Social Justice is a Right, Not Charity

Every few months, a name surfaces. Rohith Vemula. Darshan Solanki. Payal Tadvi. Ayush Ashna. Anil Kumar.

Young people. Bright students. First-generation learners who made it into India's premier institutions against impossible odds. And then they died. Not from accidents. Not from disease. From something far more insidious—institutional murder dressed up as suicide.

Between 2005 and 2024, at least 115 students died by suicide across the Indian Institutes of Technology alone. The majority were from Dalit, Adivasi, and OBC communities. Their deaths weren't personal failures. They were the predictable outcome of a system designed to exclude, humiliate, and break them.

This is why social justice matters. Not as charity. Not as appeasement. As a constitutional right owed to communities denied basic humanity for millennia.

What is Social Justice?

Strip away the political noise and the definition is simple: equal access to wealth, opportunities, and social privileges.

Not special treatment. Equal treatment.

For communities systematically denied education, property, dignity, and even the right to walk on public roads, social justice means undoing centuries of accumulated disadvantage. It means recognizing that a race cannot be fair when some runners started a thousand years behind the starting line while carrying weights.

There are no "lower" castes. There are only the oppressed—and those who have oppressed them for centuries.

Martin Luther King Jr. understood this when he spoke of the fierce urgency of now. Nelson Mandela understood this when he dismantled apartheid. Babasaheb Ambedkar understood this when he demanded separate electorates for Dalits—and was forced to compromise under Gandhi's fast unto death.

The struggle for dignity is universal. What makes India's caste system uniquely horrific is its longevity, its religious sanction, and its continued brutality.

The Violence That Never Ended

Here is what the National Crime Records Bureau tells us:

In 2022, 57,582 cases of crimes against Scheduled Castes were registered—a 13.1% increase from the previous year. Another 10,064 cases against Scheduled Tribes, up 14.3%. These are only the reported cases. The actual numbers are far higher.

Uttar Pradesh alone reported over 15,000 cases against Dalits in a single year. Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar follow. Every day, somewhere in India, a Dalit is beaten for drinking water from a common well. A family is burned alive for owning land. A woman is raped as punishment for her community's assertion of rights.

This is not history. This is today.

In 2020, Hathras happened. A Dalit girl was gang-raped, her spine broken, her tongue cut. She died. The police cremated her body at night without the family's consent. The perpetrators belonged to dominant castes.

In 2022, in Madhya Pradesh, Rampyari Bai, a tribal woman, was set on fire during a land dispute. Her crime was asserting her right to ancestral property.

In 2024, an eight-year-old Dalit boy in Rajasthan was beaten for touching a water bucket near a hand pump. A child. For touching water.

These are not aberrations. They are the system working as designed.

The Architecture of Oppression

To understand why social justice is necessary, you must understand what it fights against.

The Dharmasutras—ancient legal texts dating back over two thousand years—laid out a hierarchy with explicit brutality. These were not divine revelations. They were written by men, for the benefit of men who wished to dominate others. Apastamba declared the four varnas in order of superiority. Gautama reserved the harshest punishments for Shudras: if one listened to Vedic recitation, molten tin poured into the ears; if one repeated it, the tongue cut off; if one memorized it, the body split asunder.

Manusmriti codified this further—again, a text written by mortals, not handed down by any god. It declared women inherently sinful. It declared Shudras existed to serve. It exempted upper castes from corporal punishment even for crimes that would earn others death.

This was not merely text. It was practiced law for centuries, enforced by kings and sanctioned by religion. The worth of human life was explicitly differentiated: a thousand cows as compensation for killing a Kshatriya, a hundred for a Vaishya, ten for a Shudra.

The system controlled everything: who could own land, who could learn, who could walk on which streets, who could draw water from which wells. And crucially, it controlled women's bodies—because caste purity depended on controlling who could marry whom.

Women: Oppressed Across Every Divide

Caste oppression and gender oppression are not separate systems. They are intertwined, each reinforcing the other.

The same texts that established caste hierarchy also established the subordination of women. Manusmriti declared that a woman must be under the control of her father in childhood, her husband in youth, her son in old age—never independent. It claimed women were inherently prone to sin, incapable of performing rituals, unfit for education. These were not divine commandments. They were rules written by men who feared women's autonomy.

This is not unique to one religion. Across faiths—Hinduism, Islam, Christianity—patriarchal interpretations have been used to control women's bodies, limit their mobility, deny them inheritance, and confine them to domestic roles. The five pillars of patriarchy operate everywhere: control over women's sexuality, control over reproduction, restriction of economic independence, exclusion from religious authority, and violence as enforcement.

The men who wrote these texts hid behind the authority of the divine. They claimed god wanted women silent, submissive, secondary. But no god wrote these laws. Mortal men did—men who benefited from the subjugation they prescribed.

Today, this continues. Honor killings punish women for choosing their own partners. Dowry deaths punish families for not paying enough. Triple talaq was used to discard wives instantly. Menstruating women are barred from temples. In every religion, women who question are labeled heretics, troublemakers, westernized. The oppressors change their robes, but the oppression remains.

Women from oppressed castes face this doubly. A Dalit woman is targeted both for her caste and her gender. She is the most vulnerable, the most violated, the least heard. The NCRB data on crimes against Dalit women—rape, assault, murder—tells a story of intersecting brutalities that dominant-caste feminism often fails to address.

The Invention of "Hindu"

One of the most important historical facts suppressed in mainstream discourse is this: "Hindu" as a unified religious identity is a twentieth-century invention.

The term originally meant nothing more than "people from the region of the Indus River"—a geographical descriptor used by Persians and Arabs. Until the British census operations began in the 1870s, no one on the subcontinent identified themselves as "Hindu" in any religious sense. They identified by caste, by sect, by local community.

The 1911 census revealed the problem. When administrators tried to determine who was actually "Hindu," they found that a quarter of those classified as such denied the supremacy of upper castes and the authority of the Vedas. A quarter didn't worship the "great Hindu gods." A third were denied access to temples. Two-fifths ate beef.

The upper castes panicked. If the majority oppressed castes were counted separately, the dominant castes would be exposed as a small minority. The Gait Circular, which attempted to enumerate these distinctions, was withdrawn after fierce protests from upper-caste organizations.

The term "Hindu" was adopted not to include the oppressed castes as equals, but to subsume them as subordinates—to claim their numbers while denying them power.

This is why the demand for a caste census terrifies certain political formations. The last time comprehensive caste data was done, in 2011, it suggested that OBCs constitute around 50% of the population, Dalits and Adivasis around 25-30%, and upper castes about 20% of the population.

The "Hindu majority" is a statistical illusion built on the forced inclusion of communities who were never treated as equals.

The Freedom Fighters You Weren't Taught About

Every Indian schoolchild learns about Gandhi and Nehru. Few learn about the people who actually fought against caste.

Jotirao Phule was born in 1827 in Maharashtra, in the Mali caste. Along with his wife Savitribai, he opened the first school for girls in India and the first school for Dalits. He founded the Satyashodhak Samaj—the truth-seekers' society—which rejected caste hierarchy, priest-craft, and idol worship. He saw the "Aryan" narrative for what it was: a story of conquest used to justify oppression. He called the upper-caste elite the enemies of the nation.

Periyar E.V. Ramasamy took this further in Tamil Nadu. He is often caricatured as being "against God" or "against religion." This misses the point entirely.

Periyar understood something crucial: the humans who oppressed their fellow humans did not do so openly. They hid behind religion. They hid behind God. They claimed divine sanction for their cruelty. When a priest said a Dalit cannot enter a temple, he claimed God wanted it so. When a father killed his daughter for marrying outside caste, he claimed tradition demanded it. When women were denied education, men said the scriptures forbade it.

Periyar's attack was not on faith itself—but on the weaponization of faith. He fought against the men who used God as a shield for their oppression. He fought for women's rights, for widow remarriage, for intercaste marriage, for the destruction of the caste system root and branch. The Dravidian movement he sparked understood that you cannot fight caste without confronting the religious structures that sanctify it.

This is not atheism for its own sake. It is the recognition that when religion becomes a tool of power, it must be questioned. When priests become gatekeepers of dignity, the gates must be broken down.

Babasaheb Ambedkar stands as the towering figure of anti-caste thought. A Mahar by birth, he was the first from his community to earn a college degree, then a doctorate from Columbia, then another from the London School of Economics. He led the Mahad Satyagraha, where thousands of Dalits marched to drink water from a public tank. He demanded separate electorates for Dalits at the Round Table Conferences—and was forced to abandon this demand when Gandhi threatened to fast unto death.

Gandhi's opposition is worth understanding. He claimed separate electorates would "destroy Hinduism." In a conversation with Vallabhbhai Patel, he revealed his real fear: "Untouchable hooligans will make common cause with Muslim hooligans and kill caste Hindus."

The Poona Pact of 1932 replaced separate electorates with reserved constituencies in a joint electorate—a system that allows dominant castes to influence who represents Dalits. This compromise has haunted Indian democracy ever since.

Why Ambedkar Left Hinduism

In 1935, Ambedkar made a declaration that shook the nation: "I was born a Hindu, but I will not die a Hindu."

He spent the next two decades studying world religions—Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism—searching for a faith that offered dignity rather than degradation. In 1956, just weeks before his death, he converted to Buddhism along with nearly 400,000 followers in a historic ceremony at Nagpur.

Why Buddhism? Because it rejected caste. Because it rejected the authority of texts that sanctioned inequality. Because the Buddha himself had challenged the ritual hierarchy of his time. Because Buddhism offered a path to liberation that did not require the permission of priests or the acceptance of inherited inferiority.

Ambedkar's conversion was not a rejection of spirituality. It was a rejection of a system that used spirituality as a weapon. He sought a faith that affirmed human equality—and found that Hinduism, as practiced, could not offer this.

Arignar Anna and Kalaignar Karunanidhi continued the Dravidian project in Tamil Nadu. The Justice Party, the Dravidar Kazhagam, the DMK—these were not merely political organizations but civilizational interventions. The 1921 Madras Government Order implementing communal representation was revolutionary: it explicitly recognized that "merit" was a mask for caste privilege and mandated proportional representation.

These leaders understood what many still refuse to accept: social democracy is more vital than political freedom. What use is independence if the same hierarchies continue?

Why Reservation is a Right

The most common argument against reservation goes like this: "Why should someone get a seat in IIT because their grandfather was oppressed? Merit should be the only criterion."

This argument fails on multiple levels.

First, it assumes that "merit" is neutral. It is not. A child born to educated parents, with access to coaching classes, English-medium schools, nutritious food, and social networks, will outperform a child denied all these advantages. This is not merit. It is inherited privilege.

Second, it misunderstands what reservation addresses. The right to reservation does not exist because someone's grandfather was poor fifty years ago. It exists because fundamental human rights were denied for thousands of years. The accumulated social capital of dominant castes—their networks, their cultural familiarity, their confidence in institutions—does not disappear in a generation or two.

Third, look at the actual data on representation.

In IIT Delhi, 14 departments have no faculty from SC or ST communities. In IIT Bombay, 90% of faculty are from upper castes. Across all IITs and IIMs, Dalits and Adivasis together account for less than 9% of faculty—despite constituting 30% of the population.

In newsrooms, of 121 leadership positions surveyed, 106 were occupied by upper castes. Not a single one by a Dalit or Adivasi. Three out of four TV news anchors are upper caste. The same pattern repeats in the judiciary, in corporate boardrooms, in academia.

The system excludes. Reservation is the correction.

The Lie About Time Limits

A persistent myth claims that Ambedkar proposed reservation for only ten years and that it should have ended long ago.

This is false.

The ten-year provision in the Constitution applied only to political reservation—reserved seats in Parliament and state legislatures. It said nothing about reservation in education and employment, which was always intended to continue until substantive equality was achieved.

Moreover, even political reservation has been extended every decade since independence—most recently in 2019, when Parliament passed the 126th Constitutional Amendment extending SC/ST reservations in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies for another ten years. No serious political party has opposed these extensions.

Ambedkar himself was clear: the time limit was a compromise forced by political realities, not his preferred position. He originally demanded separate electorates with protected electoral bases—a far more radical measure that would have given oppressed communities genuine political power rather than dependent representation.

The Deflection to Communalism

A pattern repeats throughout modern Indian history: whenever oppressed castes assert their rights, communal violence follows.

The Mandal Commission submitted its report in 1980, recommending reservation for OBCs. The Congress government shelved it. In 1990, when VP Singh's government finally began implementation, the BJP launched its Rath Yatra demanding a Ram temple at Ayodhya.

The demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 came weeks after the Supreme Court upheld Mandal implementation. A local newspaper noted at the time: "Due to the aura of Ram, the demon of Reservation ran away."

In Gujarat, the 1985 anti-reservation agitations transformed into Hindu-Muslim riots within days. The Dave Commission noted: "Whenever there was an increase in communal riots, incidents of crime due to anti-reservation agitation would come down."

The construction of a "Hindu majority" serves this purpose perfectly. It allows upper castes, who constitute perhaps 20% of the population, to claim they represent the majority. It subsumes the oppressed castes into a category designed by their oppressors.

What Kills in the Institutions

Return to those student deaths.

Rohith Vemula, a PhD scholar at the University of Hyderabad, left a note before his death in 2016: "My birth is my fatal accident. I can never recover from my childhood loneliness."

The university had suspended him and four other Dalit students from the hostel following complaints from the ABVP, the student wing of the RSS. A Union minister had written to the Education Ministry calling the university a "den of casteist, extremist and anti-national politics"—targeting students who had protested against the death penalty for Yakub Memon.

Darshan Solanki, an 18-year-old first-year student at IIT Bombay, died in February 2023. The Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle called it an "institutional murder." Internal committees, as always, found "no specific evidence of direct caste-based discrimination."

But students tell a different story. Roommates asking SC students not to "pollute" their belongings. Professors asking students to stand in different queues based on caste. The preparatory course—designed for students from marginalized backgrounds—taught by faculty who openly express anti-reservation sentiment. A professor at IIT Kharagpur calling reserved-category students worse than dogs.

In 2025, the Supreme Court formed a National Task Force to examine mental health and discrimination in higher education institutions. The fact that such intervention was necessary speaks to decades of institutional failure.

The Path Forward

India does not lack laws against caste discrimination. The Protection of Civil Rights Act exists. The SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act exists. What is lacking is implementation, political will, and social transformation.

The path forward requires:

A comprehensive caste census. The data from 2011 has never been fully released. Without accurate numbers, rational policy is impossible. The resistance to this census reveals what dominant castes fear most: being counted.

Actual implementation of reservation. Vacancies in reserved positions remain unfilled for decades. In central universities, 80% of OBC faculty positions remain vacant, 83% for STs, 64% for SCs. This is not accident but policy.

Anti-discrimination legislation for educational institutions. The "Rohith Act" has been demanded since 2016. It has never been passed. Students continue to die.

Representation in institutions that shape discourse. Newsrooms, judiciary, corporate boards—these remain fortresses of caste privilege. Without Dalit and Adivasi voices in these spaces, the narrative will always be controlled by those who benefit from the status quo.

Continued reservation until substantive equality is achieved. Not for ten years. Not for fifty. Until the social capital accumulated over millennia is redistributed. Until a Dalit child has the same life chances as a child from a dominant caste.

The Promise of the Constitution

The Indian Constitution is a revolutionary document. It was drafted primarily by Ambedkar, who understood that political freedom meant nothing without social transformation. It abolished untouchability. It mandated reservation. It promised equality.

That promise remains unfulfilled.

The Constitution survives because of its provisions for social justice—not despite them. Every attempt to weaken these provisions has been resisted by the oppressed majority who see the Constitution as their shield.

The path shown by Phule and Savitribai Ma, by Narayana Guru and Ayyankali, by Babasaheb and Periyar, by Pandithar Iyothee Thass and the Justice Party greats, by Muthu Lakshmi Amma and Arignar Anna, by Kalaignar and VP Singh—this path is the only one that leads to genuine freedom.

India becomes a true democracy not when it empowers those already powerful, but when it empowers the oppressed, the marginalized, women, minorities. When reservation is fully implemented. When caste atrocities are actually punished. When a Dalit woman can walk any street without fear. When a first-generation learner at IIT can focus on studies without battling institutional contempt.

The crusade for social justice must continue—not for years but for generations—until misinformation is corrected, prejudice is dismantled, discrimination is ended, and atrocities cease.

This is not charity. This is a debt. And until it is paid, India cannot claim to be free.

வெல்வோம். We will win.

This piece draws on historical scholarship, NCRB data, and the documented experiences of students and activists fighting caste discrimination. The fight for social justice requires both understanding the past and confronting the present.