We like to believe that caste fades away in the halls of power – universities, bureaucracies, and courts. Yet, recent incidents serve as poignant reminders that it endures, even where meritocracy is loudly proclaimed. The suicide of a senior Scheduled Caste IPS officer in Haryana laid bare the burdens carried by those historically marginalised.
Such events are not isolated; rather, they reflect a society that condones hierarchies beneath the surface of merit. Caste does not vanish behind education, titles, or formal protocols; instead, it lingers subtly in expectations, unspoken norms, and the allocation of opportunity. Acknowledging this is the practical starting point for tackling the inequalities still woven into the fabric of India’s elite.
Articles 15 and 17 forbade discrimination and untouchability, and Article 46 committed the State to developing the educational and economic interests of the Scheduled Castes. B R Ambedkar referred to this as social democracy. During the decades since Independence, great efforts have been made by India to achieve this dream. Reservation in education and administration was introduced to create avenues for social mobility. Early policies envisioned an India where ability and hard work, not pedigree, would determine opportunity.
But seven and a half decades later, that promise is still more inscription than institution. India has generated a Dalit middle class and broadened educational opportunity, but under this semblance of inclusion is a stubborn deficit between constitutional purpose and social conscience. The tension is no longer between villages of oppression and cities of modernity; it is between the text of equality and the psyche of privilege. In the universities, courts, and bureaucracies of the elite, the regime of caste endures, invisible to most, but indisputably evident to victims of its weight.
The IPS officer who ended his life, alleging harassment, was not failing an exam or a post; he was navigating a space where social hierarchies subtly question belonging, even amid professional recognition.
Among the educated elite, caste is often considered a relic. Classrooms, courtrooms, and boardrooms have ears that delight in claims that discrimination is a thing of the past. But the statistics tell a different story. Scheduled Castes comprise 16.6% of Indians and yet hold only 4% of top-level bureaucratic positions. Fewer than 5% of judges in upper courts are SC or ST. Diversity among professors in IITs and central universities is lamentably poor, and Dalit students continue to face despair in universities that promised them freedom.
These are not accidents of competition, but consequences of underlying arrangements. When privilege appears as merit, exclusion is framed as efficiency. Caste no longer manifests via slur or segregation; instead, a veil is thrown over its appearance with words like "cultural fit," gaps in networking, unwritten norms, and the polite affirmation that "we don't see caste”. Subtle barriers like inequities in mentorship, informal gatekeeping, and exclusion by professional networks maintain hierarchies while disguised as meritocracy.
The consequences are tangible. Marginalised students and officers often bear disproportionate psychological burdens, navigating spaces that celebrate formal equality but fail in substantive support. Open hostility can be condemned; invisible bias congratulates itself as progress. Denying caste is thus one of the most sophisticated forms of inequality, erasing others’ experiences while weakening the moral foundation of constitutional equality.
The State has built impressive legal scaffolding but little social foundation. Reservation policies opened doors, but institutions never fully learned inclusion. Anti-discrimination laws remain reactive, not preventive. Committees are formed after tragedies, only to dissolve into bureaucratic amnesia. Data on caste representation in the judiciary, academia, and private sector appointments is often missing. Meanwhile, ‘merit’ has quietly replaced substantive equality with formal equality: treating unequals identically.
Ambedkar warned that political democracy cannot endure without social democracy. Today, his warning echoes in universities, bureaucracies, and courtrooms – the very spaces meant to reflect rationality. Even within the private economy, caste hierarchies are a fact. Hiring is dependent on network and cultural affinity; leadership options are unbalanced. Meritocracy is a comforting illusion that works for a few. Caste tragedy in contemporary India is not ignorance but callousness: refusal by the educated to notice hierarchies that are to their advantage.
Building conscience, not just law
The future is not about laws, but about conscience. Transparency is the first order of business. Public institutions, starting with universities and courts, must put up caste-wise representation statistics. Without statistics, equality is just rhetoric. Second, inclusion must be a criterion; diversity is institutional strength, not tokenism, in selection and promotion. Third, the Constitution is not to be taught as civics, but as moral grammar in the common vocabulary of equality and empathy.
Mentorship programmes that match underrepresented students with veteran professionals, explicit anti-bias training within the bureaucracies and universities, and active discovery of ability by underrepresented groups can translate abstract ideals into a lived reality.
Critically, India has to recover the lost phrase in its Preamble – fraternity. Equality can be codified and enforced; fraternity has to be transmitted by conscience. It converts coexistence into community and rights into relationships. Unless this is grounded on morals, laws are hollow structures, and meritocracy, a thin cover for entrenched hierarchy.
India has increased opportunities, but not inclusion. The fact that caste prejudices still find a home in its most educated quarters is its gravest paradox: freedom's greatest beneficiaries are often its most reluctant practitioners. An officer’s suicide or a student’s desperation is never a private failure, but a public indictment. Till the privileged accept comfort as a responsibility, not a right, legality will be insisted upon, but society will be socially incomplete.
Institutions may change policies, but societal transformation requires the privileged to see inequality not as distant or abstract, but as daily and lived. Only then can meritocracy be more than an ideal, and equality more than a policy.
(The writer is a Millennium fellow and a law student at the Gujarat National Law University, Gandhinagar)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.