By positioning caste as the foundational structure beneath all forms of discrimination, activists have created a convenient framework that turns every measure of individual achievement into a suspect enterprise.
Caste is a Portuguese word used to describe varna, jati by the colonial project. It is also the most used and abused word. The most relevant study was done by Dr B.R.Ambedkar in his book “The Annihilation of Caste”. Today, there is a lot of politics around caste. Unfortunately, caste is a South Asian feature irrespective of religion and now has entered every sphere of human existence.
A PERILOUS MOVEMENT
Over the past two decades, a movement has systematically challenged the foundation of aspiration and achievement in India’s premier educational institutions, relying heavily on western approval. This intellectual campaign has sought to redefine meritocracy not as a system of individual achievement but as a façade for caste dominance. It has gone beyond advocating for affirmative action and equity and instead positioned merit as an inherently exclusionary concept to be dismantled rather than preserved. Nowhere to start better than the 2013 paper in “Economic and Political Weekly” by sociologist Satish Deshpande, arguing that the “general category” serves as a euphemism for upper-caste privilege. This perspective has since been leveraged to position India’s higher education institutions (HEIs) as bastions of “structural oppression.”
This further followed Ajanta Subramanian’s “The Caste of Merit” (2019), published by Harvard University Press, which takes this argument further by portraying IITs as elite institutions where upper-caste students allegedly convert their social capital into merit, ensuring generational privilege while systematically marginalizing OBCs, Dalits, and Adivasis. She goes so far as to dismiss merit itself as an illusion—a construct designed to mask upper-caste dominance. Supported by research tied to the French Ministry of External Affairs, her thesis asserts that IITs operate through informal networks where power and privilege, rather than talent and effort, dictate success. This narrative has since become the intellectual foundation for a broader movement that seeks to replace competitive excellence with ideological dogma. Reading such an observation feels disorienting, knowing by personal experience that students from across India work extraordinarily hard to earn a place in these elite institutions—transforming their own lives and those of their families.
Such assault on merit has only intensified in the past decade, coinciding with the rise of a non-left political order. Critics claim that the National Education Policy (NEP) is designed to expand IITs while defunding public universities, allegedly favouring private institutions run by business elites. Yet, this argument conveniently ignores that India’s public universities continue to receive substantial funding, and IITs, despite their elite status, have some of the most diverse student populations due to extensive affirmative action policies. Expanding opportunities for marginalized groups should not mean dismantling the structures that enable excellence.
CASTE AND CRITICAL RACE THEORY
CRT asserts that institutions are inherently built on systemic oppression, rendering objective truths irrelevant. Thinkers like Max Horkheimer and Pierre Bourdieu have shaped this intellectual movement, arguing that power structures dictate what is considered “knowledge” and that “cultural capital” ensures the privileged remain dominant.
Bourdieu’s argument that culture itself functions as a form of “inherited capital” has been weaponized by critical theorists to claim that caste operates as an invisible safety net for the upper castes. This framework suggests that India’s meritocracy is nothing more than a carefully crafted mechanism of exclusion. The logical conclusion of this argument is radical: existing structures—education, family, and even patriotism
The attempt to equate caste with race mirrors the divisive identity politics of the West. It’s astonishing to read that the anti-racism movement in the US is now being urged to rebrand itself as an anti-caste movement, essentially manufacturing a one-size-fits-all victimhood narrative. Isabel Wilkerson’s book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” exemplifies this trend, arguing that racism is merely an extension of caste-based hierarchy. By positioning caste as the foundational structure beneath all forms of discrimination, activists have created a convenient framework that turns every measure of individual achievement into a suspect enterprise.
ACTIVISM MASQUERADING AS SCHOLARSHIP
The indigenization of the Critical Race Theory (CRT) in India follows a familiar template—activism cloaked in scholarship, reducing complex social issues to a simplistic oppressor-victim binary. Imported from American racial discourse, CRT artificially equates caste with race, casting Brahmins/Savarnas as oppressors just as it labels white people in the West. It portrays institutions as mechanisms of exclusion, insisting that oppression is deeply embedded in society’s very fabric to sustain privilege.
Extending beyond caste, CRT attacks gender, sexuality, and even the family structure, framing them as oppressive constructs designed to reinforce power hierarchies. It demonizes meritocracy as a tool of exclusion, rejecting the idea that success can result from effort or ability. Instead of advocating reform within institutions, CRT demands their dismantling, pushing a radical agenda of perpetual grievance and division.
This ideological import ignores India’s social complexities, flattening nuanced realities into a rigid framework of systemic injustice. It rejects the progress made through legal, social, and economic reforms, replacing it with a narrative that breeds resentment rather than empowerment. By promoting an adversarial stance against institutions, CRT does not seek to uplift marginalized communities but to perpetuate discord, ensuring that the rhetoric of grievance never ends.
BATTLE FOR INDIA’S INTELLECTUAL FUTURE
India stands at a crossroads. The assault on its educational institutions is not an isolated academic debate but a battle for the nation’s future. If the anti-merit movement succeeds, it will erode the intellectual and economic foundation that has propelled India’s rise. This ideological project, rooted in CRT and Western identity politics, must be countered with a fact-based, intellectually rigorous defence of meritocracy.
The first step in resisting this assault is recognizing the imported nature of this discourse. The equating of caste with race is an artificial construct designed to fit India into a Western theoretical framework that does not align with its socio-historical realities. The second step is investing in Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) and reaffirming India’s civilizational ethos, which has historically valued knowledge and excellence as pathways to social mobility. And the third is implementing the roadmap given by Dr B.R. Ambedkar.
* Prof Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit is the Vice Chancellor of JNU.