Civilizational State without Caste? Recasting the Past, Civility, and the Limits of Liberal Critique

On 27th December, 2025. Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s Achyut Yagnik Memorial Lecture at the Ahmedabad Management Association, delivered under the title of “The Idea of Civilisation: Poison or Cure?” was received with enthusiastic applause by a packed auditorium comprising journalists, professors, media professionals, activists, filmmakers, and cultural practitioners—what is often described as Ahmedabad’s (rather Gujarat’s) civil society. 

The lecture offered a familiar but influential critique of contemporary authoritarianism in India. Yet what it revealed, more sharply through its silences than its arguments, was a persistent crisis in Indian liberal discourse: the systematic erasure of caste from analyses of civilization, state power, and democracy. In his lecture, Mehta argued that the contemporary Indian state no longer presents itself primarily as a constitutional entity accountable to citizens, but as the political custodian of an ancient civilization. This civilizational framing, he suggested, is not unique to India but part of a wider global trend in which states—from China and Russia to Turkey and Hungary—derive legitimacy not from democratic procedures but from claims to cultural depth, historical continuity, and civilizational destiny. The civilizational state positions itself as prior to, and above, constitutionalism.

Central to Mehta’s argument was the claim that this transformation relies on a recasting of the past. History is reorganized around three major ruptures: the Muslim period, British colonialism, and Nehruvian secularism. In this narrative, the Muslim era is framed as a civilizational disruption, colonialism as humiliation, and Nehruvian constitutionalism as an elite, alien project that suppressed India’s authentic cultural self. The legitimacy of the present state, Mehta argued, is derived from its promise to “rectify” these ruptures and reclaim a lost civilizational essence.

This diagnosis is analytically important. It captures how the civilizational state performs itself as simultaneously anti-Muslim, anti-colonial, and anti-Nehruvian. Yet the framework remains fundamentally incomplete. What is striking is that caste—arguably the most enduring and internally constitutive structure of Indian civilization—does not figure in this account at all. The civilizational past is described as wounded by external forces, but never as internally violent. The rupture that caste represents—its systematic production of graded inequality, humiliation, and exclusion—is rendered invisible.

Civilization, Rupture, and the Erasure of Caste

This omission is not accidental. As B R Ambedkar argued forcefully in Annihilation of Caste, any discussion of Indian civilization that does not foreground caste is not merely partial but ideological (Ambedkar 1936: 37–45). Civilization in the subcontinent has never been an abstract moral inheritance; it has been a social order organized through caste hierarchy, ritualized inequality, and the regulation of bodies via the logic of purity and pollution. To imagine civilization as something corrupted primarily by Muslims, colonizers, or Nehruvian secularism—while leaving caste untouched—is to reproduce Brahmanism’s most effective strategy: projecting domination outward while concealing it within.

The civilizational state, in this sense, is not simply a reactionary political project; it is a rearticulation of Brahmanical social order through the language of cultural repair. The past is recast not to address historical injustice but to stabilize hierarchy. The “ruptures” that require correction are those that challenged Brahmanical authority—Islamic rule, colonial intervention, and constitutional secularism—while caste is presented either as timeless tradition or as a problem already resolved through symbolic inclusion.

Mehta’s critique of authoritarianism, absent a caste analysis, risks becoming what Gopal Guru has described as theoretical Brahmanism—a mode of critique that operates at a high level of abstraction, invoking democracy, institutions, and norms, while remaining detached from the lived experience of caste-based domination (Guru 2009: 6–9). Such theory is capable of diagnosing authoritarianism as a political deviation, but not caste as a civilizational condition.

Liberal Silence and Epistemic Closure

The silence that followed the lecture reinforced this limitation. During the question-and-answer session, not a single audience member raised the question of caste. In a city with a long history of Dalit assertion and Ambedkarite politics, this silence cannot be dismissed as oversight. Rather, it reflects what Sharmila Rege identified as the epistemic closure of Savarna liberal spaces—spaces that can critique the state’s relationship to Muslims, nationalism, or constitutionalism, but remain deeply uncomfortable confronting Brahmanism as an internal structure of power (Rege 2013: 3–8).

Liberal civil society, in this configuration, becomes a space where authoritarianism is opposed only insofar as it violates procedural democracy, not when it reproduces social hierarchies. Caste is treated as either an already addressed social problem or as an inconvenient interruption to “larger” debates about democracy and the state.

When I eventually intervened, I argued that the civilizational state is not only anti-Muslim or anti-Nehruvian, but also—and more fundamentally—Brahmanical. Civility in India has historically been organized through caste norms that distinguish the pure from the polluted, the respectable from the excessive, and the civic from the uncivil. When the state claims legitimacy from civilizational continuity rather than constitutional morality, it inevitably reproduces these hierarchies, particularly in relation to Dalits, Bahujans, Adivasis, and marginalized genders.

Civility, Inclusion, and Disciplinary Recognition

Mehta’s response was revealing. Rather than engaging caste as a structural problem, he asked whether one could identify an Ambedkarite movement that had worked on the quality of education rather than merely on access. He further suggested that since Dalit–Bahujans are now symbolically included within the civilizational framework, critiques of exclusion no longer hold. The audience applauded.

This exchange underscores the relevance of Suryakant Waghmore’s work on civility and Dalit politics. Waghmore demonstrates that Dalit inclusion in liberal democracy often operates through regimes of conditional civility, where recognition is granted only when Dalit political assertion conforms to Savarna norms of restraint, gratitude, and respectability (Waghmore 2013: 18–24). Inclusion, in this sense, is not emancipatory but disciplinary. It transforms structural inequality into a question of behaviour rather than justice.

The civilizational state incorporates Dalits symbolically—as voters, beneficiaries, or cultural subjects—without dismantling caste structures governing land, labour, and knowledge. As Waghmore argues, such inclusion stabilizes Brahmanical power by depoliticizing caste antagonism and recoding it as a problem of civility rather than equality (Waghmore 2013: 31–34). The applause that followed Mehta’s response thus marked more than agreement; it affirmed a shared comfort with caste-blind civility.

The absence of caste in Mehta’s lecture is especially striking in light of Achyut Yagnik’s work. Yagnik consistently rejected civilizational essentialism, foregrounding caste and political economy in his analyses of Gujarat and showing how Hindutva masked social contradictions through claims of cultural unity (Yagnik and Sheth 2005). He emphasized that Hindu nationalism drew strength from reorganizing caste relations—selectively incorporating OBCs while disciplining Dalit politics and marginalizing Muslims (Yagnik 2010). Invoking Yagnik’s name while offering a caste-blind account of civilization thus risks flattening his critical legacy, for whom civilization was always a contested formation structured by caste power.

Education beyond Access: Ambedkarite Epistemic Struggles

The demand that Ambedkarite movements demonstrate concern for “quality” rather than “access” reproduces a familiar liberal misreading of Dalit politics. Shailja Paik’s work on Dalit education powerfully unsettles this binary. Paik shows that Dalit struggles over education have always been struggles over dignity, pedagogy, and epistemic justice—not merely entry into institutions (Paik 2014: 112–120). Access without transformation reproduces caste humiliation rather than dismantling it.

Paik documents how educational spaces have historically functioned as sites of aspiration and injury for Dalits—where the promise of mobility is undercut by everyday practices of segregation, ridicule, and moral policing (Paik 2014: 145–150). To ask Ambedkarite movements to prove their commitment to “quality” while ignoring the casteist conditions under which education is delivered is to reverse the burden of critique.

This erasure becomes even more untenable when one considers contemporary campus politics. Gaurav Pathania’s work on student movements demonstrates that universities are among the most contested sites of ideological struggle in contemporary India (Pathania 2016: 9–14). Ambedkarite student organizations—such as BAPSA at Jawaharlal Nehru University, the Ambedkar Students’ Association at the University of Hyderabad, and collectives across state and central universities—have articulated sustained critiques of syllabi, pedagogy, evaluation systems, and the ideology of merit.

Pathania shows that student movements are not merely reactive or instrumental; they are sites of political education where questions of nationalism, democracy, caste, and social justice are actively theorized (Pathania 2016: 67–72). Ambedkarite student politics, in particular, has challenged the Brahmanical common sense of the university by exposing how “merit” functions as a caste-coded language.

As Anand Teltumbde argues, the university is not outside caste power but one of its most refined sites of reproduction (Teltumbde 2018: 142–147). The struggle for the quality of education—understood as critical, inclusive, and socially accountable knowledge—has been central to Ambedkarite politics.

Authoritarianism as Civilizational Continuity

The danger of caste-less critiques of authoritarianism is that they misdiagnose the problem. Authoritarianism in India is not a rupture from an otherwise egalitarian civilization; it is an intensification of long-standing structures of social domination. The civilizational state does not merely borrow from caste hierarchy—it is sustained by it.

Ambedkarite thought offers not merely a counter to authoritarianism but a radically different understanding of civilization itself—one grounded in constitutional morality, social equality, and the annihilation of caste (Ambedkar 1987: Vol 3, 449–452). Without confronting caste as the constitutive core of the civilizational state, critiques of its anti-Muslim or anti-Nehruvian tendencies remain partial and politically inadequate.

The question, then, is not why Dalit–Bahujan voices must repeatedly insist on naming caste. The question is why Savarna liberal discourse continues to imagine civilization as wounded by history, but never as violent within.

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References

Ambedkar, B R (1936): Annihilation of Caste, Bombay: Self-Published.

Ambedkar, B R (1987): Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, Vol 3, Education Department, Government of Maharashtra.

Guru, Gopal (2009): “Archaeology of Untouchability,” Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 44, No 37, pp 49–56.

Paik, Shailja (2014): Dalit Women’s Education in Modern India: Double Discrimination, London: Routledge.

Pathania, Gaurav J (2016): The University as a Site of Resistance: Identity and Student Politics, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Rege, Sharmila (2013): Against the Madness of Manu: B R Ambedkar’s Writings on Brahmanical Patriarchy, New Delhi: Navayana.

Teltumbde, Anand (2018): The Republic of Caste: Thinking Equality in the Time of Neoliberal Hindutva, New Delhi: Navayana.

Waghmore, Suryakant (2013): Civility against Caste: Dalit Politics and Citizenship in Western India, New Delhi: Sage Publications.

Yagnik, Achyut and Suchitra Sheth (2005): The Shaping of Modern Gujarat: Plurality, Hindutva and Beyond, New Delhi: Penguin.

Yagnik, Achyut (2010): “Hindutva and the Changing Politics of Gujarat,” Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 45, No 43, pp 38–45.