Why We Must Confront the Vedas to Dismantle Caste?
Scriptures and Silence
I didn’t grow up hating religion. In fact, I come from a family deeply rooted in the Arya Samaj tradition, a movement that reveres the Vedas as pure, rational and divinely inspired. The Vedas, especially the Rigveda, have always fascinated me not just because they are among the oldest surviving texts of the Indian subcontinent but because they are a window into the soul of a civilisation that has shaped much of South Asian consciousness.
So let me state this clearly: This essay is not written in disrespect. It is written in discernment.
My intention is not to provoke or polarise. It is to engage honestly, critically and unflinchingly with the injustice of caste. The role that sacred texts have played directly or indirectly in justifying and perpetuating it.
Why This Essay, Why Now?
I have recently read Caste Matters by Suraj Yengde, a scholar whose clarity, courage and compassion have left a lasting impression on me. His work like that of Ambedkar before him, doesn’t allow us the luxury of silence. It forces us to confront the everyday apartheid that still quietly structures Indian society whether in boardrooms, temples, or universities.
Many people in today’s India claim that caste is a medieval concept no longer relevant to the “New India” we aspire to build. But this belief collapses when confronted with even the most basic statistical enquiry.
Caste and Power: The Reality Check
Here’s a snapshot comparing caste demographics with representation in power structures:
Upper castes make up around 20% of India’s population but dominate around 75% of powerful roles—be it in the corporate sector, civil services, judiciary, media or even temple boards.
Meanwhile, OBCs (Other Backward Classes), Dalits (Scheduled Castes), and Adivasis (Scheduled Tribes)—who together form the majority of India’s population—remain severely underrepresented.
This is not a coincidence. It is structure. It is history in motion.
The Vedas: Sacred or Beyond Critique?
Many of us are taught to hold the Vedas as sacred, timeless and incorruptible. But like any ancient text, the Vedas were composed in a particular historical, political and cultural context. And it is within this context that we must interrogate their legacy not with blind reverence or blind hatred but with intellectual honesty.
The Purusha Sukta (Rigveda 10.90) describes a cosmic being whose mouth becomes the Brahmin, arms the Kshatriya, thighs the Vaishya and feet the Shudra. This may have been symbolic in its time but it laid the groundwork for the ritual codification of hierarchy that later evolved into rigid caste boundaries.
Whether this hymn was a later interpolation, as some scholars argue, or an original inclusion, the fact remains~ it has been weaponised by priestly and elite classes to justify a system of exclusion, degradation and inherited privilege.
Faith ≠ Fossil
To question is not to destroy. To confront is not to condemn.
Being radical in one’s thinking about religious texts is not nihilism. It is a necessary response to centuries of violence that have been justified through religion. The point isn’t to erase the Vedas. It is to hold them accountable to the reality they helped shape and the inequalities they were later used to legitimize.
Every text sacred or not must pass through both subjective experience and objective enquiry. No scripture is beyond critique. To suggest otherwise is to abandon reason at the altar of dogma.
A Request, Not a Rejection
I know this essay may be difficult for some, especially those who, like my own family, hold the Vedas close to their spiritual identity. But I write this not as an attack, but as a plea for intellectual and moral courage.
The caste system is not an abstract evil. It is lived. It decides who cleans the toilets and who cleans the boardroom tables. It determines who speaks and who listens. Who is seen as divine and who is not even touched.
As someone born with the privileges of class and caste, it is my duty not my charity to question what I have inherited. To speak even if it costs me comfort. Because silence is not neutrality. Silence is complicity.
Confrontation is Participation
To confront the casteist foundations of our society including those subtly present in revered texts is to participate in its moral reconstruction. The anti-caste movement doesn’t ask us to abandon faith. It asks us to redefine it to rebuild our spiritual life on the foundation of dignity, equality and justice.
Because the soul of any civilisation is not in its chants but in how it treats its people.
There’s a common argument used to defend the Vedas against any association with caste that the original texts never spoke of a rigid, birth-based hierarchy and that the caste system was a later distortion. Like many half-truths this claim is both technically correct and deeply misleading.
Let’s take the often-quoted Purusha Sukta from the Rigveda (10.90). It’s the only hymn that directly mentions the four varnas~ Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra emerging from different parts of the cosmic being (Purusha):
Mouth = Brahmins (speech, knowledge)
Arms = Kshatriyas (strength, protection)
Thighs = Vaishyas (sustenance, trade)
Feet = Shudras (support, service)
Nowhere in this verse does it explicitly say that varna is birth-based or immutable. It doesn't lay down rules about who can marry whom, what one can or cannot eat or who must serve whom. There is no mention of untouchability. What the Sukta offers is a symbolic cosmology, a poetic explanation of social functions within a divine order.
However, the problem is not just in what it says but in how it has been interpreted and institutionalised over centuries.
While the bulk of the Rigveda does not speak of caste at all, the Purusha Sukta gave later Brahmanical thinkers a theological foundation. What was once symbolic became social. What was flexible became fixed. Over time, through the Brahmanas, Dharmashastras and temple-based ritual systems, this division was hardened into a rigid and birth-determined hierarchy.
So yes, it’s true that the Vedas didn’t codify caste as we know it today. But they laid the symbolic groundwork and crucially, they were later used to justify it.
In that sense, to say the Vedas are caste-free is to ignore how language, symbolism and power interact across time
A fire doesn’t need to start the explosion to be responsible for the smoke that suffocates
How Varna Became Caste: Brahmanism and Institutional Power
The Vedas may have laid down a symbolic social framework through varna a four-fold division of labor but the codification of caste as a hereditary, birth-based system came much later, through a web of religious texts, priestly institutions, and philosophical distortions. The transformation wasn’t just ideological ~ it was political. It was about power who got to define purity, control resources and decide who belonged where in society.
The Brahmanas: Ritual as Authority
The Brahmanas are prose texts attached to each Veda. They were composed after the Samhitas (hymns) and explain the rituals, sacrifices and the meaning behind them. What you start seeing here is a centralisation of ritual power in the hands of Brahmins. The act of sacrifice (yajna) becomes sacred and exclusive. A new logic emerges: those who perform rituals are purer than those who don't.
This is the beginning of ritual hierarchy not yet caste, but caste in the making. It creates a distinction between the sacred and the profane between those who “know” (Brahmins) and those who merely serve.
The Smritis: Codifying Inequality
Centuries later, came the Dharmashastras or Smritis texts like the Manusmriti, Yajnavalkya Smriti and others. These were legal and ethical manuals written between 200 BCE and 400 CE designed to govern society through moral and religious laws.
The most infamous of these is the Manusmriti, often referred to as the cornerstone of Brahmanical patriarchy and caste hierarchy. It doesn't just talk about varna it enforces it as a rigid and birth-based system. It prescribes:
Specific duties for each varna
Severe punishments for lower castes who defy boundaries
Total exclusion of Shudras from access to sacred knowledge (e.g. a Shudra hearing a Vedic chant was to have molten lead poured in his ears)
Here, varna becomes jati a closed and inherited social identity. Mobility is not only limited but impossible. Ritual impurity becomes hereditary. This is not the Vedic spirit, it is Brahmanical control codified into law.
Karma and Varnashrama Dharma: Twisting Philosophy
What makes the caste system especially insidious is how deeply it was embedded into Hindu metaphysics through karma theory.
Originally, karma (action) was meant to explain cause and effect across lives: do good, and you are rewarded- do evil and you suffer. But the Smritis twist it: if someone is born a Shudra or “untouchable,” it must be because of their bad karma in a past life. If you are a Brahmin, it’s because of your purity in previous births. Your suffering is your fault. Your privilege is your virtue.
The varna-ashrama dharma (duty based on caste and stage of life) further locked people into their roles. It said perform your caste duty without complaint and maybe you will be reborn in a higher varna.
This wasn’t spiritual liberation it was social seduction into passivity and obedience.
Birth-Based Jati and Endogamy: The Final Lock
By the time of the Gupta period (c. 4th century CE), what began as a flexible framework had become a rigid caste system:
Jati (birth group) replaces varna as the basic unit of social identity
Endogamy (marrying within one’s jati) is enforced
Occupations become hereditary
Purity-pollution rules become embedded into village life, ritual spaces, and even food practices
You couldn’t just change your occupation or marry into another caste. You were born into a social fate one you couldn’t leave behind at all
From Function to Fatalism
If there is one figure in modern Indian history who understood the caste system not just as a social evil but as a deeply spiritual and institutional sickness it was Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. Born an ‘untouchable’ in the Mahar caste, Ambedkar wasn’t merely fighting for equality he was fighting to expose the moral and philosophical rot that had been dressed up as religion for centuries.
Ambedkar saw the caste system for what it was- a rigid and birth-based hierarchy that denied millions the right to dignity, mobility and even basic humanity. But more importantly he understood that you cannot reform caste without rejecting the very texts and structures that sanctified it.
In his explosive work Annihilation of Caste (1936), originally written as a speech for a Hindu reformist group that later refused to let him deliver it, Ambedkar laid out the full force of his critique:
“The Hindu social order…is nothing but a division of society into a fixed hierarchy, in which the rights and duties of each class are fixed in advance and are not subject to change.”
He argued that caste was not just a social problem it was a religiously sanctioned system rooted in texts like the Manusmriti, which he publicly burned in 1927 as an act of symbolic rejection. He didn’t merely want reform. He wanted rupture a complete break from the spiritual foundations of Brahmanism.
In Riddles in Hinduism, Ambedkar took this even further. He asked uncomfortable questions: Why do Hindu gods behave immorally? Why are the Vedas considered infallible? Why do the very scriptures that talk about truth and duty enable discrimination?
His message was clear: you cannot annihilate caste while clinging to the texts that justify it.
This is why, in 1956, just months before his death, Ambedkar converted to Buddhism along with over 500,000 followers. It wasn’t just a personal decision. It was a political and philosophical act of liberation. He chose a path that was rooted in compassion, reason and equality values he believed Hinduism had failed to uphold.
Ambedkar’s life reminds us that confronting caste is not just a matter of law or protest. It is a matter of intellectual and spiritual integrity. To fight caste, one must not only reject its visible structures but also dismantle the moral scaffolding that has allowed it to survive for millennia.
Radical Critique ≠ Nihilism
Let’s confront the discomfort directly. Critiquing sacred texts is not the same as abandoning faith. Calling out injustice embedded in religious traditions doesn’t mean rejecting values, meaning or one’s spiritual identity. It means refusing to allow those values to become hollow. It means choosing honesty over blind loyalty and compassion over custom.
There’s an elemental difference between faith and fossilized dogma. Faith evolves. Dogma resists. Faith can be a source of healing, solidarity and moral clarity. But when it becomes fossilized, when it refuses to self-reflect, to question, to grow it begins to protect structures of power rather than people.
And let’s be clear: many of those who preach religious purity in defense of the Vedas are often the first to critique the customs of other communities especially minorities calling them “backward” or “oppressive.” But the courage to reform must begin at home. You cannot demand progress from others while shielding your own tradition from honest scrutiny.
This is why we must insist on-
Reinterpretation of sacred texts
Contextual readings rooted in history and not mythology
And honest revision of practices that cause harm no matter how ancient they are
This is not blasphemy. This is ethical evolution.
For those of us who still feel spiritually connected to Hinduism, the goal isn’t to walk away it’s to reclaim a spiritual space that isn’t structured by caste. A space where dignity is not restricted by birth. Where ritual doesn’t rely on exclusion. Where one’s soul isn’t polluted by what surname they carry.
Because what good is moksha (liberation) if it’s only available to some?
What Being Anti-Caste Today Demands
Let me say something that may sound uncomfortable: Being anti-caste is not an identity. It is a practice.
In recent years, I have seen an increasing number of upper-caste scholars Brahmins included writing, researching and speaking on caste. Many of them do important work. But we must pause and ask: is the goal to dismantle caste or to merely manage it? To quote Ambedkar loosely, producing knowledge about caste while still reaping its benefits is not radical it’s ritual. It's the caste system dressed up in academic robes.
The real challenge of being anti-caste is not just intellectual. It’s existential.
It asks you not to theorise but to act.
You don’t dismantle caste by studying it. You dismantle caste by refusing to uphold it in your homes, institutions, marriages, friendships and everyday choices.
This means:
Participating in anti-caste movements and not just following them from a distance (or liking a post on X)
Showing up in solidarities and not as allies looking down with sympathy, but as comrades walking shoulder to shoulder
Calling out your own people your uncles, parents, professors or friends when they mask casteism under the language of “merit,” “tradition,” or “cultural pride”
Rejecting the illusion of neutrality because when it comes to caste, there is no neutral ground.
Silence isn’t passive. Silence is participation.
If you don’t resist the system, you are upholding it no matter how progressive your words sound.
Let’s be clear: the role of the upper caste today is not to “give voice to the voiceless.” That’s a patronizing myth. Marginalised communities have always had voices they have just been silenced, ignored and erased. The real role of the privileged is to dismantle the very scaffolding that gave them their privilege even if they didn’t ask for it even if they never directly oppressed anyone.
And yes, I can already hear the backlash: ‘But what about general category students?’ ‘But what about merit?’ ‘But isn’t reservation unfair to us?’
Let me be honest. Reservation is not a handout. It is a historical correction. It is not a favor done to Dalits or Adivasis. It is compensation a faint and belated one for over 2000 years of sanctioned exclusion, humiliation and stolen opportunities.
If that makes you uncomfortable, good. That discomfort is the first step out of entitlement and into empathy.
Not Against God, But Against Injustice
Let me be absolutely clear: I am not attacking faith.
I am not against belief, spirituality or religion. I am an agnostic and a secularist, yes but I also hold a deep respect for every individual’s relationship with the Sacred, however they define it. My issue is not with God. My issue is with how God has been used to justify inequality.
When tradition is used to defend oppression, when dogma trumps dignity and when sacred texts are weaponised to maintain social hierarchy then that isn’t spirituality it’s tyranny draped in prayer beads.
To defend caste in the name of religion is to stand against the collective wisdom of the people wisdom enshrined in the Indian Constitution, which promises liberty, equality and fraternity to all.
I urge my readers, especially those from privileged backgrounds, to resist the rising tide of ultra-right majoritarianism that seeks to present every religious practice as unquestionably “pure” or divine. That logic isn’t just intellectually bankrupt it’s morally lazy. In fact, it’s both absurd and dangerous.
Nothing should be beyond questioning. Not even the Vedas. Not even God.
Because if your faith demands silence in the face of injustice, then perhaps what needs changing isn’t the world but the terms of your belief.
P.S. This essay represents my original work. Editing is done using Gen AI.