Dr John Mohan Razu
Professor of Social Ethics
Caste is an evil system that survives in our world though its origin in India. It continues to survive over 3000 years when compared with other diabolic systems like slavery, racial segregation, etc, etc have been demolished. It is surviving because of the Brahmanical social order reinforced by Hinduism and Manu dharma Shastra. System of caste is the substance because all others such as hierarchy, patriarchy, and all other discriminatory practices are the attributes (characteristics) or off-shoots of the main substance vis-à-vis a system known as caste. Scholars and social reformers like B.R. Ambedkar demonstrated that caste survival relies entirely on the strict control of women through patriarchal rules. Together, they create a compound structure of violence and Inequality.
System of caste divides human being by birth into a permanent, unequal hierarchical order that dictates social status, occupation, and human worth. It functions on systemic exclusion. In and through this, it institutionalises discrimination, untouchability, and the denial of basic dignity, education, and economic resources to lower-caste that are within as well as outside. Caste system ushers’ extreme violence. Dominant caste groups use physical violence, social boycotts, and honour killings to punish anyone who challenges caste boundaries or make attempts to rise socially. In a land where Iyotheedass, EV Periyar, and many reformers born we find even today honour killings when a Dalit man or women wanting to marry from other castes.
Caste system revolves around universal domination. Caste has been exported to countries like the United States, Canada, England, and other parts of the world. It is spreading swiftly and vastlyand thus becoming a global social system that grants systemic power, political leadership, and economic control over property primarily to me. System of caste enforces rigid gender roles and limits the bodily autonomy, freedom of choice, and labour of women. It has even gone to the extent of normalising abuses and thus sustains domestic abuse, sexual violence, and systemic silencing across societies regardless of other social divisions. It amplifies danger especially to the Dalits who live on the peripheries.
Caste is such a diabolic and venomous system that is embedded in human psyche. It has survived and surviving because those who hail from the dominant castes finds status, privilege, and power. If caste offers those, why should they abandon and abolish. Whether educated or high qualified they tend to embrace the benefits of caste since it elevates them to high social status. Along with those, it also pushes them to marry within so that the purity-pollution dynamic be maintained and furthered. Therefore, caste system is endogamous and thus endogamic. Endogamy is the cultural or legal practice of marrying only within a specific social, religious, ethnic, or caste group. Endogamous is the adjective for used to describe a group, marriage, or practice that follows this rule.
It believes in-marriage, it restricts romantic and marital partners to members of one’s own community. Therefore, caste functions on endogamy, and thus endogamous that describes a community or system where people marry inside their own defined group meaning an endogamous caste or tribe. Caste shall never become exogamous or exogamy which is the practice of marrying a specific religious denomination, a distinct social class, or traditional caste system. Those trying to deviate by positioning patriarchy thereby justifying it which is sheer reductionism and escapism. Caste is diabolic and cancerous. And so, caste ought to be annihilated because it is premised on the solid substance. The others such as patriarchy, hierarchy, power, and domination and host of others hang.
A few days ago, “Times of India”, dated 23rd of September, 2026, on the front pages flashed news under a caption Professor sent on leave, faculties of more IITS seek for fair investigation. The incidence happened in IIT-B’s board of governors asked Prof. Suryanarayana Doola, who is facing scrutiny over the suicide of second-year B. Tech student Sahil Wakode, to go on leave and set up a high level 10-member panel to examine the circumstance that led to the death. The board has also reportedly agreed to most of the demands by protesting students, barring calls for resignations. Similar calls came from faculty bodies of IIT-Kanpur, Kharagpur, Guwahati, Roorkee and Hyderabad, for the process and impartial probe, and students clarifying that the protest was not in defence of academic misconduct but for seeking reform and that their demand for temporarily relieving Doola as dean was not presumption of guilt. Wakode’s father said he would go on a hunger strike if IIT-B officials names in the case are not arrested.
In such top premier institution such as IIT having its footprints across the country continues to practicing caste against those who belong to Dalit and Tribal category. It is the corroded casteist mind-set that cannot tolerate those who come from the lowest ladder of caste system or outside to come and study on part with the dominant castes. In this game both the dominant castes belonging to faculties and students are involved. This is why annihilation caste become important than pitching others. Once the substance or the root is identified which is the Brahminic Hinduism and other instruments involved in it, then one should constantly keep addressing and attacking caste system and its major backer Hindu religion.
System of Caste is India’s base social structure on which everything hangs. Let not dominant caste categories belonging to Hinduism, Christianity, and others divert the basic truth that India is caste-ridden which has pervaded into all realms of our social, political, educational, cultural, and religious life. If this is the case how could those divert by stating others. Marx had envisioned classless society and B.R. Ambedkar advocated casteless Indian society. Let us not enter into or propose other ways and approaches in order to retain or legitimate caste which is evil and volatile. It is those visionaries who wanted to protect their identity and control others brought the evils that humanities faced and are facing. Vision and hope towards the betterment of humanity and human worth should be our goal and engagement in a diabolic world.
