Indian sociologists and historians have retained a certain foundational bias and blindness regarding caste. M N Srinivas’s theory of “Sanskritisation” saw underprivileged castes as aspirational, seeking social mobility. Socio-economic changes were seen as destabilising caste relations and leading to their disappearance. The persistence of upper-caste hegemony, and the resistance to it from underprivileged sections, does not corroborate the thesis forwarded by Srinivas and other sociologists and historians. The neglect of B R Ambedkar has been part of a strange refusal to acknowledge the political in caste.
