Casteism

Casteism denotes the social, economic, and political discrimination practised on the basis of caste—the system of hereditary, endogamous, and hierarchically ranked groups (jāti) historically subsumed under the four-fold varna order of Brāhmaṇa, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra, with the so-called "untouchable" communities placed outside and below it. The term entered Indian sociological and political vocabulary in the early twentieth century as reformers and the colonial state increasingly catalogued caste; B. R. Ambedkar's Annihilation of Caste (1936, the undelivered address to the Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal) is the canonical critique. The constitutional basis for combating casteism is found in Article 15 (prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, or place of birth), Article 16 (equality of opportunity in public employment), and Article 17, which abolishes "untouchability" and forbids its practice "in any form," making it a punishable offence.

The procedural architecture against casteism operates on two tracks: protective discrimination and penal sanction. The first track flows from Articles 15(4), 15(5), and 16(4), which permit the State to make special provisions and reserve appointments for the Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), and Other Backward Classes (OBCs). The President notifies the lists of SCs and STs under Articles 341 and 342 respectively, and Parliament alone may amend them. The second track is penal: the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955 (originally the Untouchability (Offences) Act) gives effect to Article 17, while the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 criminalises specific atrocities, mandates Special Courts, and—after the 2015 and 2018 amendments—provides for time-bound investigation and bars on anticipatory bail in most cases.

Casteism manifests through several recognised mechanisms that the law and administration must address in sequence. Endogamy and the regulation of marriage remain the structural core, sustaining caste boundaries across generations. Spatial segregation (separate hamlets, wells, cremation grounds), occupational hereditary fixity (notably manual scavenging, addressed by the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013), and ritual exclusion from temples and public spaces are its overt forms. A National Commission for Scheduled Castes (Article 338) and a National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (Article 338A) investigate violations, while District Magistrates and Special Public Prosecutors enforce the 1989 Act. Reservation in legislatures under Articles 330 and 332 reserves seats for SCs and STs in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies.

Contemporary instances keep casteism on the policy agenda. The Rohith Vemula case at the University of Hyderabad in January 2016 triggered a national debate on institutional casteism in higher education. The Una flogging of Dalit youths in Gujarat in July 2016, and recurring atrocities documented annually by the National Crime Records Bureau under New Delhi's Ministry of Home Affairs, illustrate persistence in rural and semi-urban settings. The 103rd Constitutional Amendment of 2019 introduced a 10 percent reservation for Economically Weaker Sections, upheld in Janhit Abhiyan v. Union of India (2022). Diaspora dimensions have surfaced abroad: in 2023 the California legislature passed (and Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed) a bill to add caste as a protected category, and Seattle's City Council banned caste discrimination in February 2023.

Casteism must be distinguished from adjacent concepts. Caste itself is a descriptive social fact—a stratification system—whereas casteism is the normative malpractice of discrimination built upon it; one may study caste without endorsing casteism. Communalism, by contrast, mobilises identity along religious lines and is inter-religious, while casteism operates predominantly intra-religiously, though caste cuts across Islam, Christianity, and Sikhism in India. Racism rests on phenotype and ancestry; the 2001 Durban World Conference Against Racism saw India resist the equation of caste with race, arguing the categories are analytically distinct. Casteism also differs from classism: while caste and class overlap heavily, caste is birth-ascribed and ritually sanctioned, whereas class is, in principle, mobile.

Several controversies and edge cases complicate enforcement. The 50 percent ceiling on reservations laid down in Indra Sawhney v. Union of India (1992) is repeatedly tested by State legislation, such as Maharashtra's Maratha quota struck down in 2021. The "creamy layer" exclusion applies to OBCs and, after Jarnail Singh (2018), to promotions for SCs/STs, generating sustained litigation. Whether sub-classification within SCs is permissible was settled by a seven-judge Supreme Court bench in State of Punjab v. Davinder Singh (August 2024), which held that States may sub-categorise Scheduled Castes. The conversion question—whether Dalit Christians and Muslims should receive SC status, currently barred by the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950—remains under review, with a commission headed by former Chief Justice K. G. Balakrishnan constituted in 2022.

For the working practitioner—the civil servant, the policy researcher, or the diplomat answering questions on India's human-rights record—casteism is both a domestic governance challenge and an item of international scrutiny under instruments such as the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. A District Collector implementing the Atrocities Act, a UPSC aspirant analysing Indian society for General Studies Paper I, and an officer at the Ministry of External Affairs responding to a UN Special Rapporteur all require precision about the distinction between caste as structure and casteism as malpractice, and command of the statutory and constitutional toolkit—Articles 15, 16, and 17, the 1955 and 1989 Acts, and the evolving reservation jurisprudence—that the Indian state deploys against it.