Caste on the Body

Jasmeh Kaur
Apr 12
4 min read

Updated: Apr 18

In India, the caste system is far from being merely an abstract order. Caste has materialised itself in how bodies are allowed or denied the right to occupy space, express identity, and uphold dignity. This article explores how caste is enacted and contested through the body. It examines the historical and contemporary ways in which caste-oppressed communities are policed through physical restriction, dress codes, and spatial control. And also how in turn these communities have resisted such impositions through practices of assertion and refusal.

Embodying caste

In 2024, the dominant caste residents of Ebbanad blocked a TNSTC bus that was finally extended to a Dalit village, Koranur (Shantha 2024). Just two kilometres away, the Dalit and Adivasi families were denied this basic access to transport. The police made the passengers walk, and the bus never reached them. That bus meant school, work, hospital and a connection to the world. But for the upper castes, such easy access to mobility for the Dalits was unacceptable.

This incident isn’t an isolated case. It speaks to a longer history of how caste has physically regulated movement. Where someone can walk, what route they take, whether they’re allowed to be seen in public spaces– are all deeply caste-marked questions. In many rural areas, Dalits have historically had to take longer, separate paths to avoid crossing into dominant caste streets. Temple entrances, water sources, and even village centers were often off-limits. André Béteille’s (1965, 45) work on spatial segregation in southern Indian villages documents how entire village layouts were engineered to keep caste groups apart.

Just like movement, appearance too has been policed by caste. The body doesn’t only cross physical thresholds, it also wears identity. And for caste-oppressed communities, what the body wears has long been regulated with quiet but brutal precision. Kerala once had a system of “breast tax”, levied on lower-caste women, who had to pay a price if they wanted to cover their breasts (Nair 2016). Such instances demonstrate how caste barriers went beyond physical control to stripping one of their dignity. The logic was the same as in the case of mobility: looking the part was in itself, an act of defiance.

Reclaiming the Body

In a caste society where power operates through control over the body itself, the act of reclaiming both body and dignity becomes a critical form of resistance. For Dalit communities, defiance has often taken shape not only through collective mobilisation but also through everyday gestures that subvert normative caste structures. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar's public presence exemplified this mode of resistance. His insistence on wearing formal suits and presenting himself with deliberate precision was a challenge to the caste order that associated Dalit bodies with degradation (Masoodi 2017). In a context where dress was used to signify caste location, Ambedkar’s attire disrupted these visual hierarchies and redefined what dignity could look like.

Public intellectuals like Suraj Yengde have emphasised Dalit assertion as radical because it rejects the idea of quiet accommodation. In his writing, he frames the act of being seen in the public sphere not as a personal achievement, but as a collective claim to a future where Dalit presence is ordinary, not exceptional. Similarly, Gogu Shyamala, writer and activist makes use of political activism and storytelling to foreground the life-worlds of Dalit women in Telangana. Her short stories resist the romanticisation of rural life and instead present the village as a caste-dominated space where resistance often emerges through subtle gestures such as refusing to lower one’s voice, claiming land, or choosing to speak in one’s dialect.

In contemporary movements, Dalit women have similarly used their bodies as instruments of protest. Marches by Dalit women’s collectives across Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Uttar Pradesh have refused both invisibility and containment. These are not only political actions but embodied disruptions. Women walking through streets they were once forbidden from, occupying public platforms, and speaking on their own terms, assert the right to space, voice, and visibility. Reclamation also takes place through everyday activities, such as wearing what is considered “too good” for one’s caste, walking into upper-caste localities, riding a bike, and going to school. As Rege (2013) notes, these ordinary actions that are often perceived as provocations by dominant castes become powerful refusals of the scripts historically imposed on Dalit bodies. In Gujarat, Dalit men have been attacked for wearing sunglasses or carrying mobile phones, not because these items are inherently provocative, but because they signal a refusal to remain within caste-assigned roles.

These acts of defiance reconstitute the body not as a site of shame or submission, but as a political subject. Whether through collective protest or individual assertion, caste-oppressed communities continue to challenge the very structures that seek to discipline their presence.