Ambedkar’s Prophecy: The Bitter Reality of India’s Contradictions
On November 25, 1949, during the final days of the Constituent Assembly, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar expressed a deep anxiety: “On the 26th of January, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics, we will have equality, and in social and economic life, we will have inequality.” Today, in 2026—seventy years after his passing on December 6, 1956—an objective look at our political, economic, social and cultural structures reveals a chilling reality: his fear has become a brutal, naked truth!
Almost a century after his historic struggles for basic rights, such as the Mahad Satyagraha of 1927 for the right to drink water from a public tank and the 1930 Kalaram Mandir Satyagraha, the Dalit community still bleeds for those very same rights. The constitutional promises of equality remain a cruel mirage for millions of marginalised Indians.
Even after seventy-five years of political independence, the shameless exploitation of caste remains a continuous hypocrisy in Indian politics. Through the 1932 Poona Pact, when Gandhiji’s fast forced Ambedkar to abandon the demand for separate electorates for Dalits, Babasaheb feared that joint electorates would strip Dalits of their right to choose true representatives. He worried it would create subservient “Dalit leaders” controlled by upper-caste political parties.
Today’s politics perfectly mirrors that historical fear. Every political party skilfully uses caste as a vote-bank tool today. The cheap theatrics of politicians dining at Dalit homes before elections is political hypocrisy at its ugliest. Since the ‘Mandal vs. Kamandal’ politics of the 1990s, the current ruling establishment and other right-wing forces have strategically appropriated Dalit icons, including Ambedkar.
While pushing to unite the country under a broad “Hindu identity,” they carefully maintain subtle caste polarisation within the corridors of power. Placing Dalits or Adivasis in the highest constitutional posts (like the President) is mere tokenism—an excellent eyewash that exploits a community’s emotions without altering the structural exploitation of its marginalised people.
The Economic Monopoly of Caste
This political deprivation is deeply tied to systematic economic dominance. Ambedkar repeatedly warned that social freedom is impossible without economic freedom. It is often said that capital has no caste, but an analysis of the Indian economy reveals that capital here has always been fiercely upper-caste. Reports from international research organisations like the World Inequality Lab and Oxfam show that wealth concentration in India today surpasses even the British colonial era!
The data is staggering: Studies on inter-group wealth inequality reveal that Hindu High Castes own approximately 41% of the total national wealth and 51.4% of all buildings in the country, despite being a demographic minority. In stark contrast, Scheduled Castes (SCs) own a mere 7.3% of the wealth, and Scheduled Tribes (STs) hold just 3.7%.
Furthermore, research by Han Donker, Ajit Dayanandan and Ravi Saxena reveals that about 93% of the Board of Director positions in India’s top 1000 corporate firms are occupied by people from the ‘general’ category. Meanwhile, the Agricultural Census shows that 71% of Dalit farmers are actually landless labourers.
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The benefits of privatisation and liberalisation since the 1990s have strategically flowed into the pockets of a specific class and caste. As public sector enterprises are increasingly handed over to private players, the legal right to reservation shrinks, serving as a neo-liberal strategy to re-marginalise Dalits economically.
The Fortress of Endogamy: The Marriage Market
Nowhere is the hypocrisy of modern India more glaring than in the marriage market, which serves as the ultimate biological and social fortress for maintaining caste purity. Dr. Ambedkar noted that the real mechanism of caste is endogamy (marrying strictly within one’s own caste). Despite India’s rapid urbanisation and economic globalisation, this ancient barricade remains almost completely intact.
According to the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), an overwhelming 95% of Indians still marry within their own caste. Even more damning is the historical trend: the rate of inter-caste marriages in India was an abysmal 5.82% in 2011, and researchers note there has been absolutely no upward trend over the past four decades.
The illusion that “modern education” dismantles caste barriers is also shattered by empirical data. Studies analysing the IHDS reveal that the educational attainment of the spouses has no statistically significant association with the likelihood of an inter-caste marriage.
The cultural stronghold is so rigid that 73% of marriages are arranged by parents, and even among the tiny fraction of inter-caste marriages, almost 63% are still arranged by families, with 98% of those couples living with their parents immediately afterward. This proves that caste endogamy is not merely a rural relic; it is an active, heavily policed institution that urban, educated India goes to great lengths to preserve.
Institutional Exclusion and “Merit”
In the cultural and social landscape, discrimination is even more psychological and deeply rooted. In his groundbreaking text, Annihilation of Caste, Ambedkar sharply analysed that caste is not a physical wall or barbed wire that can be torn down; it is a notion, a state of mind. Standing in the 21st century, this upper-caste mental distortion has merely taken on a new packaging, especially regarding reservations.
Sociologist Ajantha Subramanian, in her book The Caste of Merit, brilliantly illustrates how the modern, urban upper-caste society cleverly disguises its inherited social and cultural capital as “merit.” When a Dalit student or official gains entry into an institution through reservation, the bitter taunts of being “meritless” or a “quota candidate” represent a modern, urban and polished form of ancient untouchability.
Regarding cultural dominance in the media, reports expose that nearly 90% of top leadership roles in India’s mainstream media are monopolised by upper castes.
Due to this deep-seated ‘Manuvadi’ mindset, reservation laws have been reduced to a corrupted shell. According to the central government’s Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT), representation of SC/ST communities among the 90-odd Secretary-level officers in the Government of India is less than 3% or 4%.
He deeply understood that a society and religion devoid of inherent human dignity and equality could not be changed merely by laws on paper.
The situation in higher education is just as bleak. The latest University Grants Commission (UGC) Annual Report (2023–24) data exposes a severe systemic blockade: a staggering 30% of all reserved teaching posts remain vacant today, primarily concentrated at the most senior levels.
While marginalised groups are mostly locked into junior ad-hoc positions, leadership and professor ranks remain an unreserved monopoly. For instance, recent parliamentary data highlights that professors from the OBC category are merely 4.5% of total recruited professors across higher education institutes.
Upper-caste-controlled interview boards and the controversial 13-point roster system routinely sideline minority talent or stamp “Not Found Suitable” on files for reserved seats. In a country with millions of highly educated, unemployed researchers, claiming a lack of suitable candidates is actually a classic example of institutional corruption.
Moreover, to silence voices fighting this structural deprivation, undeclared oppression is unleashed on campuses. The deaths of students from Rohith Vemula to Darshan Solanki in IITs and central universities are not simple suicides; they are calculated “institutional murders” driven by upper-caste psychological abuse.
In broader society, recent National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reports indicate that an average of over 150 Dalits face severe physical and sexual violence every day. Yet, when they seek justice, the conviction rate under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act languishes at merely 30%!
The Path Forward
On October 14, 1956, just weeks before his death, Babasaheb struck a final blow to the Hindu caste system by converting to Buddhism at Nagpur’s Deekshabhoomi alongside lakhs of followers. He deeply understood that a society and religion devoid of inherent human dignity and equality could not be changed merely by laws on paper.
Therefore, seventy years after his departure, a harsh introspection is urgently needed. India may have sent a rover to the moon and secured its place in the global IT sector, but behind this glossy progress rules a distorted mentality—one where a Dalit youth can still be killed by upper-caste mobs simply for riding a horse in good clothes, and where 95% of families refuse to marry outside their ancestral hierarchies.
Until the invisible yet impenetrable wall of caste is completely shattered from our minds, until true power-sharing is established in politics and economics, and until the ‘Manuvada’ hiding behind the arrogance of ‘merit’ is destroyed in our cultural sphere, celebrating Ambedkar’s birthday on April 14 every year will remain an act of state hypocrisy.
The greatest tribute to him is only possible when this fractured India truly stands tall as a discrimination-free, empathetic and progressive nation.
References:
- Ambedkar, B. R. (1936). Annihilation of Caste. Navayana Publishing Pvt Ltd.
- Subramanian, A. (2019). The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India. Harvard University Press.
- Donker, H., Dayanandan, A., & Saxena, R. (2016). Corporate Boards in India. Blocked by Caste? Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. XLVII No. 31. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263654153_Corporate_Boards_in_India_Blocked_by_Caste
- Constituent Assembly of India. (1949). Constituent Assembly Debates, Vol. XI.
- Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), Government of India. Annual Reports & Data on Representation of SC/ST/OBC in Central Government Services.
- Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Government of India. All India Report on Agriculture Census. New Delhi.
- National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. Crime in India: Statistics on Atrocities against SCs and STs.
- University Grants Commission (UGC). (2024). UGC Annual Report 2023–24. New Delhi, India.
- Desai, S., & Vanneman, R. (2015). India Human Development Survey (IHDS). University of Maryland and National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi.
- Oxfam India. India Inequality Report.
- World Inequality Lab. World Inequality Report. Paris School of Economics.
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An essayist, whose work explores politics, economics, sports, social issues and international relations.
