of social organisation, political entrepreneurs naturally found it to be an effective basis for electoral mobilisation. Democracy did not invent caste identities; it inherited them. Yet electoral competition gave those identities new strategic significance. Caste ceased to be merely a ritual hierarchy; it became a political constituency.

This development should not be interpreted simply as political manipulation. Democracy rewards organisation. Communities possessing dense social networks, internal leadership and collective identity are often better positioned to negotiate representation and public resources than socially fragmented populations. Caste supplied precisely such organisational infrastructure. Political parties therefore increasingly selected candidates with reference to local caste arithmetic, constructed electoral alliances around caste coalitions and framed public discourse through the language of social representation. The logic of electoral competition thus reinforced the political visibility of identities that the Constitution hoped would gradually lose their social significance.

The consequences have been paradoxical.

On the one hand, democratic mobilisation has undoubtedly empowered many historically marginalised communities. The emergence of Dalit, OBC and regional political movements fundamentally altered the composition of political elites and widened democratic participation. To describe all caste politics as socially regressive would therefore be historically inaccurate. For many excluded communities, caste-based political organisation became an instrument of democratic inclusion rather than social exclusion.

On the other hand, the same political process normalised caste as the primary language through which electoral claims were articulated. Political parties increasingly measured electoral success through caste equations; candidate selection often reflected demographic calculations; public debates over reservation, census enumeration, local leadership and resource allocation became framed in caste terms. The result was not the disappearance of caste from public life but its institutional relocation—from ritual hierarchy to democratic competition.

This relocation produced an irony that Ambedkar himself had anticipated in a different context. Throughout his writings, he repeatedly warned that political democracy cannot survive without social democracy. Constitutional institutions may proclaim liberty, equality and fraternity, but these values cannot flourish where society continues to organise itself through inherited hierarchies. His warning was never that democracy would fail as a constitutional mechanism. It was that democracy might remain politically successful while being socially incomplete.

Viewed from this perspective, independent India presents a remarkable paradox.

The Republic has succeeded in making caste politically negotiable but has been far less successful in making it socially irrelevant.

The language of equality dominates constitutional discourse; the language of caste continues to influence social organisation.

The Constitution transformed the relationship between the citizen and the State.

It did not transform the relationship between the citizen and the marriage market.

This distinction explains why electoral democracy has not disproved Ambedkar's theory.

It has, instead, revealed its remarkable adaptability.

The social institution identified by Ambedkar acquired an entirely new political function without surrendering the mechanism through which it reproduces itself.

Caste no longer survives because it monopolises occupations or commands legal privilege.

It survives because it continues to regulate kinship, while simultaneously providing an effective framework for political organisation.

The genius of caste has not been its resistance to change.

It has been its extraordinary capacity to change without surrendering its core principle of social closure.

This, perhaps more than any other development of the last century, explains why Ambedkar's 1916 essay continues to illuminate the sociology of democratic India.

The Fourth Proposition Tested: Why Constitutional Equality Failed to Produce Social Equality

There is a profound intellectual continuity between Ambedkar's first sociological essay, Castes in India (1916), and his final address to the Constituent Assembly on 25 November 1949. The former explained how caste reproduces itself through the regulation of marriage; the latter warned that political democracy cannot survive unless it rests upon the foundations of social democracy. These two interventions, separated by more than three decades, are often studied independently. Yet they are, in reality, parts of a single intellectual argument. The sociologist identified the mechanism of caste; the constitutional statesman warned that unless society itself was transformed, the Constitution alone could not dismantle that mechanism.

The adoption of the Constitution marked the most ambitious attempt in Indian history to reconstruct society through law. It abolished untouchability, prohibited discrimination on grounds of caste, guaranteed equality before law, institutionalised affirmative action, and established universal adult franchise. No previous civilisation had attempted to confront an ancient system of inherited inequality through such an elaborate constitutional architecture. If legal reform alone were sufficient to transform society, India should have become the world's most successful experiment in social equality.

Ambedkar himself, however, never entertained such optimism.

In his concluding speech before the Constituent Assembly on 25 November 1949, he issued one of the most remarkable warnings in constitutional history. He declared that India must not remain satisfied with political democracy but must build social democracy, because "political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy." He defined social democracy not merely as constitutional equality but as "a way of life which recognises liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of life." These three values, he insisted, could not be separated from one another. Most significantly, he warned that on 26 January 1950 India would enter "a life of contradictions": political equality would coexist with deep social and economic inequality. Unless this contradiction was resolved, he cautioned, those excluded from equality might ultimately endanger the democratic structure itself.

This warning deserves to be read alongside Castes in India.

The Constitution could abolish untouchability because untouchability was a legal disability.

It could prohibit discrimination because discrimination could be subjected to legal sanction.

It could reserve seats in legislatures and public employment because representation lay within the competence of the State.

But the Constitution could not legislate affection.

It could not command fraternity.

It could not compel parents to accept an inter-caste marriage.

It could not dissolve the authority of kinship networks by constitutional decree.

It could regulate public institutions; it could not directly reorganise private social life.

Here lies the central paradox of constitutionalism.

A Constitution is extraordinarily effective in governing the relationship between the citizen and the State.

It is much less effective in governing the relationship between one citizen and another when that relationship is embedded in family, kinship, religion and community.

Caste survives primarily in this second domain.

Ambedkar understood this distinction with exceptional clarity. His sociology and his constitutional philosophy therefore converge upon the same conclusion: the decisive arena of caste is society, not merely the State.

This explains why the constitutional abolition of untouchability, though historically transformative, did not automatically dissolve caste consciousness. Law can prohibit exclusion from public wells, schools, temples and public offices. It cannot by itself persuade families to abandon inherited notions of social status when arranging marriages. The Constitution changed the legal rules of citizenship; it did not automatically change the cultural rules governing kinship.

The neglected constitutional principle in this context is fraternity.

Liberty and equality have generated extensive constitutional jurisprudence. Fraternity has remained comparatively under-theorised. Yet Ambedkar repeatedly insisted that fraternity was the indispensable condition for the practical realisation of the other two. "Without fraternity," he warned, "liberty and equality could not become a natural course of things. It would require a constable to enforce them." This single sentence perhaps offers the most penetrating explanation of independent India's experience. Where fraternity is weak, equality depends increasingly upon legal enforcement rather than social acceptance. Rights become matters of litigation instead of habits of everyday life.

The persistence of caste-based endogamy illustrates precisely this constitutional limitation. The law neither requires nor encourages caste endogamy. On the contrary, the constitutional ethos points towards individual liberty and equality in matters of marriage. Yet social institutions continue to exercise powerful influence through family expectations, community sanctions, informal authority and the desire to preserve inherited social capital. In many regions, caste associations, village councils and kinship networks retain considerable normative authority over matrimonial decisions, even though they possess no constitutional status. Their power is social rather than legal.

It is important, however, to avoid exaggeration. Indian society has not remained frozen since 1950. Urbanisation, education, women's employment, migration, constitutional litigation and civil society movements have expanded the space for individual autonomy. Inter-caste marriages, though still a minority, have increased in some urban and educated settings. Younger generations negotiate marriage with greater individual participation than earlier cohorts. These changes are real and significant.

Yet the pace of social change has been substantially slower than the pace of constitutional change.

The Republic transformed institutions more rapidly than it transformed social norms.

This distinction explains why Ambedkar's constitutional project appears simultaneously successful and incomplete.

It succeeded in democratising the State.

It did not fully democratise society.

The persistence of caste should therefore not be interpreted as evidence of constitutional failure. Such a conclusion would ignore the extraordinary achievements of the Indian Constitution in dismantling legal inequality and expanding democratic participation. Rather, it reveals the limits of constitutional engineering when confronted with deeply embedded social institutions. Constitutions can redistribute power, rights and opportunities. They cannot, by themselves, dissolve inherited structures of intimacy, identity and belonging.

Indeed, the continuing relevance of Castes in India lies precisely here.

The essay reminds us that caste is reproduced less through law than through everyday social practices.

The Constitution transformed the legal order.

Ambedkar knew that the social order would require a longer revolution.

His warning in 1949 was therefore not a confession of constitutional pessimism. It was a recognition that the success of the Constitution ultimately depended upon forces beyond the Constitution itself.

A century after Castes in India, independent India demonstrates the remarkable foresight of that warning. Political democracy has endured. Constitutional institutions have survived. Millions who were once excluded now participate in public life as equal citizens. Yet the social revolution envisioned by Ambedkar remains unfinished because the institution he identified in 1916 continues to reproduce itself through the sphere that law finds most difficult to transform—the intimate world of family, marriage and kinship.

In that sense, the greatest vindication of Castes in India is not that caste survived.

It is that Ambedkar correctly identified where it would survive.

The Fifth Proposition Tested: Has Democracy Become the New Custodian of Caste?

One of the most striking ironies of post-independence India is that the Republic simultaneously pursued two seemingly contradictory projects. Through the Constitution, the State sought to erode caste as a system of civil disability. Through electoral democracy, however, the political system increasingly came to recognise caste as one of the principal units of democratic mobilisation. The result was not the disappearance of caste but its institutional relocation. Caste gradually lost much of its formal legal authority while acquiring unprecedented political significance.

This transformation could hardly have been anticipated in 1916.

When Ambedkar wrote Castes in India, caste existed primarily as a social institution supported by religious authority, customary practice and local hierarchy. Independent India profoundly altered that institutional landscape. The Constitution deprived caste of legal legitimacy. Democratic politics, however, furnished caste with a new arena in which it could organise collective interests, negotiate representation and influence the distribution of state power. The institution did not simply survive modernity; it entered modernity and learned to operate within it.

This distinction is critical because it explains why the persistence of caste cannot be understood solely through the language of tradition. Modern caste is not merely an inheritance from the past. It is also a product of contemporary democratic incentives.

Democracy is built upon numbers.

Political parties seek organised constituencies.

Constituencies are constructed around identities capable of collective action.

In India, caste already possessed precisely those characteristics.

It provided organisational networks.

It possessed recognised leadership.

It generated internal solidarity.

It supplied demographic certainty.

No political strategist could easily ignore such an institutional resource.

Consequently, caste gradually became the grammar through which electoral competition was organised.

Candidate selection increasingly reflected local caste composition.

Coalition-building frequently depended upon caste arithmetic.

Election campaigns routinely appealed to community identity.

Public offices became symbols of caste representation.

Even demands for justice were increasingly articulated through caste categories.

This development should not be misunderstood.

It would be historically inaccurate—and normatively unfair—to argue that caste-based political mobilisation has been wholly detrimental to democracy. On the contrary, democratic mobilisation enabled historically marginalised communities to challenge entrenched monopolies of political power. The emergence of Dalit movements, backward-class politics and regional parties fundamentally broadened political participation and altered the social composition of governing elites. Democratic politics became an important instrument of social inclusion for communities that had long remained excluded from public authority. Rajni Kothari's account of the "politicisation of caste" and Christophe Jaffrelot's analysis of democratic mobilisation both emphasise that electoral politics transformed caste from a static hierarchy into an arena of political negotiation and contestation.

Yet the success of democratic inclusion carried an unintended consequence.

The political system increasingly acquired an institutional interest in preserving caste identities as identifiable electoral constituencies.

Democracy rewards identifiable groups.

Political negotiation requires organised claimants.

A social identity that dissolves completely becomes difficult to mobilise politically.

Consequently, electoral competition often encourages the continuous reaffirmation of identities even while constitutional morality aspires towards their gradual transcendence.

This is the paradox that deserves closer attention.

The Constitution envisages a future in which citizenship progressively outweighs inherited identity.

Electoral politics often functions within the realities of existing identities rather than the aspirations of future citizenship.

Neither logic is irrational.

The Constitution is normative.

Politics is competitive.

The tension between them is structural.

This distinction also illuminates a phenomenon that receives surprisingly little scholarly attention. Independent India has witnessed an extraordinary expansion in the public celebration of Ambedkar. His portraits adorn public institutions. His writings are widely published. Political parties across the ideological spectrum invoke his legacy. His birth anniversary has become a major public event. His image enjoys perhaps the broadest political acceptance of any modern Indian thinker after Mahatma Gandhi.

Yet the central sociological proposition of Castes in India rarely occupies the centre of political discourse.

Ambedkar the Constitution-maker is celebrated.

Ambedkar the analyst of endogamy is far less frequently confronted.

The irony is unmistakable.

Almost every political tradition claims Ambedkar.

Very few advance a sustained programme directed at weakening the institution that he regarded as the reproductive core of caste.

Electoral manifestos promise representation.

They seldom articulate a social programme for expanding fraternity across caste boundaries or for encouraging the erosion of endogamy through voluntary social reform.

The symbolic appropriation of Ambedkar has often proved politically easier than the implementation of his most radical sociological insight.

This observation applies not to one political party but to the broader democratic system.

The mainstream political imagination has generally approached caste through the language of representation, reservation, recognition and redistribution.

These are indispensable constitutional objectives.

They address historical injustice.

But they are not identical to the question Ambedkar posed in 1916.

His question was different.

How does caste reproduce itself?

A political movement may successfully redistribute offices, opportunities and representation without fundamentally altering the institution through which caste reproduces its social boundaries.

This is perhaps the greatest unresolved question of constitutional India.

The distinction becomes particularly visible in the sphere of marriage.

Political parties regularly nominate candidates from different castes.

Legislatures contain representatives from historically excluded communities.

Public institutions display greater social diversity than at any previous point in Indian history.

Yet marriage continues overwhelmingly to occur within caste boundaries.

The Republic has democratised political representation.

It has not democratised the marriage market.

This is precisely where Ambedkar's sociology re-enters the discussion.

If endogamy remains the principal mechanism through which caste reproduces itself, then a democratic system that addresses representation without substantially transforming patterns of marriage will inevitably weaken some dimensions of caste while leaving its reproductive core largely intact.

History therefore compels a more nuanced conclusion than either celebration or pessimism permits.

The Constitution did not fail.

Democracy did not betray equality.

Reservation did not strengthen caste in any simple sense.

Rather, constitutional democracy succeeded in redistributing political power, but it proved considerably less successful in dissolving the social institution through which caste continuously recreates itself.

This distinction is fundamental.

Political equality has expanded dramatically.

Social closure has contracted much more slowly.

The State has travelled farther than society.

Ambedkar anticipated precisely this possibility when he warned the Constituent Assembly that political democracy could not endure without social democracy. His warning was not directed against elections. It was directed against the belief that elections alone could transform society. A century after Castes in India, the evidence suggests that democracy altered the functions of caste more profoundly than it altered its foundations. The legal disabilities of caste have been challenged by constitutionalism; its political role has been reshaped by democracy; but its reproductive mechanism remains substantially embedded in family, kinship and endogamous marriage.

The Sixth Proposition Tested: If Ambedkar Was Right, Why Did No Major Political Movement Seek to Break Endogamy?

If the preceding sections are accepted, a disturbing question inevitably follows.

If Ambedkar correctly identified endogamy as the institution through which caste reproduces itself, why has independent India devoted comparatively little organised political energy towards dismantling endogamy itself?

This question is not directed against any single political party or ideological tradition.

It is directed against the history of the Republic.

Over the past seven decades, India has witnessed mass movements for linguistic identity, land reform, reservations, regional autonomy, religious mobilisation, anti-corruption, economic liberalisation, agrarian distress, environmental protection and gender justice. Political parties have built enduring electoral coalitions around class, caste, religion, region and language. Yet remarkably few have attempted to organise a sustained social movement whose explicit objective was to weaken caste through the expansion of voluntary inter-caste marriage and fraternity.

This silence is striking because Ambedkar himself left little ambiguity regarding the issue.

In Annihilation of Caste, he argued that inter-dining was insufficient and that "the real remedy for breaking Caste is inter-marriage. Nothing else will serve as the solvent of Caste." At the same time, he cautioned that marriage reform alone could not succeed unless the social and religious beliefs that sanctified caste were also challenged.

Independent India enthusiastically embraced Ambedkar as the principal architect of the Constitution.

It has been considerably more hesitant to embrace Ambedkar as the architect of a programme for dismantling the social foundations of caste.

The contrast deserves careful attention.

Political parties routinely celebrate Ambedkar's birth anniversary.

His portraits occupy legislatures, universities and public offices.

His image appears across the ideological spectrum.

His constitutional legacy has acquired almost universal public legitimacy.

Yet the proposition that stood at the centre of both Castes in India and Annihilation of Caste—that caste survives because marriage remains enclosed—has rarely become the organising principle of public policy or political mobilisation.

Why?

The answer lies partly in the nature of democratic politics itself.

Electoral politics is organised around constituencies.

Endogamy produces constituencies.

Every endogamous community generates dense networks of kinship, trust, leadership and collective identity. These networks become valuable political resources because they facilitate communication, mobilisation and voting behaviour. A political system structured around competitive elections therefore has limited incentives to encourage the dissolution of identities that already function as stable organisational units.

This does not imply that political parties consciously seek to preserve caste.

The institutional logic is subtler.

A political party requires organised communities.

Caste supplies organised communities.

Consequently, democratic politics often works through caste even while constitutional morality aspires to move beyond caste.

The same paradox is visible in public discourse.

Debates surrounding reservation, representation, caste census, backwardness, political inclusion and distributive justice are all indispensable in a society marked by historical discrimination. They seek to remedy unequal access to power and opportunity. Yet these debates generally begin with the assumption that caste exists as the relevant unit of public policy. They seldom ask how the institution itself may gradually lose its social significance.

This is not a criticism of affirmative action.

Affirmative action addresses historical injustice.

It does not, by itself, dissolve the social institution that generated the injustice.

Confusing these two objectives has often obscured Ambedkar's original sociological insight.

Indeed, the Republic has largely succeeded in transforming caste into a constitutional category of justice, while leaving intact many of the social processes through which caste continues to reproduce itself as a category of identity.

The distinction is subtle but fundamental.

Justice requires recognising disadvantage.

Social transformation ultimately requires making inherited boundaries progressively less relevant.

The first task belongs primarily to the State.

The second belongs primarily to society.

It is here that the absence of a sustained movement for fraternity becomes most visible.

Ambedkar repeatedly insisted that fraternity was not an ornamental constitutional ideal but the moral condition necessary for liberty and equality to become lived realities. Without fraternity, legal equality remains external to social life. Individuals become equal before the law while continuing to remain distant from one another in everyday existence.

Marriage occupies a unique place in this moral universe.

No institution creates kinship more directly.

No institution dissolves inherited social distance more effectively.

No institution more profoundly alters the boundaries of community.

This explains why Ambedkar assigned such extraordinary significance to inter-caste marriage. He was not proposing a symbolic reform. He was identifying the point at which social reproduction itself could be interrupted.

Yet modern India has generally preferred less disruptive forms of reform.

The State has legislated against discrimination.

Courts have defended individual rights.

Educational institutions have widened access.

Political representation has expanded.

These are historic achievements.

But they do not necessarily alter the intimate decisions through which families reproduce caste across generations.

Consequently, the Republic today presents an unusual sociological picture.

The citizen increasingly encounters the State as an equal.

The individual often continues to encounter society through inherited identities.

The contradiction that Ambedkar foresaw in 1949 has therefore not disappeared.

It has merely assumed a different institutional form.

The Republic honoured Ambedkar the constitutionalist.

It has been more cautious in embracing Ambedkar the social revolutionary.

Perhaps this hesitation arises because constitutional reform primarily requires legislation, whereas the dismantling of endogamy requires something far more demanding: the voluntary transformation of family, kinship, community and moral imagination.

Laws can prohibit exclusion.

Courts can enforce equality.

Governments can redistribute opportunity.

But no Parliament can legislate kinship.

No executive order can create fraternity.

No election can compel society to transcend the emotional boundaries through which it defines itself.

That is why Castes in India continues to speak with unusual force to twenty-first-century India.

Its central insight was never merely that caste exists.

It was that caste survives because society reproduces it through ordinary acts that appear private but collectively determine the structure of public life.

The greatest vindication of Ambedkar is therefore not that his diagnosis remains recognisable after a century.

It is that independent India has demonstrated the extraordinary difficulty of transforming a society whose deepest institutions lie beyond the immediate reach of law.

Conclusion: A Century Later, the Question Remains

More than a century has elapsed since a twenty-five-year-old Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar presented Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development before Alexander Goldenweiser's Anthropology Seminar at Columbia University. Few could have imagined that an essay written in an academic setting in New York in 1916 would continue to interrogate the social conscience of the world's largest democracy in 2026. Yet that is precisely what has happened. The remarkable longevity of Castes in India does not arise from its historical description of early twentieth-century Hindu society alone. It arises because Ambedkar identified a sociological mechanism whose explanatory power has outlived the historical circumstances in which it was first articulated.

This article has deliberately approached Castes in India not as a canonical text demanding reverence but as a sociological theory demanding empirical verification. Its central propositions have been tested against more than a century of constitutional governance, democratic politics, economic transformation, urbanisation, educational expansion and demographic change. The question was straightforward: Has independent India falsified Ambedkar's theory?

The evidence suggests a paradoxical answer.

India has profoundly transformed the institutions within which caste once operated.

It has not transformed the principal mechanism through which caste reproduces itself.

Untouchability has lost constitutional legitimacy.

Hereditary occupations have weakened.

Educational opportunities have expanded.

Political representation has become incomparably more inclusive.

Millions who once stood outside the structures of public authority now participate in the institutions of the Republic as equal citizens.

These are achievements of extraordinary historical significance. They testify to the moral and constitutional success of independent India and must never be underestimated.

Yet the same history demonstrates another reality.

Marriage remains overwhelmingly endogamous.

Kinship continues to reproduce inherited social boundaries.

Family remains the principal site where caste is transmitted across generations.

The language of ritual purity may have weakened in many contexts, but the social preference for marriage within caste continues to enjoy remarkable legitimacy. Caste has therefore not survived because India failed to modernise. It has survived because it successfully adapted to modernity.

This distinction is crucial.

The argument of this article is not that India has failed.

Nor is it that the Constitution has failed.

The Constitution succeeded in transforming the relationship between the individual and the State.

Its greater challenge lay in transforming the relationship between individuals within society.

That challenge remains unfinished.

The century-long journey from 1916 to 2026 also compels a reconsideration of democratic politics. Electoral democracy weakened caste as a system of legal exclusion but simultaneously reorganised caste as a framework of political mobilisation. Communities that were once denied representation acquired political voice and constitutional recognition—an achievement central to democratic justice. Yet the political recognition of caste identities has not necessarily dissolved the social institution through which those identities continue to reproduce themselves. Democracy redistributed power more rapidly than society redistributed intimacy.

This distinction explains one of the most striking ironies of modern India.

Ambedkar is perhaps the most universally invoked public intellectual in contemporary Indian politics.

His portrait adorns Parliament, courts, universities, government offices and political rallies.

His constitutional legacy is celebrated across ideological divides.

Yet his most radical sociological proposition—that caste survives because society continues to regulate marriage through endogamy—has rarely occupied the centre of political imagination.

The Republic embraced Ambedkar the Constitution-maker.

It has been considerably more hesitant to embrace Ambedkar the social revolutionary.

Perhaps this hesitation reflects the limits of politics itself.

Governments can enact legislation.

Courts can enforce rights.

Constitutions can prohibit discrimination.

Policies can expand opportunity.

But no law can compel affection.

No Parliament can legislate fraternity.

No election can dissolve inherited patterns of kinship.

The deepest institutions of society ultimately change not only through legal reform but through transformations in moral imagination, family practices and everyday social relationships.

It was precisely this distinction that Ambedkar recognised in both 1916 and 1949.

As a sociologist, he demonstrated that caste reproduces itself through endogamy.

As the principal architect of the Constitution, he warned that political democracy could not endure without social democracy founded upon liberty, equality and fraternity.

Read together, these two interventions form a single intellectual project.

The first explained the sociology of inequality.

The second proposed its constitutional remedy.

History demonstrates that the constitutional remedy remains incomplete because the sociological mechanism remains resilient.

That is why Castes in India continues to speak so powerfully to contemporary India.

It is not merely a document about the past.

It is a diagnostic framework for understanding the present.

Its enduring relevance lies not in proving that Indian society has remained unchanged, but in revealing how deeply rooted institutions adapt to changing historical circumstances without surrendering their essential logic. Caste today is not identical to the caste of 1916. It is less dependent on hereditary occupation, less protected by law and less openly defended in public discourse. Yet it continues to reproduce itself through the regulation of marriage, kinship and social identity—the very mechanism that Ambedkar identified over a century ago.

Ultimately, the significance of Castes in India extends beyond the sociology of caste. It compels us to confront a larger question about the nature of social change itself. Can a Constitution transform a society whose deepest institutions are reproduced not by the State but by the family? Can equality become a lived social ethic without fraternity becoming a lived social practice?

A century of Indian democracy suggests that these questions remain unresolved.

Perhaps, then, the greatest tribute to Ambedkar is not to commemorate him through statues, anniversaries or political rhetoric.

It is to continue asking the questions he asked.

For nations, like individuals, are ultimately judged not by the ideals they proclaim but by the social realities they are willing to confront.

More than one hundred years after Castes in India was written, Ambedkar's most unsettling question still stands before the Republic:

Can a society that preserves endogamy ever truly claim to have annihilated caste?

References

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2. Ambedkar, B.R. (1936). Annihilation of Caste. Self-published, Lahore. (Various later editions). Particularly the discussion on inter-marriage as the principal remedy against caste.

3. Ambedkar, B.R. (1949). Speech in the Constituent Assembly, 25 November 1949 (Grammar of Anarchy / Concluding Speech). New Delhi: Constituent Assembly Debates.

4. Government of India. (1950). The Constitution of India. Articles 14, 15, 16, 17, 21 and the Preamble.

5. Kothari, Rajni. (1970). Caste in Indian Politics. New Delhi: Orient Longman.

6. Jaffrelot, Christophe. (2003). India's Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India. New Delhi: Permanent Black.

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8. Dumont, Louis. (1980). Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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16. Government of India. Census of India, 1911; Census of India, 1931; Census of India, 2011. Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner. (For demographic trends, sex ratios and caste-related demographic analysis.)

17. National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), 2019–21. International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) and Ministry of Health & Family Welfare. (Sex ratio, gender indicators and demographic context.)

18. Omvedt, Gail. (1994). Dalits and the Democratic Revolution: Dr Ambedkar and the Dalit Movement in Colonial India. New Delhi: Sage Publications.

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