Subalternity and Dalit alienation: mapping the contours of lower-caste subjectivity in India
This paper argues that the Subaltern Studies school fails to explain the persistence of Dalit social alienation despite political gains because it overlooks everyday non-colonial domination, a dynamic illustrated by the Bahujan Samaj Party's trajectory in Uttar Pradesh, where upper-caste hegemony, sustained through ideological absorption in civil society rather than coercion, ultimately reabsorbed and displaced the party's anti-caste mobilization.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
In the vast social landscape of India, a profound puzzle has long occupied sociologists and political observers: why have decades of legal equality, economic growth, and democratic voting failed to erase the deep social stigma attached to the Dalit community? For generations, Dalits, historically known as "untouchables," have faced a rigid social hierarchy where their birth determined their status, their work, and their dignity. While the Indian constitution guarantees equal rights and affirmative action policies have helped many Dalits gain education and government jobs, the social reality on the ground often tells a different story. The question at the heart of this research is why material progress has not translated into a fundamental shift in how Dalits are viewed by society or how they view themselves. To understand this, one must look beyond simple economics and into the realm of ideas and culture. The researchers draw on the work of Antonio Gramsci, an Italian thinker who argued that true power is not just about force or laws, but about "hegemony"—a state where the dominant group's values become so deeply embedded in everyday life that they feel like common sense to everyone, including the oppressed. They also examine the limits of "Subaltern Studies," a school of thought that focuses on the voices of the marginalized, suggesting that this approach may have overlooked how deeply internalized caste beliefs remain even after colonial rule ended.
The paper, authored by scholars from the University of Delhi and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, investigates this disconnect by tracing the political journey of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state. The researchers argue that the persistence of Dalit subordination is not due to a lack of political power or economic resources, but because the caste system has mutated. It has shed its overt religious justification but survives as a hidden structural force, maintained by the "civil society" institutions—schools, families, and social norms—that shape how people think and interact. The study suggests that the Subaltern Studies school, which aimed to restore the agency of the marginalized, has fallen short in this specific context. By focusing heavily on resistance against British colonial rule, this school often treated the subaltern as a group with a completely independent consciousness. The authors contend that this view is flawed because Dalit consciousness is not entirely separate from the dominant caste ideology; rather, it is often shaped and limited by the very ideas it seeks to oppose. In simpler terms, the oppressed have often internalized the rules of the oppressor, making it difficult to break free without a deeper cultural transformation.
To illustrate this dynamic, the authors turn to the BSP, a political party founded to champion the cause of Dalits and other lower castes. The party's history serves as a detailed case study of how a movement can rise to power and then be absorbed back into the hierarchy it was meant to destroy. In its early years during the 1980s and early 1990s, the BSP adopted a confrontational stance, using slogans that directly challenged upper-caste dominance and mobilized Dalits through a sense of historical grievance. This strategy successfully disrupted the traditional political order, helping the party gain significant influence. However, as the party sought to win elections and govern, its strategy shifted dramatically. The leadership began to pursue "social engineering," forming alliances with upper-caste groups, including Brahmins, to broaden its voter base. The party's rhetoric softened, moving from anti-caste confrontation to a message that invited everyone to "ride the elephant," the party's symbol.
The researchers analyze this shift as a critical failure of what Gramsci called a "war of position." This concept suggests that before a group can seize political power, it must first win the cultural and intellectual battle within society, transforming the "common sense" that keeps hierarchies in place. The BSP, the authors argue, skipped this crucial step. Instead of cultivating a new generation of leaders from within the Dalit community who could challenge the underlying cultural norms, the party leadership sought to mimic the upper castes to gain their support. This approach, known as Sanskritisation, involves lower castes adopting the rituals and behaviors of the upper castes to gain status. While this strategy helped the BSP win a majority in the state assembly in 2007, it came at a high cost. The party became dependent on the very elites it was supposed to oppose, and the broader Dalit base felt increasingly alienated. The leadership, rather than acting as a collective intellectual force for the community, began to function more like a traditional elite, prioritizing power-sharing deals over structural change.
The consequences of this accommodation became starkly visible in the years following 2007. The BSP's electoral fortunes began to decline as its original support fractured. In the 2012 state elections, the party suffered a crushing defeat, losing the very strongholds it had once dominated. By 2014 and again in 2024, the party failed to win a single seat in the national parliament from Uttar Pradesh, polling only around nine percent of the vote in the state and losing its deposit in several areas where it had once been dominant. The study notes that the party's attempt to court upper-caste voters ultimately backfired, leaving the Dalit community without a strong political vehicle. The vacuum left by the BSP's decline has been filled by a new, rival formation led by Chandrashekhar Azad, who is attempting to revive the original, more radical Ambedkarite politics that the BSP abandoned. This new group is currently testing whether a movement can succeed by focusing on the cultural and ideological transformation that the authors argue is necessary for true emancipation.
The central finding of the paper is that political victory alone is insufficient to dismantle deep-seated social hierarchies. The authors suggest that as long as the "common sense" of society continues to accept caste distinctions as natural, any political party that captures power without first changing these cultural foundations will eventually be reabsorbed by the system. The BSP's trajectory demonstrates that when a movement seeks parity with the dominant group rather than the transformation of the system itself, it risks reinforcing the very identity categories it seeks to overcome. The study concludes that genuine liberation requires a long-term effort to transform civil society—changing how people think, teach, and relate to one another—before attempting to seize the machinery of the state. Without this prior cultural shift, the authors argue, political power tends to reproduce existing inequalities in new forms, leaving the Dalit community materially better off in some ways, but socially and psychologically still trapped within the old order.
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