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While caste in India has long been understood as a hierarchical socio-economic system – a view underscored by Marxist interpretations tracing its origins to a historic division of labour – this perspective often overlooks its deeper social and epistemic dynamics. Although the Marxist account rightly highlights how occupational roles became hereditary and ideologically justified, its reduction of caste to mere economic stratification obscures a more fundamental reality: caste as an epistemic order.

In fact, within a caste-based society where specific labour is “stigmatised and degraded”, the core premise of the labour theory of value loses its meaning, as some economists have noted. Ultimately, caste is a system that organises intellectual authority. It dictates who may learn, who may teach, who may interpret and who may speak with legitimacy. This controlled distribution of knowledge – what can be termed “epistemic inequality” – was not incidental to the caste system, but its central mechanism for reproducing social hierarchy.

The Rig Veda’s Purusha Sukta (10.90.12) describes the divine origin of the four varnas from the body of the cosmic Purusha: the Brahmin from his mouth, the Kshatriya from his arms, the Vaishya from his thighs and the Shudra from his feet. This verse provides the oldest scriptural justification for a hierarchical social structure.

This framework was later codified into explicit law in the Manusmriti (c. 4th century CE), which states, “A Shudra is unfit to receive education… It is not necessary that the Shudra should know the laws and codes and hence need not be taught” (Manu IV-78 to 81).

This ideology of epistemic segregation finds a modern political analogue in the philosophy of Integral Humanism, propounded by Deen Dayal Upadhyaya. Contemporary Hindutva ideologues have reframed the varna system not as a hierarchy but as a non-hierarchical, occupation-based framework. However, this reframing overlooks the challenge of addressing inherent structural inequalities and discrimination.

Instead, it facilitates political mobilisation through symbolic gestures of co-option, preserving the traditional power structure while denying its oppressive nature.

Also read: Caste Census is Critical But Not Synonymous with Social Justice: Sociologist Satish Deshpande

Thus, ordered in purportedly ‘divine’ Hindu cosmology, the social order of caste in India historically rested on the strict control of learning, interpretation, textual authority and the means of knowledge production. This Brahminical supremacy, structured around the delegation of manual labour to the lower rungs of society, fundamentally shaped cognitive frameworks to assign authority and legitimacy.

As Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd argues, this structure established a sharp distinction between the privileged castes and the ‘productive castes’ – the Dalit-Bahujan communities. Their labour, which generated crucial technologies like leather processing, pottery and food production through trial and error in the struggle for survival, was systematically excluded from recognised epistemic systems.

Yet these embodied forms of innovation were systematically devalued, reflecting a persistent hierarchy that privileged ‘the knowledge of the head over that of the hand’, particularly in how histories of science and technology have been written. Such social engineering determined who could define meaning, interpret texts, assume the priesthood, write history, analyse society and be recognised as a legitimate producer of knowledge, while consigning the intellectual contributions and labour of marginalised castes to epistemic erasure.

Despite decades of democratic governance and constitutional guarantees, these hierarchies continue to shape India’s public institutions – universities, bureaucracies, political parties (including those on the left), cultural........

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