Article31

The Caste Question in the Hinduism

The caste system, as it is popularly imagined today—a rigid, oppressive, birth-based hierarchy where the so-called “upper” exploit the “lower”—is not an eternal Hindu reality but rather a distortion born of centuries of foreign domination. At its core, caste (varna and jati) was never about an immutable birth identity; it was about vocation, dharma, and one’s contribution to society. The very word caste is not Indian at all but Portuguese—casta, meaning breed or lineage—imposed by Europeans to simplify, caricature, and ultimately disparage the fluid complexities of Hindu social organization. To blame Hinduism itself for caste oppression is to confuse the victim with the aggressor.

In pre-Islamic India, each professional grouping had its own dharma—its code of duty, honor, and social function. A priest had his dharma, but so too did a farmer, a merchant, an artisan, and a soldier. Social mobility was possible, intermingling was common, and the great saints of Hinduism routinely emerged from non-Brahmin backgrounds. Valmiki, the composer of the Ramayana, was a member of the outcaste community. Vyasa, compiler of the Mahabharata and the Vedas, was the son of a fisherwoman. Nandanar, revered in Tamil Shaivism, was an untouchable. The bhakti movement, which redefined Indian spirituality, was led by Kabir the weaver, Ravidas the cobbler, Tukaram the grocer—voices from far beyond the priestly fold. These were not exceptions; they were the rule of a civilization where spiritual greatness was never monopolized by birth.

The long night fell with the advent of the Muslim conquests. Islamic rulers, establishing their dominance through taxation, enslavement, and military brutality, undermined the delicate balance of Hindu society. The destruction of temples and monasteries crippled the institutional bases of learning, forcing communities into defensive postures. Jatis—professional guilds—retreated inward, marrying within themselves for survival, ossifying what had once been porous boundaries. The imperative of survival turned fluid dharmic categories into rigid enclosures. The British then compounded this damage by cataloguing, codifying, and freezing these communities into censuses and legal codes, turning “caste” into a permanent bureaucratic identity. What had been vocational became hereditary; what had been diverse became hierarchized under colonial ethnography.

The irony is that during these same centuries, Hindu political leadership often came from outside the so-called “upper castes.” From the great Vijayanagara rulers in the South to the Maratha warriors like Shivaji, from countless local chieftains to modern figures like Narendra Modi—born into a so-called lower caste—Hindu vitality and leadership repeatedly defied the colonial caricature. The lived reality was one of dynamism, not paralysis.

To wield caste today as a weapon against Hinduism is to participate in the very strategy of its enemies—first Muslim invaders, then European colonizers—who found it useful to divide, vilify, and delegitimize Hindu society. It is a grotesque irony: Hinduism, the only civilization that allowed skeptics, atheists, women saints, and untouchables to become spiritual authorities, is accused of eternal oppression by those who themselves practiced slavery, crusades, inquisitions, and apartheid.

Thus the decadence and caste rigidity in modern Hindu society are not Hinduism’s original sin but its colonial wound. What was once a system of professions and duties was perverted into a prison of identity. The defense of Hinduism requires restoring its true spirit—where dharma, not birth, defines worth; where saints rise from every walk of life; and where the civilization refuses to be shamed by categories invented by foreigners for their convenience.  

The so-called caste system of India, used today as a stick to beat Hinduism with, is less an eternal Hindu reality and more the product of centuries of foreign domination, distortion, and degradation. To begin with, the very word “caste” is foreign, Portuguese in origin, casta, meaning breed or lineage, applied by Europeans to describe what they could not or would not understand. Hindu society knew of varna and jati, categories that denoted functions, vocations, and professional groupings, not permanent prisons of birth. These categories were porous, dynamic, and tied to the principle of dharma—duty and righteousness appropriate to one’s role in the cosmic order. A society built upon dharma did not freeze men and women into iron cages; it sought to give meaning to every kind of labor, whether priestly, martial, mercantile, or manual. To call this “caste” is already to bow to colonial caricature.

Before the foreign yoke, the evidence of Indian texts themselves makes clear that social and spiritual greatness was not confined to any single “caste.” The composers of the epics and scriptures were hardly all Brahmins. Valmiki, the sage who composed the Ramayana, was born an outcaste, a hunter by background, transformed into a poet-seer by tapas and inspiration. Vyasa, compiler of the Mahabharata and arranger of the Vedas, was the son of a fisherwoman, yet he is revered as the very fountainhead of Indian philosophical discourse. Nandanar, one of the most beloved Tamil Shaiva saints, hailed from the so-called untouchables, yet his songs burn with a purity and devotion that humbled kings. In the medieval period, the Bhakti movement was led by artisans, weavers, cobblers, grocers—Kabir the weaver, Ravidas the cobbler, Tukaram the grocer, Namdev the tailor. Far from an exclusive preserve of Brahminical arrogance, Hindu sanctity has always overflowed caste boundaries. The greatest teachers of Hinduism have routinely been men and women from the very margins, which makes a mockery of the modern claim that caste oppression is intrinsic to the religion.

What then explains the decadence, the rigidity, the cruel stratification that became associated with caste in later centuries? The answer lies not in some primordial flaw within Hinduism but in the wounds inflicted by foreign domination. The Islamic invasions that began in the medieval period tore apart the institutions of Hindu society. Temples, which had served not only as places of worship but as schools, universities, granaries, and centers of social mobility, were smashed and looted. Buddhist monasteries, repositories of learning, were burned, their monks killed or scattered. In such conditions of cultural siege, communities turned inward. The guilds and professions that once had flexible rules of marriage and mobility became closed, defensive circles. Jatis that had once intermixed now married strictly within themselves to survive persecution. A society harassed by jizya taxes, forced conversions, and slave raids hardened its divisions as a strategy of preservation. What appears to the modern critic as oppressive rigidity was in fact a defensive mechanism under foreign rule.

The damage did not stop there. When the British supplanted the Mughals, they set about cataloguing Indian society through the cold eyes of census, bureaucracy, and law. They required neat boxes where none had existed before. The British censuses of the nineteenth century froze Indian communities into fixed “castes,” listed and ranked them, and then enshrined these identities in law. Colonial ethnographers classified Indians into rigid hierarchies, often according to their own racial theories, and thereby created a frozen system where once there had been flux. What had been a living organism became a fossil under the colonial microscope. Caste ceased to be a vocation or community identity and became instead a birthmark, permanent and bureaucratically recognized. The British loved this rigidity because it allowed them to divide and rule, to pit community against community, to undermine Hindu unity.

It is important to recall that even under these dark centuries, Hindu political leadership often emerged from outside the so-called “upper castes.” Shivaji, the great Maratha warrior who established Hindu sovereignty against the Mughals, was not a Brahmin. The rulers of the Vijayanagara empire, who held back the tide of Islam in South India, hailed from diverse backgrounds. Countless chieftains, generals, and kings emerged from communities derided in colonial records as “low caste.” Even in the modern age, independent India’s current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, comes from a background labeled as backward caste. This is not an aberration but a continuation of a long historical pattern: Hindu vitality has always defied the rigid boxes imposed by foreigners.

What is most galling is the hypocrisy of those who today denounce Hinduism as irredeemably casteist. Europe, which practiced slavery, feudal serfdom, inquisitions, and pogroms, presumes to lecture India on equality. Islam, which institutionalized slavery, concubinage, and the massacre of infidels, dares to accuse Hinduism of oppression. The record is clear: no Hindu text commands the enslavement of another people, no Hindu empire was built on the transoceanic slave trade, and no Hindu crusade sought to wipe out entire populations. Hindu society, for all its faults, produced saints from every background, gave the outcaste a place in the pantheon of holy men, and allowed women to compose hymns in the Rig Veda itself. This is not the record of a religion founded on oppression; it is the record of a civilization constantly struggling to harmonize difference into unity.

To wield caste today as a weapon against Hinduism is thus to participate in the very project of its enemies. Muslim rulers encouraged caste rigidity to prevent Hindu unity. British rulers codified caste to make their administration efficient and their dominion secure. Modern ideologues, both within and without India, continue this strategy by equating caste with Hinduism itself, seeking to shame Hindus into abandoning their tradition. But the truth is the reverse: caste, as understood today, is a colonial and imperial perversion, not a Hindu inheritance.

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The medieval period in India illustrates most clearly how the Islamic conquest warped Hindu society. Prior to the twelfth century, India was a land of extraordinary intellectual and social fluidity. Nalanda and Takshashila universities admitted students from across Asia, irrespective of their jati or region. A potter’s son could study logic, a trader’s child could master astronomy. But with the incursions of Mahmud of Ghazni, Muhammad Ghori, and later the Delhi Sultanate and Mughals, this world was shattered. Temples were not merely houses of worship but community centers that held libraries, employed artisans, trained dancers and musicians, and distributed charity. Their destruction by invaders was a deliberate attempt to cripple Hindu society at its foundation. Once temples became unsafe, once village schools were sacked, communities naturally tightened their walls, turning inward to preserve what little they could. This social contraction hardened fluid boundaries into rigid caste rules.

The imposition of the jizya tax on non-Muslims created further distortions. The dhimmi system treated Hindus as second-class subjects who could practice their religion only if they paid a humiliating tribute. Conversion was rewarded with tax relief, social privileges, and access to positions of power. This system encouraged some communities to guard their identity obsessively, while others, fearing ostracism, locked themselves into strict hereditary professions. When an entire society is reduced to a conquered people, survival takes precedence over social openness. Thus, caste ossification was less an act of Hindu oppression than a desperate defensive response to centuries of Islamic imperialism.

The Bhakti movement of the medieval period, arising precisely during this age of foreign domination, must be understood as a direct rebellion against caste rigidity. Kabir, born to a family of Muslim weavers, denounced both Brahmin pride and Islamic orthodoxy. Ravidas, the cobbler saint, declared that the truest city was the city of love, not of birth. Tukaram, from a family of grocers, composed hymns that rejected caste distinctions entirely. Basava, the twelfth-century reformer in Karnataka, explicitly opposed Brahminical hierarchy and uplifted manual labor as sacred. These saints were not anomalies but the very conscience of Hinduism reasserting itself in times of darkness. They show that Hindu spirituality remained indomitable, refusing to bow to either foreign tyranny or internal rigidity.

When the British supplanted the Mughals, they brought their own kind of violence—not the sword of Islam but the scalpel of bureaucracy. Obsessed with categorization, they conducted census after census, recording every Indian by “caste.” What had been flexible became fixed, because now the colonial government recognized, rewarded, and punished communities on the basis of those labels. The infamous 1901 census under Herbert Risley classified castes by supposed racial origin, dividing Indians into “Aryan” and “Dravidian” stock, based on pseudoscientific measurements of skulls and noses. Such grotesque racial theories hardened divisions that had never been understood that way before. Suddenly, Indians themselves began to internalize categories invented by foreigners. Jati, once a matter of profession, locality, or custom, became a bureaucratic identity enforced by law.

It must be remembered that the British actively used caste for their “divide and rule” policy. They recruited armies on caste lines, privileging certain “martial races” like Sikhs, Gurkhas, and Rajputs, while excluding others. They extended patronage to some castes while marginalizing others, deliberately sowing division. Missionaries gleefully seized upon caste as proof of Hinduism’s moral bankruptcy, portraying conversion to Christianity as liberation. Macaulay’s infamous educational reforms further uprooted traditional learning, convincing generations of Indians that their heritage was a swamp of superstition. In this poisoned climate, caste became a stigma, weaponized against Hinduism itself.

Yet history also records Hindu rulers and leaders from beyond the Brahmin fold rising to national prominence. Shivaji, the Maratha liberator, hailed from a family of cultivators. He defied the Mughal empire, built a navy, established just administration, and honored saints regardless of caste. The Vijayanagara kings, who preserved Hindu dharma in the South for centuries, came from communities far removed from Brahminical orthodoxy. In modern times, leaders like Narayana Guru in Kerala, born into an Ezhava family, spearheaded social reform while remaining deeply rooted in Hindu philosophy. B.R. Ambedkar, the fiercest critic of caste oppression, was himself a product of Hindu society who drew from its philosophical depth even as he rejected its social failures. And in our own age, Narendra Modi, born into a family labeled as backward caste, rose to become Prime Minister of the world’s largest democracy. This continuity of leadership from so-called “lower” castes undermines the colonial fiction that Hinduism is intrinsically oppressive.

If caste rigidity were truly essential to Hinduism, how could these figures have commanded mass reverence? How could saints like Kabir or Chokhamela, leaders like Shivaji or Ambedkar, reformers like Narayana Guru or Periyar, or politicians like Modi have become symbols of Hindu resilience? The answer is that Hindu society, though wounded by centuries of domination, never entirely lost its elasticity. The enemies of Hinduism want us to forget this elasticity, to reduce a civilization of three thousand years to a caricature of cruelty. But the record speaks otherwise.

Contrast this with the societies that denounce Hinduism. The Islamic world institutionalized slavery for over a thousand years, castrating millions of African boys in slave markets, enslaving Hindus by the hundreds of thousands, and annihilating entire Buddhist populations. Europe practiced serfdom, where peasants were legally bound to landowners, with fewer rights than even the most marginalized jatis in India. The Atlantic slave trade, run by Europeans and justified by Christian theology, uprooted and destroyed millions of African lives. The Inquisition burned heretics alive. And yet these same civilizations point fingers at Hinduism for caste, as if their own histories were not dripping with blood. Hinduism’s supposed sin pales beside the crimes of its accusers.

The deeper philosophical truth is this: Hinduism, unlike the Semitic religions, never claimed exclusivity. It never declared one prophet, one book, one law for all mankind. It declared instead that truth is many-sided, that all paths lead to the divine. In such a civilization, it was inevitable that communities would organize themselves in diverse ways—by profession, by ritual, by custom. But this pluralism was never intended as oppression. It became oppressive only when shattered by centuries of foreign domination. The real decadence, the absolute corruption of caste, was not born in the Vedas or the Upanishads; it was born in the slave markets of Ghazni, in the bureaucratic censuses of London, and in the missionary pamphlets of Calcutta.

To defend Hinduism is therefore to expose this history of distortion. It is to insist that caste, as understood today, is not an eternal Hindu inheritance but a colonial and imperial imposition. Hinduism’s true inheritance is its saints from every background, its openness to seekers from all walks of life, its insistence that dharma, not birth, defines a person’s worth. If Hindu society today is to rise again, it must recover this truth, refusing to be shamed by categories invented by its enemies.   

The modern attack on Hinduism, centered almost obsessively on caste, must therefore be unmasked for what it is: not a sincere moral critique but a continuation of colonial strategy. Missionaries, administrators, and imperialists discovered early on that the best way to delegitimize Hinduism was to present it as a religion of eternal oppression. The Portuguese invented the very word caste to caricature Indian society. The British codified it into censuses and legal categories. The missionaries painted it as a system from which only Christianity could offer salvation. And modern ideologues—Marxists, Islamists, Western liberals—repeat the same trope, using caste as a bludgeon to deny Hinduism its dignity. What they refuse to admit is that the rigid, oppressive caste system they decry is largely the consequence of foreign domination, not an inherent product of Hindu philosophy.

Let us ask directly: where in the Vedas, the Upanishads, or the Gita is caste as rigid birth-based hierarchy prescribed? The Purusha Sukta of the Rig Veda, often misquoted as proof, describes society symbolically as emerging from different parts of the cosmic person—priests from the mouth, warriors from the arms, traders from the thighs, workers from the feet. But this is metaphor, not law; cosmology, not sociology. The Bhagavad Gita is explicit: “Chaturvarnyam mayaa srishtam guna-karma-vibhaagashah”—“The four orders were created by Me according to qualities (guna) and action (karma).” (Bhagavad Gita 4.13). Here caste is tied not to birth but to personal qualities and deeds. If birth were decisive, why would Vyasa, son of a fisherwoman, be honored as the compiler of the Vedas themselves? Why would Valmiki, born an outcaste, become the seer of the Ramayana? Why would so many saints arise from the so-called lowest castes? Hindu texts themselves explode the modern caricature.

Critics like to point to untouchability as proof of Hindu cruelty. But even this must be seen in historical context. In ancient times, those engaged in tasks involving death, blood, or waste—tanners, butchers, cleaners—were ritually separated, not because they were subhuman but because their work was considered polluting under the ritual logic of the age. Every civilization had such exclusions: medieval Europe treated butchers and executioners as dishonorable; Islamic law considered entire professions impure. What made Hinduism distinctive was that even the “untouchables” produced saints and poets who entered the pantheon of revered figures. Nandanar in Tamil Nadu, Chokhamela in Maharashtra, Ravidas in North India—these men were not erased but exalted. Show me another civilization where the humblest of the humble became canonized voices of spiritual authority.

Meanwhile, the civilizations that accuse Hinduism of caste carried out horrors infinitely greater. Islam institutionalized slavery on a scale India never imagined, castrating boys, trafficking women, reducing entire populations to servitude. Christianity justified the transatlantic slave trade with biblical sanction, enslaving millions and exterminating indigenous peoples in the Americas. Europe practiced feudal serfdom, binding peasants to landowners in a hereditary prison far worse than the supposed immobility of Indian jatis. And yet these same traditions posture as liberators while branding Hinduism as uniquely oppressive. This is hypocrisy raised to an art form.

What Hinduism has suffered is not just the material damage of conquest but the psychological damage of propaganda. The colonizer’s most effective weapon is not the sword but the story—the narrative that convinces the conquered of their own inferiority. By equating Hinduism with caste, by making caste the very definition of Hindu identity, the colonizers implanted a poison into the Hindu mind. Generations of Indians grew up internalizing this shame, repeating the colonial narrative against themselves. Even reformers like Ambedkar, while rightly condemning the social evils of untouchability, unwittingly reinforced the foreign fiction that caste is Hinduism’s essence. The tragedy is that Hindus themselves have too often believed the lies of their enemies.

The path of renewal lies in rejecting this falsehood and recovering the true spirit of Hindu dharma. That spirit is one of openness, pluralism, and elasticity. It is the spirit that allowed skeptics and atheists to compose hymns in the Rig Veda, that allowed women like Gargi and Maitreyi to debate philosophy with men, that elevated an outcaste like Valmiki to sagehood, that embraced saints from every profession. Hinduism must not be judged by the distortions imposed under foreign rule but by its own inner record of inclusiveness and spiritual democracy.

The modern Hindu must therefore learn to answer critics not with apology but with defiance. When accused of caste oppression, he must point to the Bhakti saints who rose from the humblest origins to redefine Indian spirituality. When shamed by colonial categories, he must cite the Gita’s teaching that caste is defined by qualities and action, not birth. When told that Hinduism is irredeemably hierarchical, he must expose the record of Islamic slavery, Christian serfdom, and European racism. And when confronted with the reality that caste oppression still lingers today, he must acknowledge it honestly as a corruption born of foreign domination, not a mandate of dharma.

Above all, Hindus must refuse to allow caste to be used as a weapon against their civilization. For centuries, foreign rulers exploited caste to divide Hindus. Today, foreign ideologues and domestic elites exploit caste to delegitimize Hinduism itself. To accept their terms of debate is to remain enslaved. The only true liberation is intellectual decolonization: to see caste not as Hinduism’s eternal sin but as Hinduism’s colonial wound.

In defending this thesis, one defends not just Hinduism but the truth of history. The decadence in Hindu society, the ossification of caste, the cruelties that arose, are real enough—but they are the scars of conquest, not the essence of dharma. Hinduism’s essence is its inclusiveness, its ability to sanctify every profession, its refusal to deny salvation to anyone on account of birth. That essence was obscured but not extinguished. It is time to recover it.

If India today is to rise, if Hindu society is to heal, it must cast off the chains of colonial psychology. It must remember that caste, as popularly understood, is not Hinduism’s invention but its deformation under slavery to Muslims and British alike. It must reclaim the truth that dharma is higher than birth, that saints arise from every corner of society, that unity is stronger than division. In doing so, Hinduism will not only defend itself against its critics but will once again stand as a civilization of freedom, dignity, and spiritual democracy.

1. Bhagavad Gita, 4.13. Critical edition, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune.
2. Rig Veda, Purusha Sukta (10.90), in Ralph T.H. Griffith, The Hymns of the Rigveda, E.J. Lazarus & Co., 1896.
3. Ramayana of Valmiki, trans. R. Griffith, 1870–1874. Valmiki’s background as a former outcaste-turned-sage is discussed in A.K. Warder, Indian Kavya Literature, Vol. 1, Motilal Banarsidass, 1972.
4. Vyasa’s non-Brahmin origin (son of Satyavati, a fisherwoman) noted in Romila Thapar, The Penguin History of Early India, Penguin, 2002, p. 154.
5. Nandanar, Ravidas, Kabir, Tukaram, and Chokhamela discussed in John Stratton Hawley, A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement, Harvard University Press, 2015.
6. Basava’s anti-caste teachings in M.M. Kalburgi, Basava: Vachanas, Oxford University Press, 1997.
7. On temple destruction during Islamic rule: Richard Eaton, Temple Desecration and Indo-Muslim States, in Essays on Islam and Indian History, Oxford University Press, 2000.
8. On the jizya tax and Hindu status under Islamic rule: Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History, Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 284–289.
9. On British census and caste codification: Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India, Princeton University Press, 2001.
10. Herbert Risley’s racial theories: H.H. Risley, The People of India, 1915.
11. On divide-and-rule policies: Susan Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age, Cambridge University Press, 1999.
12. On missionaries exploiting caste: Geoffrey Oddie, Hindu and Christian in South-East India: Aspects of Religious Contact and Change, 1800–1900, Routledge, 1991.
13. On Shivaji’s caste and rise: Stewart Gordon, The Marathas 1600–1818, Cambridge University Press, 1993.
14. On Vijayanagara rulers: Burton Stein, Vijayanagara, Cambridge University Press, 1990.
15. Narayana Guru’s reforms: Robin Jeffrey, The Decline of Nair Dominance: Society and Politics in Travancore 1847–1908, Sussex University Press, 1976.
16. B.R. Ambedkar’s critique in Annihilation of Caste, first published 1936.
17. On Modi’s caste background: Christophe Jaffrelot, Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times, Penguin, 2015.
18. On Islamic slavery: Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East, Oxford University Press, 1990.
19. On Christian slavery and serfdom: Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study, Harvard University Press, 1982.
20. On the Inquisition: Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision, Yale University Press, 1998