The Evolution and Impact of the Caste System in India: A Gandhian Perspective

Few social structures in human history have proven as durable – or as deeply contested – as India’s caste system. Rooted in ancient religious texts, reshaped by centuries of political change, and eventually hardened into a rigid hierarchy that determined every aspect of a person’s life from birth to death, the caste system has shaped Indian civilization in ways that continue to reverberate today. For Mahatma Gandhi, engaging with this system was not a peripheral concern – it was a moral and spiritual imperative at the very center of his vision for a free and just India.

From varna to jati: the origins of social stratification 🔗

The story of caste in India begins not with oppression but with occupational organization. Ancient India in the Vedic Period (c. 1500-1000 BCE) classified people according to their varna – a Sanskrit word meaning “colour” or “type” – which broadly designated four social categories based on function rather than heredity alone. Brahmins (priests and scholars) occupied the top tier, followed by Kshatriyas (warriors and rulers), Vaishyas (traders and agriculturalists), and Shudras (labourers and service providers). Outside this fourfold structure altogether were those later known as Dalits – condemned to the most degrading occupations and denied the most basic social dignities.

The theological grounding for this division appears in the Purusha Sukta hymn of the Rigveda, which describes the four varnas as emerging from the body parts of a sacrificed primordial being – Brahmins from the head, Kshatriyas from the arms, Vaishyas from the thighs, and Shudras from the feet. By grounding social hierarchy in sacred cosmology, this myth gave the arrangement an appearance of being natural, eternal, and divinely ordained. Crucially, however, in older descriptions of varnas, far greater emphasis is placed on the functions of the classes than on hereditary membership – meaning varna was originally defined more by what you did than by who your parents were.

What transformed this relatively flexible framework into the rigid, birth-determined system we recognize today was the rise of jati – the sub-caste. Jati, derived from the Sanskrit word for “born,” refers to endogamous kinship and occupational groups that proliferated into the thousands across India. Each jati imposed strict rules on marriage, dining, and social interaction. Each varna was divided into jatis which identified the individual’s occupation and imposed marriage restrictions, and members of higher varnas were expected to maintain ritual purity by avoiding contact with lower groups. What had once been a broad social model became a labyrinth of localized, immovable social boundaries.

Historians note that the calcification of this system accelerated significantly during the Mughal period and, most decisively, under British colonial rule. The caste system as it exists today is the result of developments during the post-Mughal period and the British colonial period, which made caste organisation a central mechanism of administration. The British used census classifications and ethnographic surveys to fix and formalize jati identities that had previously been more fluid, effectively freezing them in place for administrative convenience.

The degeneration Gandhi diagnosed 🔗

Gandhi’s engagement with the caste system was philosophically complex and evolved significantly across his lifetime. At its core, however, was a sharp distinction he drew between the original varna ideal and the degenerated caste system he saw operating in modern India. In his view, the two were not the same thing – and conflating them was both historically inaccurate and morally dangerous.

In his own words, recorded in his selected letters, Gandhi was clear: “Castes are innumerable and in their present condition they are a drag upon Hinduism…. Varna stands on a different footing, and it means profession.” For Gandhi, the original varna framework was based on occupational complementarity – each group performing a necessary function, none inherently superior or inferior. The key, in his reading, was dharma: the conscientious performance of one’s duty. What had happened over centuries, he argued, was that self-control and duty had been replaced by selfishness and exploitation. The four original varnas became subdivided into innumerable jatis, began to represent gradations of high and low, and the hallmark of the original law – self-control – was replaced by selfishness and exploitation.

This was Gandhi’s fundamental critique: the caste system was not a continuation of the varna ideal but a perversion of it. Where varna was designed to organize society for collective well-being, jati-based caste had become a tool of domination – entrenching privilege at the top and condemning millions to hereditary degradation at the bottom. It was, in Gandhi’s moral vocabulary, an inversion of dharma.

The spiritual dimension of the critique 🔗

Gandhi also came at the caste system from a spiritual angle. He argued that Hinduism, at its philosophical core, teaches the equality of all souls and the practice of ahimsa (non-violence). A social system that treated an entire class of human beings as subhuman – denying them entry to temples, access to public wells, the right to walk certain roads – was not merely socially unjust. It was a spiritual contradiction, a form of violence dressed in religious costume. Gandhi condemned untouchability as immoral and argued it could be eradicated without abolishing the varna framework altogether, consistently describing it in his writings and speeches as a sin.

Untouchability: Gandhi’s most uncompromising battle 🔗

Of all the injustices perpetuated by the caste system, untouchability drew Gandhi’s sharpest and most sustained condemnation. He regarded it not as a cultural tradition to be tolerated but as a moral catastrophe – a cancer eating at the body of Hinduism and of Indian civilization itself.

Gandhi had overcome caste prejudices at an early age when as a twelve-year-old he first challenged his mother that Hinduism did not sanction untouchability. This was not merely an intellectual position. It was a lived commitment. He accepted so-called “untouchables” in his ashrams on equal terms, performed tasks traditionally considered “unclean” himself, and vowed to be an open rebel against Hinduism if untouchability was not abolished. He named those affected Harijans – “children of God” – to counter the dehumanizing stigma attached to the label “untouchable,” though this term has itself since been critiqued by Dalit activists as paternalistic.

His moral reasoning was unambiguous. There was no element of compromise in Gandhi’s attitude towards untouchability, while his approach towards caste and varna evolved over time. He repeatedly declared that untouchability was a sin – not a social inconvenience or a cultural sensitivity, but a direct offence against human dignity and against God.

The Harijan campaign: reform in action 🔗

Gandhi did not limit himself to moral declarations. Between November 1933 and July 1934, he undertook one of the most ambitious social campaigns in Indian history. Starting from Wardha, he embarked on a nationwide Harijan tour covering 20,000 km, travelling by train, car, bullock cart, and on foot. The purpose was clear: to raise funds for the newly established Harijan Sevak Sangh, to advocate for the eradication of untouchability in all its forms, and to pressure caste Hindus to perform what Gandhi called penance for centuries of oppression.

While incarcerated, he established the All India Anti-Untouchability League in September 1932 and launched the weekly publication Harijan in January 1933 – a journal that became a key vehicle for his social reform writings. He also backed legislative efforts, including temple entry bills that sought to open places of worship to Harijans. In 1938, the Madras legislature passed the Removal of Civil Disabilities Act, which prevented Harijans from being barred from social or public amenities, and the Malabar Temple Entry Act opened temples in Malabar to untouchables.

Gandhi’s personal conduct underscored these public campaigns. He himself worked as a scavenger, a barber, a washerman, a cobbler, a tiller and a tailor – all work considered “unclean” by caste Hindus – and none of Gandhi’s ashrams were built on the principle of caste or varnashrama dharma. He broke caste norms not as a political statement but as a daily practice of what he preached.

Gandhi and Ambedkar: a necessary confrontation 🔗

No account of Gandhi’s relationship with the caste system is complete without examining his profound disagreement with Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, himself a Dalit and one of the most important thinkers on caste in Indian history. The two men shared a commitment to Dalit dignity but differed sharply on method and diagnosis.

For Ambedkar, the caste system and untouchability were inseparable. Ambedkar argued that the outcaste was a byproduct of the caste system, and there would be outcastes as long as there were castes. Nothing could emancipate the outcaste except the destruction of the caste system itself. Gandhi’s position, for much of his public life, was that untouchability could be eradicated while preserving the essential varna framework – that the problem was the growth, not the tree.

This divergence came to a dramatic head in 1932 over the question of separate electorates for the Depressed Classes. The British government had granted them, and Ambedkar supported the provision as a means of political self-representation. Gandhi opposed it, fearing it would permanently fracture Hindu society. Gandhi undertook a fast unto death to protest the separate electorate provision. Under tremendous pressure, Ambedkar agreed to the Poona Pact, which replaced separate electorates with reserved seats within the general electorate. Ambedkar later viewed this as a compromise that weakened the political rights of depressed classes.

What is less widely recognized is that Gandhi’s views did evolve. In 1945, Gandhi’s positions against the fourfold varna order became more emphatic, and he discarded some previous formulations, including those on hereditary occupations. By that point, he had arrived at the position that caste itself – not merely untouchability – had to be abolished. Gandhi gave the title “Caste Has To Go” to his November 1935 article published in Harijan, well before Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste was published in 1936. This evolution is frequently overlooked in historical accounts that fix Gandhi’s position at its most conservative.

Legacy: reform, critique, and constitutional response 🔗

Gandhi’s anti-caste campaigns had measurable effects on national consciousness and on legislation. His Harijan Yatra mobilized communities across the country. His moral framing – that untouchability was a sin against God and humanity – shifted the terms of public discourse at a time when many saw the practice as simply traditional. The constitutional prohibition of untouchability after independence, and the Protection of Civil Rights Act of 1955, which made untouchability an offence and provided legal protection against discrimination, were the legislative culmination of decades of reformist pressure.

Yet the critiques of Gandhi’s approach remain important to engage with honestly. Critics argue that his acceptance of the varna system and his emphasis on changing the hearts of upper-caste Hindus, rather than advocating for structural change, limited the scope of his impact. The term “Harijan” itself, once an act of dignification, is now widely rejected by Dalit communities as condescending – a reminder that even well-intentioned reform carried out from a position of privilege has its blind spots. Ambedkar’s more radical structural approach ultimately found fuller expression in the Indian Constitution he helped draft, which not only abolished untouchability but also mandated affirmative action through reservations.

What Gandhi contributed – and this cannot be dismissed – was the transformation of the caste question from a matter of private religious custom into one of national political and moral urgency. By insisting that no swaraj (self-rule) was worth having if it excluded millions of its own citizens, he embedded social justice into the heart of the independence struggle itself.

What do you think? Gandhi drew a firm line between the original varna ideal and the corrupted caste system – but critics argue the two were never truly separable. Does reforming a system from within preserve its essential injustices, or is it the only realistic path to change? And if Gandhi’s views on caste evolved dramatically by the 1940s, how should we evaluate thinkers whose positions shift over time – by their most progressive moment or their most conservative one?

References

1. https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1152/caste-system-in-ancient-india/
2. https://www.britannica.com/topic/varna-Hinduism
3. https://www.britannica.com/topic/jati-Hindu-caste-system
4. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldcivilization/chapter/the-caste-system/
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India
6. https://www.gandhiashramsevagram.org/selected-letters-of-mahatma/gandhi-letter-extracts-caste-system-and-untouchability.php
7. https://gandhi.study/human-rights-indian-perspective/understanding-gandhi-caste-system-social-reforms/
8. https://indianhistorycollective.com/a-historian-recommends-gandhi-vs-caste/
9. https://janataweekly.org/gandhis-approach-to-caste-and-untouchability-a-reappraisal/
10. https://pwonlyias.com/upsc-notes/gandhi-caste-untouchability-reform/
11. https://edukemy.com/blog/gandhis-harijan-campaign-modern-history-notes/
12. https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/opinion/gandhi-denounced-caste-and-untouchability
13. https://subscription.epw.in/journal/2006/19/commentary/gandhis-little-known-critique-varna.html
14. https://kuey.net/index.php/kuey/article/download/6309/4598/12762