This article is written by Naina Tyagi of 2nd Year of BALLB of Bhagat Phool Singh Mahila Vishwavidyalaya, Khanpur Kalan, Sonipat, an intern under Legal Vidhiya
Abstract
This article explores how a legal system that triumphantly asserts equality fails to understand the concept and issues concerning social hierarchy and caste structures in a society. It argues that the problem is not only individual prejudice or a few “bad cases,” but a deeper structural blindness in how law understands harm, proof, neutrality and justice. Constitutional promises and special laws against caste discrimination and atrocities do exist, yet Dalit, Adivasi and other caste‑oppressed communities continue to face violence, humiliation, social boycott and institutional indifference when they seek remedies. The article shows how procedures and institutions often treat caste as an exception instead of acknowledging it as a fundamental structuring force in Indian society. It addresses how law tries to treat everyone equally in an already unequal society. Caste till date remains one of the most ingrained system in social hierarchy which decides important factors in a person’s life like the access to resources, justice, dignity, etc. And the article discusses that despite the constitutional guarantees of equality, caste based discrimination continues to persist in subtle and structural form. It concludes by suggesting reforms that can make law more caste sensitive.
Keywords
Caste, Structural Blindness, Law, Social Justice, Equality, Indian constitution, Substantive Justice.
Introduction
Everyday we can see numerous acts in India that quietly reveal caste: who draws water first, who sits where, whose touch is welcomed, whose anger is feared, whose pain is doubted.These moments rarely make it into court records, yet they shape who feels safe to speak, who dares to complain, and who can even imagine justice as something meant for them. Law, on paper, speaks a different language of rights, procedures, classifications, articles and sections that promise equality and dignity to all. But between the language of the Constitution and the language of lived experience lies a difficult gap, in which many caste‑oppressed people learn that “justice” can be another plot of depletion, exposure and disbelief rather than healing. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar stated caste as a system that is not merely a division of labour, but a division of labourers.
The concept of structural blindness refers to the unwillingness or inability of the law to recognise how deeply social structures like caste shape inequality. To speak of structural blindness is to acknowledge that institutions may follow their own rules and still reproduce injustice, because the rules themselves were not designed from the outlook point of those who are at the bottom of the hierarchy. When “unbiased” standards of evidence ignore the realities of social boycott, economic dependence, or the fear of punitive violence, the law’s neutrality becomes a splendor only for those who are already protected and can afford justice. When affirmative action is attacked in the name of merit without confronting the history of enforced illiteracy and dehumanising labour, the language of fairness is turned against those it was meant to uplift. Law assumes equal individuals but society is unequal in nature so it ends up helping those who are privileged.
Caste as a structural reality
Modern scholars describes caste as a combination of the broad varna model (Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra) and thousands of jati (birth‑based groups), which comes together to create a rigid hierarchy known as caste system. Key features repeatedly identified by sociologists are: hereditary membership, hierarchical ranking, endogamy (marriage within the group), traditional link with occupation, and restrictions on social interaction. Caste system not only impacts social ranking but also have it’s effect on occupation and marriage.
The occupational linkage of person to his caste is considered not just economic but it also carries a judgement about whose work is honoured and whose is despised. Children from caste‑oppressed families often grow up knowing that society expects them to repeat their parent’s labour, and that if they attempts to move into “respectable” professions they can face disbelief, harassment or violent pushback.
Endogamy is one of the very rigid pillars of the caste system: people are expected, and often compelled, to marry within their own caste group. Sociological and legal studies show that families and kin networks use emotional pressure, surveillance, social boycott, and sometimes physical violence to prevent or punish inter‑caste relationships. Numerous Cases like Lata Singh vs. State of UP (2006) can be seen where people have gone to the extent of honour killing because of rigid caste structure.
Constitutional promises
The Indian Constitution was drafted with a clear intention to break the chain of caste system in India. The Constitution of India guarantees equality before law in Article 14, prohibits caste discrimination in Articles 15 and 16, and abolishes untouchability under Article 17. These provisions were meant not just as technical rules that will remain in books, but they were seen as instruments of moral repair for communities historically treated as less than human. Yet, despite this robust text, caste remains one of India’s most persistent human rights crises, shaping who gets land, education, clean work, and even the right to love, often through both open violence and subtle exclusion. The gap between constitutional vision and social reality is so wide that scholars describe the situation as “equal by law, unequal by caste”. The dissent of Justice Subba Rao in the State of U.P. v. Deoman Upadhyaya 1960 stated that Article 14 comprises both “positive content” as well as “negative content”. Whereas, equality before the law is a negative content because people already live under unequal settings and treating them equal before law when they come from a different backgrounds altogether is somewhat questionable, equal protection of the laws exhibits a positive content of Article 14.
Ambedkar’s vision went beyond law: he saw caste as a moral wrong requiring annihilation through education, inter‑caste marriage, economic empowerment, and rejection of religious justifications for hierarchy. In the Constituent Assembly, he defended these provisions against opposition, arguing that without them, independence would mean little for the “weakest and feeblest”.
Structural blindness of Law
Law promises to treat everyone as equal individuals standing on level ground, but when society itself is unequal by design, that promise often becomes a shield for those who are already privileged. Structural blindness means law sees “cases” and “evidence” through a lens that assumes people start from the same place, ignoring how caste has already stacked the deck against some from birth. Caste‑oppressed people rarely enter courts or police stations as such equals: they carry histories of segregation, disbelief, economic dependence, and fear of retaliation that shape what they can say, what evidence they have, and whether they survive to testify. Neutrality becomes privilege when it requires victims to prove the unprovable (like intent in a system where caste is assumed), while dominant groups use the same rules to delay, intimidate, or reframe their actions. It can be seen in numerous cases like even in rape cases like the blind Dalit woman incident (2021 Supreme Court ruling), early demands for “caste as sole motive” under SC/ST Act Section 3(2)(v) ignored compounded oppression from gender and disability, later eased by intersectional reasoning from Justice Chandrachud, but showing evidentiary rules failing the most vulnerable. Also in In Dr. Subhash Kashinath Mahajan v. State of Maharashtra (2018), the Supreme Court added safeguards like preliminary inquiry and anticipatory bail before arrests under the SC/ST Act, citing “misuse” fears, despite data showing low conviction rates were due to hostility, not false claims. Parliament overturned this via amendment, and the Court later admitted it overreached into legislative domain, restoring the Act’s intent, but the episode showed how “neutrality” concerns can dilute protections for the vulnerable. And also in Indra Sawhney v. Union of India (1992, “Mandal case”) upheld OBC quotas but imposed a 50% cap and “creamy layer” exclusion framed as “merit protection,” often challenged by upper castes against SC/ST benefits; recent Davinder Singh v. State of Punjab (2024) allowed SC sub‑classification but struggles persist with reaching the poorest
Impact of Structural Blindness
Dalit still face Violence: Despite constitutional protections and the SC/ST (PoA) Act, abominations against Dalits continue at alarming rates, with NCRB data showing crimes rising from 45,961 in 2019 to 50,900 in 2021, a trend of 6-7% annual increase. This includes murders (13 Dalits killed weekly), rapes (7.64% of national cases involve Dalit women), and daily humiliations like social boycotts or attacks for asserting rights, such as using public spaces or demanding fair wages. Blindness contributes by under‑registering FIRs (police often refuse or dilute caste angles) and low conviction rates (under 30%), as officers dismiss complaints as “feuds” rather than recognising caste patterns.
Dominance results in bias: Historically and even today, Dalit and marginalized communities are seen with suspicion by police and authorities, as if they are naturally criminals. This comes from colonial laws like the Criminal Tribes Act, where certain communities were labelled as “born criminals”. The Supreme Court in Sukanya Shantha v. Union of India (2024) recognised caste segregation practices in jail manuals which separated prisoners by caste, gave different work based on caste, treated Dalits as “unclean” as unconstitutional and illegal
Need for substantive Equality
Formal equality treats everyone the same, but substantive Equality asks: same as what? It demands law to actively undo historical disadvantage so the oppressed can truly participate as equals. As CJI Chandrachud noted: treating differently to treat all equally. For caste justice, this means moving beyond caste‑blind neutrality to remedies that see and repair structural harm.
Context‑sensitive interpretation: Judges must read law through the lens of lived caste realities and recognise that “merit” or “evidence” cannot be neutral in unequal societies. The Supreme Court’s 2025 CRP report on judicial conceptions of caste urges “context‑sensitive vocabulary” that rejects reductive stereotypes and affirms caste as ongoing disadvantage, not relic shaping how equality, dignity and remedies are understood. In Davinder Singh v. State of Punjab (2024), the Court upheld SC sub‑classification as “one means to achieve substantive equality,” allowing states to target the most backward within reserved categories based on empirical data, overruling rigid 50% caps where they block justice.
Affirmative action as essential: Reservations are not exceptions but constitutional necessi for substantive equality (Articles 15(4), 16(4), 46). Ambedkar saw them as breaking cycles of exclusion in jobs, education and politics, with recent rulings like State of Punjab v. Davinder Singh affirming they must reach those “not similarly situated” within castes. Without this, formal equality embeds privilege; with it, law becomes transformative.
Social justice‑oriented judging: Judges must incorporate Ambedkar’s vision: proactive interpretation advancing dignity for the weakest, interrogating inherited biases, and prioritising structural change over formalism. The 2024 sub‑classification verdict and prison manual strike‑down (Sukanya Shantha, 2024) shows using substantive equality to eliminate systemic discrimination and enable participation. Such judging rejects “castelessness” myths, engages empirical realities, and sees remedies as constitutional duty, not charity.
Conclusion
Law cannot deliver justice by pretending caste does not exist because it is the livid reality of Indian society; ignoring its structures only deepens injustice for those born into them and face it’s repercussions in their day to day living. True equality demands that law sees the full human reality like centuries of hierarchy shaping bodies, opportunities, fears, and aspirations and responds to such atrocities with courage, not blindness by merely ignoring them. Law must see structure, Constitutional promises were written to dismantle caste structures of the society, not wish it away. When courts demand “neutral” evidence that ignores village power dynamics, when police reframe atrocities as feuds, when “merit” rhetoric attacks affirmative action then law becomes complicit in the very order Ambedkar sought to annihilate. Justice worthy of the name starts from survivors’ truths: their courage to file FIRs despite retaliation, their exhaustion in decade-long trials, their fragile hope that dignity might finally be non-negotiable. Only a caste-attentive law one that interprets equality through structure, not generalization can honour that hope and fulfil the Constitution’s radical moral vision of eradicating deep rooted caste structures for the Indian society.
References
- Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste.
- Marc Galanter, Competing Equalities.
- Law commission of India reports on the SC/ST (Preventions of Atrocities) Act.
- Human Rights Watch, “Hidden Apartheid” (2007)
- Society & Space, “Caste and Policing”
- NCRB Crime in India reports (via MHA, Sansad, IDSN) –
- Lata Singh v. State of U.P. (2006) 5 SCC 475.
- Patan Jamal Vali v. State of Andhra Pradesh, (2021) 12 SCC 1.
- Dr. Subhash Kashinath Mahajan v. State of Maharashtra (2018) 6 SCC 454.
- Indra Sawhney v. Union of India (1992) Supp (3) SCC 217.
- State of Punjab v. Davinder Singh (2024) SCC online SC 1860.
- Sukanya Shantha v. Union of India, 2024 SCC OnLine SC 734.
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