Caste as India’s Hidden Constitution

India’s social history cannot be understood solely through religion. For over three millennia, caste and class have been mutable, contested, and repeatedly reimagined, shaping power, identity, mobility, and exclusion. Religion, whether Vedic, Buddhist, Islamic, or modern Hindu, has often served as the language through which class relations were justified, reworked, or concealed. Contemporary India’s obsession with “Hindu unity” masks this more profound truth. The very intensity with which caste is denied today reveals how central it has always been.

This essay traces the long evolution of India’s class system from early tribal societies to the present moment, when political Hinduism has become a dominant force even as other social institutions weaken. It interrogates cherished myths about Rajputs, Kshatriyas, Mughals, Buddhism, and Dalits, and examines how history has been selectively remembered to serve modern politics. What emerges is not a story of eternal Hindu continuity, but of constant negotiation between power and ideology. In every era, those at the top rewrote the story; those at the bottom were forced to change their lives.

Early Social Formations: Fluid Power Before Fixed Caste

Three thousand years ago, the Indian subcontinent was not governed by a single civilizational system. It was a crossroads of people moving between Central Asia, Persia, Tibet, and Southeast Asia. Groups later labeled as Shakas, Scythians, Kushans, or Indo-Greeks were not outsiders in the modern nationalist sense but participants in a shared Eurasian world of migration and exchange. Political authority rested on martial ability, control of land, kinship networks, and ritual legitimacy, not on rigid birth-based caste.

The early Vedic society that emerged during this period was itself fluid. Social roles existed, but they were not iron cages. Priests, warriors, herders, and cultivators were functions, not immutable identities. Movement between roles was possible, and legitimacy was often earned rather than inherited. The latter image of a frozen four-varna system projected backward onto this era is a retrospective construction.

At the same time, non-Vedic traditions flourished. Tribal republics, oligarchies, and monarchies coexisted. Many communities practiced customs later deemed “unorthodox” by Brahminical standards, including meat-eating, ancestor worship, and fluid marriage practices. The social world was plural and contested.

Shramanic Revolt and the Birth of Anti-Caste Thought

It was within this plural environment that the Shramanic movements arose. Buddhism, Jainism, and Ajivika philosophy were not merely spiritual alternatives; they were direct assaults on Brahminical monopoly over knowledge and salvation. Siddhartha Gautama’s challenge was revolutionary precisely because it detached human suffering from ritual hierarchy. He rejected the authority of the Vedas, denied the permanence of the soul, and dismantled the claim that birth determined spiritual destiny.

The Buddhist sangha became the most radical social experiment of its time. People from every background, former slaves, courtesans, warriors, merchants, and women, lived within the same ethical discipline. This terrified entrenched elites not because Buddhism was foreign or violent, but because it rendered caste meaningless. Salvation depended on conduct, not ancestry.

The philosophical sophistication of early Buddhism rivaled anything produced elsewhere in the ancient world. Debates on causality, impermanence, and consciousness anticipated modern scientific reasoning. In rejecting metaphysical absolutes, Buddhism undermined the cosmological foundations upon which hereditary hierarchy rested.

Mauryas, Ashoka, and Ethical Statecraft

The Mauryan Empire marked the first large-scale political unification of the subcontinent. Its founders were not orthodox Kshatriyas in the later Brahminical sense. Their authority came from conquest and administration, not from Vedic genealogy. Chandragupta Maurya himself rose from obscure origins, and his empire thrived on meritocratic governance more than ritual legitimacy.

Ashoka’s conversion to Buddhism after the Kalinga war transformed the relationship between state and society. His dhamma was not sectarian Buddhism imposed by force; it was a moral code emphasizing non-violence, compassion, tolerance, medical care, and ethical restraint. Ashoka’s inscriptions addressed subjects directly, bypassing priestly intermediaries. In doing so, he weakened Brahminical control over moral authority.

Under Ashoka, Buddhism became a civilizational force precisely because it aligned governance with ethics rather than ritual. Yet even then, the Mauryan state relied on Brahmin administrators in practice. This uneasy coexistence foreshadowed later conflicts between ethical universalism and inherited privilege.

Mahayana, Philosophical Ferment, and Brahmin Intellectual Counterattack

Buddhism did not ossify after Ashoka. Through councils such as the Mahasangiti, vigorous debates gave rise to multiple schools of thought. Mahayana Buddhism emphasized compassion and universal salvation, while Hinayana prioritized monastic discipline and individual liberation. Nagarjuna’s Madhyamaka philosophy dismantled metaphysical absolutism with relentless logic, arguing that all phenomena were interdependent and empty of inherent essence.

Ironically, many of Buddhism’s most significant thinkers were Brahmins by birth. Nagarjuna, Rahula, and others used the very tools of Brahmin scholarship to dismantle Brahminism. This intellectual rebellion threatened the priestly order far more than military conquest ever could.

Unable to defeat Buddhism through argument alone, Brahminical thinkers gradually reframed the debate. They accused Buddhism of nihilism, claiming it destroyed moral order by denying the soul. In reality, Buddhism replaced ritual morality with ethical responsibility, which was far more dangerous to hereditary privilege.

Gupta Revival and the Rewriting of History

The Gupta period is often described as a golden age of Hindu civilization. It was indeed a period of artistic and scientific achievement, but it was also an era of ideological consolidation. State patronage shifted decisively toward Brahmin institutions. Texts were codified, genealogies standardized, and social hierarchies sanctified.

This was the moment when Buddhism began to be absorbed rather than opposed. The Buddha was reimagined as an avatar of Vishnu, neutralizing his challenge by divinizing it. Buddhist ethics were appropriated, while Buddhist history was quietly erased. Monastic universities survived but increasingly depended on royal favor.

Caste hardened during this period. Texts like the Manusmriti gained authority, defining social status as hereditary destiny. Occupational mobility narrowed. Pollution and purity became central organizing principles. What had once been flexible social functions hardened into metaphysical law.

Decline of Buddhism and the Rise of the Brahmin State

By the time of King Harsha in the seventh century, Buddhism survived primarily through royal patronage. Harsha himself was sympathetic to Buddhism, yet governance relied increasingly on Brahmin intermediaries. Once state support waned, Buddhism lacked the caste-based reproduction necessary for survival. Brahminism, with its hereditary institutions, filled the vacuum.

The decline of Buddhism was not merely the result of invasion. It was also the outcome of internal social dynamics. A religion that refused to embed itself in caste structures could not compete with one that did.

Islam’s Arrival and the Myth of Conversion by Sword

Islam entered the Indian subcontinent through trade centuries before major military campaigns. Muslim merchants settled on the western coast, intermarried locally, and practiced their faith without coercion. Large-scale conversions were slow and localized, shaped by economic opportunity and social mobility rather than violence.

When Turkic and Afghan armies later established kingdoms, they did not encounter a unified Hindu society. They entered a fragmented landscape of rival kings, tribes, and castes. Many Muslim rulers were invited as allies against local rivals. Conversion was often a strategy for preserving land, status, and autonomy within a new political order.

Rajputs and Mughals: Alliance Over Theology

Rajputs were not a single, ancient caste. They emerged as a political identity formed through warfare and land control. Roughly thirty-six clans, drawn from diverse origins, were consolidated into a martial elite through narrative construction and Brahmin genealogy.

Under the Mughals, Rajput identity reached its zenith. Rajput Mughal marriages were not acts of submission but calculated alliances. Many Muslim nobles were Rajputs by lineage, having converted while retaining land and status. Islam did not erase aristocracy; it reconfigured it.

The Mughal state was remarkably open to social mobility. Military and administrative merit allowed individuals to rise regardless of birth. This stands in stark contrast to later caste rigidity. For several centuries, upward mobility was a lived reality, not a constitutional promise.

How Rajput Identity Hardened into Caste

Over time, martial success and genealogical legitimacy froze into caste identity. Victorious clans became Rajputs; defeated ones lost status and slid into lower castes or occupational groups. Rajputs who lost wars were renamed, reclassified, and socially degraded. History became punishment.

Brahmins played a crucial role in this process by scripting genealogies that retroactively sanctified power. Fiction replaced memory. Loss became pollution. The caste system thus functioned as a record of political outcomes rather than as a repository of spiritual truths.

Colonialism and the Freezing of Indian Society

British rule fundamentally altered caste by turning it into a bureaucratic category. Census operations forced fluid identities into fixed boxes. The “martial race” theory elevated certain groups while denigrating others. What had once been negotiated socially became administered officially.

Colonial knowledge production, racialized caste, and caste-ized race. Identity hardened under the weight of administration. The British did not invent caste, but they immobilized it.

Dalits, Varna, and the Legal Invention of Hinduism

The Indian Constitution of 1950 marked a turning point. For the first time, “Hindu” was defined as a legal category. Dalits, historically outside the four-varna system, were placed within Hinduism for administrative purposes. Scheduled Castes were created to provide protection and reservations, but also to integrate the excluded into a system that had once rejected them.

This raises a profound question: did Dalits become Hindu, or did Hinduism expand to include them on paper? The ambiguity remains unresolved.

Ambedkar’s Warning and the Limits of Reform

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar understood that political democracy without social democracy was fragile. He warned that ignoring constitutional morality could destroy India’s freedom. His conversion to Buddhism was not a religious gesture but a philosophical return to an unfinished revolution against caste.

Ambedkar’s critique of “merit” exposed the hypocrisy of inherited advantage masquerading as ability. In a society structured by birth, merit is never neutral.

RSS, Political Hinduism, and the Denial of Caste

Contemporary political Hinduism thrives by managing caste contradictions rather than resolving them. The RSS emphasizes religious unity while avoiding structural reform. Cow politics, religious slogans, and cultural symbolism replace material justice.

Rajputs are celebrated selectively; caste pride is mobilized only insofar as it serves a unified Hindu narrative. The result is a politics of memory without accountability.

Two Civilizations, One Choice

India has always housed two civilizational impulses. The Shramanic tradition emphasizes reason, impermanence, equality, and ethics. The Brahminical tradition emphasizes hierarchy, ritual, and permanence. Modern India stands at a crossroads again.

The Constitution represents the most sustained Shramanic document in India’s history. Political Hinduism represents the latest Brahminical consolidation.

Conclusion: Constitution or Caste

Hinduism, as practiced politically, collapses without caste. That is why caste is denied even as it structures everyday life. India’s future hinges on whether constitutional morality can withstand manufactured religious identity.

Ambedkar’s warning echoes louder today than ever. The struggle is not between Hindus and Muslims, or tradition and modernity. It is between inherited hierarchy and ethical equality.

History, once recovered from myth, does not flatter power. It illuminates choices. India must decide which civilization it wishes to continue.