We all have heard this oft-repeated phrase: “India is the biggest democracy in the world.” But scratch beneath the surface, and you’ll find it resembles less a republic and more a fiefdom – run by a handful of upper-caste, upper-class Indians who, although numerically a minority, continue to dominate nearly every institution of power and influence in this country.
They control everything: from sports stadiums to newsrooms, from corporate boardrooms to universities, from what we watch to what we are taught to think. From cricket to cinema, publishing houses to policymaking, corporate hiring to literary awards, the platform you’re reading this article on – the reins are firmly in the same hands. They dominate the screens, the scripts, the syllabi, and the salaries. Whether it’s bureaucracy, big businesses, book fairs, or book awards, the show is run by the same people.
They don’t just run institutions; they, to recall Chomsky, manufacture opinion and consent. Every headline, every history textbook, and every curriculum unit somehow echo their worldview. They are not just in the system; they are the system.
If that sounds exaggerated, try a simple test. In this era of AI, Gemini, Grok, and endless databases, it doesn’t take much to verify. Let’s do some basic exercise.
Who has received all the Bharat Ratnas, Sahitya Akademis, or Gyanpeeths – India’s highest honors in public life and literature? Who are celebrated as our greatest writers, poets, and literary critics? I come from the so-called Hindi belt, so let’s take that public sphere as a starting point – though this holds true across most Indian languages. You don’t even need me to name names; you already know them. Brilliant, no doubt – but overwhelmingly upper-caste.
Where are the voices of Dalits, Adivasis, and OBCs in the canon, in school syllabi, or on the floors of parliament?
Now, who directs the biggest Bollywood films, writes our mainstream histories (leftist, rightist, or centrist – it doesn’t matter), gets published by elite English presses, or decides what counts as “national literature”? Who wins grants, gets invited to the Jaipur Literature Festival, or represents India at global cultural events?
In the age of YouTube, who runs the most-followed “alternative media” channels? Think of all the so-called truth-to-power platforms or those doing slick interview series with politicians, journalists, and intellectuals. Many are doing important work – and I’m a genuine fan of some – but again, where do they come from? What is their social location? The exceptions are few. The core remains the same.
Now, think about the most celebrated stand-up comedians and satirists. Witty, sharp, and socially aware – but again, a narrow social profile. Or look at influencer culture: who are the most-followed IAS/IIT coaches. The same story. Who wins India’s Got Talent, becomes a playback singer, makes it as a classical dancer, or lands on TEDx stages? Again and again, you’ll find the same dominant castes at the top: Brahmins, Banias, Kayasthas, and Kshatriyas.
Yes, there are exceptions. There always are. But they’re often tokens, held up to suggest that the gates are open. They prove the rule. They become symbols of inclusion in a structure that remains deeply unequal, exclusive, and caste-bound.
Go further. Who heads our universities and research institutions and big science labs? Who dominates the higher ranks of the bureaucracy, judiciary and armed forces? Who is holding the position of joint secretary or foreign secretary? And who runs India’s biggest corporations – both at home and globally? Who are the biggest entrepreneurs, startup gurus, big billionaires, and rising stars? Who controls startup funding and venture capital?
We are very good at invisibilising and othering things; we try to do that with caste, too. Ask any upper-caste urban middle-class male about caste, and you’ll hear something like, “Oh, it’s a thing of the past.” Read any book written by an upper-caste scholar, and you’ll find the same: “Oh, it’s a British construct.” If you move the spectrum, you will find the blame on the Mughals or Muslim rulers. Some may reject it outright or find benefits in it for the larger social good; some Gandhians, maybe.
The Suttanipāta, one of the oldest texts in the Pali Canon, contains a striking dialogue in which a Brahmin asks another Brahmin, “Are you a Brahmin?” Sitting in a US graduate school, where the South Asian Studies departments are overwhelmingly dominated by Savarna academics, I once joked with a friend about the modern-day equivalent of that Suttanipāta dialogue. (After all, 99 percent of Indian-origin professors in South Asian departments here come from the same caste group – it won’t take you more than a minute to verify this; ask Google Baba or any AI). So I said, imagine this academic version (this is true and not hypothetical): Mr Guha edits Subaltern Studies with contributions from Chakrabarty, Chatterjee, Mukherjee, and Banerjee, later taught in seminars by Tiwari, Pandey, Aggarwal, Bose, Ghosh, Thapar, Sharma, Subrahmanyam, and Iyer, then cited by Singh, Mishra, Shukla, Joshi, Bhatt, Upadhyay, Pathak, Deshpande, Kulkarni, and Dixit in papers on Dalits, and eventually critiqued by Gupta, Goel, Bansal, Mittal, Singhal, Kansal, Jindal, and Tayal at Berkeley, Stanford, Princeton, and other Ivy League campuses across the US and Europe.
So, if these hierarchies have never crossed your mind – if they have never bothered your sense of justice and equality, or if you think it’s all because of their merit – you are most likely one of the beneficiaries of caste.
I’m not saying that all upper-caste people are inherently evil – far from it. What I am pointing to is the systemic structure of how India operates. This structure favors a select few at the expense of everyone else. However, within that structure, upper-caste allies exist who actively strive to bridge these inequalities in meaningful ways. Personally, I owe much to my upper-caste professors, who made it possible for me to reach a university in the United States, wrote strong recommendation letters, and gave me money to purchase my flight tickets (thanks, Chella sir), and to friends who stood by me – economically and emotionally – when life was at its hardest.
However, these are anomalies, not the norm. We, the “untouchables”, who have fought to enter universities and learned to use language and critique, even if not as well as those who came first, have one demand: that these inequalities be recognised. We may not be able to dismantle the entire structure, but we will hold up a mirror to it. And we will say it – clearly, openly, and directly – to your face.
And for that, we owe everything to Dr B.R. Ambedkar – Baba Saheb, as we call him with love and respect. It was he who, through his intellect and lifelong struggle, launched the most extraordinary bloodless revolution in Indian history. He made it possible for those once deemed untouchable, unseeable, and less than human – for someone like me, in whose entire family, from the first biological forefather to my own father, not a single person had seen the face of a school or college – to assert their dignity, demand equal rights, and claim a space in the nation’s imagination. Although his dream remains far from being fulfilled in the truest sense,
The legal and political rights Ambedkar secured have not translated fully into social or material realities. No week passes without hearing of a Dalit groom being stopped from riding a horse, being killed for keeping a mustache, a child being beaten (even to death for touching a water pot), a Dalit woman being raped for resisting harassment, or a temple ritually “purified” after Dalit entry, even if they are some big-shot politicians.
Yes, some Dalits have made it big – attending world-class universities and holding leadership positions. But these are outliers, not indicators of systemic change. At the same time, caste-based atrocities are on the rise – especially in northern India, where I come from. Even among the so-called “intermediary” or Other Backward Castes, caste hierarchies are as much a reality for them as for their upper-caste counterparts. In the eyes of OBCs, Dalits are still untouchables. They are as good as, if not better than, their Savarna counterparts at harassing Dalits.
Successive governments do what they do best – pay lip service, float schemes, and run advertisement campaigns. But the real responsibility lies with society. With the so-called mainstream. With those who enjoy unearned privilege but rarely acknowledge it. How long will we treat an entire population segment as less than human? When will we start making room for those who remain at the bottom of the social hierarchy, leading lives akin to second-class citizens within their own nation?
This Ambedkar Jayanti, as we garland his statue or repost his quotes, let us pause and ask: Can we one day transform this not-so-democratic democracy into the real one he dreamed of – where dignity, justice, and representation are not the privileges of a few, but the birthright of all?
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