The “Caste System” That Never Was: Colonial Invention of Shudra Oppression

Far from being condemned to millennia of servitude, Shudra and non-Brahmin communities frequently held political sovereignty, enjoyed access to education, and experienced upward social mobility.

Caste status in pre-colonial India was negotiable and dynamic rather than rigid and timeless.

The colonial state, however, deliberately reconfigured Indian society through race science, census operations, and missionary discourse, freezing fluid identities into a rigid “caste system”.

The myth of “systematic Shudra oppression” thus emerges less as historical truth and more as a colonial fabrication that continues to shape modern politics.

Decolonizing our understanding requires recognizing the complexity, dynamism, and resilience of India’s social order.