Divya Dwivedi and Shaj Mohan, Indian Philosophy, Indian Revolution: On Caste and Politics, Edited, introduced, and annotated by Maël Montévil, (Hurst Publishers, UK; Oxford University Press, USA), 2024.
In Indian Philosophy, Indian Revolution: On Caste and Politics, (hereon IPIR) Divya Dwivedi and Shaj Mohan offer a meticulously reasoned and deeply disconcerting reassessment of India’s socio-political framework. This collection of essays and interviews, edited and annotated by Maël Montévil, challenges standard interpretations by asserting that the ancient caste system is not a marginal concern or a historical remnant, but rather the persistent, unchanging foundation of oppression in India for three millennia. The authors conduct a probing philosophical and historical investigation which reveals the contemporary fabrication of a “Hindu majority” as a calculated “hoax” intended to obscure the underlying caste-based segregation. The theoretical (hypophysical) origins of the hoax are in the “Aryan doctrine” of the Vedas which, as Dwivedi and Mohan demonstrate through the essays in this book and other works, inspired the very self-constitution of “Europe”. Thus, the philosophical project of Dwivedi and Mohan deconstructs and criticalises both upper caste supremacism and Euro-centrism by demonstrating the latter as deriving from the former.
This book transcends critique as a theory of conditions of possibility; instead, it is a new revolutionary theory, revealing the actual conditions, both theoretical and political, for revolutionizing the egalitarian ambitions of India’s lower caste majority. However, the impetus of their theory extends to all parts of the world, taking us towards anti-imperial movements and initiating theoretical openings for a philosophico-political project that is far more radical than postcolonial and decolonial projects, as can be witnessed in the recent philosophical publications of Dwivedi, and Mohan’s, especially on Palestine. This was noted by Slavoj Žižek, who has observed that their book “is obligatory reading for all who want to understand the precipice towards which our entire world is moving”; and, Robert Bernasconi according to whom “It overwhelms one with a sense of injustice and may well inspire a generation to speak out more openly”.
Dwivedi and Mohan are prominent philosophers of their generation, belonging to the tradition or “bastard family” of deconstruction. This theoretical foundation—clearly aimed at displacing “the west” and “western canon” of philosophy—allows them to construct a distinctive philosophical framework that supports their revolutionary readings of politics and society, in India and beyond. The way this book has been received—the reviews in India and the west from more radical currents, as well as the attempts to silence it—indicates how disruptive and how effective it is as a direct political intervention. For this reason, Žižek asserted that it is an “unambiguous revolutionary thesis”. This book is not an academic exercise, but a significant act of intellectual insurgency that directly challenges the status quo.
Unveiling the Invariants of Oppression
IPIR unequivocally asserts that the oppressive caste order has been “the only invariant of the Indian subcontinent for millennia.” Rigorous notions of purity and “strict ceremonial endogamy” are the defining characteristics of this system. According to this vicious circle, the ceremonial society is divided into a minority of upper castes—Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vaishyas (or Baniya)—comprising less than 10% of the population, and a majority of lower castes, including Shudra and the historically “untouchable” Dalits who collectively account for over 90% of India’s population. A group accused of “impurity” is not only oppressed but also cut off from all humane and societal considerations, and this is where the idea of “waste” becomes more politically charged than before.
The authors underline that caste-based discrimination is not unique to Hinduism but pervades all religions of India, including Christianity, Islam, and Sikhism, where untouchability and caste domination exist:
Up until today, the caste order continues to secure upper caste supremacy by organizing inherited inequality: the social and economic capital of the upper castes is drawn from the exploitation of the lower caste peoples—assured through physical and psychic oppression rather than consent (which Louis Dumont’s Homo hierarchicus had wrongly canonized). The upper castes comprise no more than 10 per cent of the population of India. Yet, they occupy 90 per cent of all positions of power, influence, and profit in all the spheres of life which continue to be reserved for them century after century, and from which the rest, the majority lower caste peoples are excluded so that for them may be reserved the toil, the deprivation, the precarity—most stable!—and the humiliation.
The Western notion of the “Far East” and the praise of the subcontinent for the ‘harmony’ underpinning its ruling structure is also challenged at this radical juncture. As stated in this book, the celebration of this so-called “polyphony” is ultimately a compromise in favor of the ruling class with whom alone the west prefers to engage. If caste is the sole consistent factor, any examination of Indian history, politics, or social dynamics that does not emphasize caste is fundamentally deficient or deceptive. This directly opposes academic paradigms, including certain strands of postcolonial and decolonial theory, that may excessively prioritize colonialism or religious identity as fundamental determinants of social issues. This critique applies to all the countries of Asia, where the elites of inherited communities continue to hold power and engage solely with the west—for Mohan “white nationalisms”—as the sole arbiters of societies.
Caste is exposed as systemic racism, which inspired western race theory. It endures despite religious conversions by illustrating its widespread impact on many religious groupings. This is a concealed dimension of oppression often neglected in dialogues centered exclusively on Hindu-Muslim conflicts, suggesting that the issue resides not in religious identity, but in the unchangeable caste into which one is born. Or as stated in the book, “caste is an order in which the ends and the means are one and the same: enforcing caste-obedient conduct as the means towards the end of reproducing and perpetuating castes.” Mohan and Dwivedi call this species of causality a calypsology, which is at work in all elitisms where gatekeeping and endogamy perpetuates inequalities, in Asia and in the ‘west’.
The upper-caste minority has dominated land, labor, and cultural and administrative institutions for millennia. Access to temples, knowledge (such as the Vedas), and essential public resources like roads and drinking water have all been routinely denied to the lower castes. This repression, of course, has clearly shown its naked, violent forms during the Covid-19 pandemic. As the authors have previously argued in the pandemic philosophy debates with Giorgio Agamben, Jean-Luc Nancy and Roberto Esposito, caste barriers, including the demand by the upper castes to have separate hospitals and their refusal to receive medical assistance from the lower caste peoples among the medical personnel, added to causes of the deaths of more than ten million people in India.
The book asserts that the singular noble objective of politics in India is the dismantling of the oppressive inherited inequality of the caste system to establish a polity characterized by equality. In this regard, last year Divya Dwivedi and Shaj Mohan pointed out that since the “Hindu nationalist” politician Narendra Modi’s defeat in the national elections of 2024, powerful egalitarian movements, political and social, are forming in the country. Contrary to Western imperialism’s claim of political harmony in the Indian subcontinent, when caste-based power falters, a democratic and unprejudiced force can be expected to quickly form and organize itself.
The “Hindu Hoax”: A Twentieth-Century Fabrication
“Hindu” is a term that the Achaemenid Persians used in the sixth century BCE to describe the region surrounding the Indus River (Sindhu). “Indus” (as recorded by Alexander’s army) and “India” are derived from this term. Only in the 19th century did British colonial administrators and Indologists begin to use “Hindu” informally to describe the subcontinent’s inhabitants and, less frequently, to describe the traditions of the upper classes.
The designation of “Hindu” as a singular religion for a substantial population is a recent construct of the 20th century. British census operations, initiated in 1872, faced challenges in categorizing the various religious and caste groups. The 1921 Census of India Report explicitly stated that “No Indian is familiar with the term ‘Hindu’ as applied to his religion.”
The 1911 Gaits circular, which sought to categorize various groups according to common cultural spheres, demonstrated that upper castes constituted a minor segment. This delicate demographic situation led upper-caste leaders to create and impose customs and practices designed to satisfy the “Gaits criteria” (British colonial census officer), including “temple entry programs for the lower castes,” which were simply “cosmetic changes” that did not alter the underlying material conditions. This approach reinterprets “Hindu nationalism” as a planned political project—a “hoax”—that aims to conceal upper-caste minority status and preserve their power, creating a false sense of togetherness while upholding underlying caste hierarchies, rather than as a true religious or cultural rebirth.
This process was systematic and aimed at long-term geopolitical and political objectives, as noted by the authors. M. K. Gandhi played a principal role in this still ongoing process. He firmly resisted the request of the lower castes for separate electorates, apprehensive that it would undermine Hinduism. The authors compare Gandhi’s admission of a “subtle something—quite indefinable—in Hinduism which keeps them [the lower caste people] in it even in spite of themselves” to the coercion that African slaves endured under slavery—“To say that the caste order is a feature of ‘Hinduism’ is akin to saying that slavery in America was a spiritual pact between the enslaved black people and the white enslavers”. This nationalised deflection enables upper-caste elites from all religions to obscure the voices and even the existence of lower-caste individuals.
The authors contend that “Hinduism serves as the mechanism by which the aspirations of lower castes can be suppressed, with religious minorities acting merely as a conduit.” If the fundamental issue is caste oppression perpetrated by a minority, then fabricating an external adversary (Muslims) enables the upper castes to fortify their dominance by unifying “Hindus” and diverting attention from internal discord. Thus, religious pogroms targeting Muslims are not merely an impulsive religious confrontation but frequently a contrived crisis, a calculated political instrument employed to uphold the existing caste hierarchy by redirecting focus and stifling the ambitions of lower-caste individuals. Dwivedi calls out the double evil in this strategy which implicates India’s ‘secularists’ and ‘liberal left’,
it lays bare the strategy that Hinduism is the instrument through which lower caste aspirations can be slayed, for which the religious minorities are a mere medium. We should wonder what is more sinister: That this is the reality of politics in India or that we accept this reality in our everyday life?!
Resistance or Revolution?
Dwivedi and Mohan distinguish between “resistance” and “revolution”. This might seem meaningless at first; after all, these two concepts are generally considered to be the two pillars of political thought and philosophy. Consequently, resistance is expected to inevitably culminate in profound transformations and is regarded as the key to understanding the contemporary landscape. Simply put, in the political realm, many have underscored the significance of resistance, while suppressing revolution, which is a suitable strategy for the liberal west as it truly fears revolutions in all societies.
For the authors, resistance, while fundamentally connected to existence, is critiqued for its limitations in achieving transformative change in politics. Resistance, in a practical sense, performs a “work or a function” within a system, like a filament resisting electricity to create heat and light. However, in politics, resistance can be problematic because it might perform a “work for someone else, a work that we did not intend, and is thus going well against our ethical claim”. Here, resistance is analogous to a militaristic defense of terrain, where one resists something malicious approaching existing objects or institutions. In fact, according to the authors, resistance can be a fetish to abandon the idea of real change, pervasive and fundamental transformation:
The romance of resistance lies in the social illusion it provides with the noise of action, which is never political action, nor transformative participation. Instead, resistance often lets political systems reach the limits of their innate tendencies to the point of death while regulating their decay. Therefore, resistance creates heroes who knowingly regulate the innate tendencies of the system while seeming to be opposed to it. The classic example is the union leader who takes a cut from the workers and the factory owners. Resistance can be good business.
To put it another way, resistance frequently controls the decline of political systems while enabling them to reach the critical limits of their inherent tendencies. In contrast, revolution is presented as a necessary path for fundamental transformation. In a conversation between M.K. Gandhi and P.C. Joshi, a communist leader. Gandhi, “the resister,” feared “western civilisation” transforming the “eternal” caste order, whereas Joshi aimed to “create something new rather than resisting changes to the old”. This represents a fundamental transition from the passive opposition or regulation of an existing system to the active development of a new, egalitarian social order that embraces the infinite potential of humanity, rather than being constrained by the boundaries of the past or the interests of a specific community.
Beyond Stasis: The Call for Anastasis
But what is the way toward revolution? For Dwivedi and Mohan the way to escape this situation is defined in the opposition of two concepts of Stasis and Anastasis.
Rooted in ancient Greek language political philosophy, which belongs to the West Asian civilizational system as Mohan shows, the term “stasis” signifies a condition of stagnation or paralysis inside a complex system, arising when “two or more distinct laws conflict within a polis.” According to Dwivedi and Mohan, “stasis” refers to a condition in which one element of a system seeks to dominate and establish itself as the governing principle, hence hindering the system’s ability to evolve and form new connections.
The authors apply this to the present global political arrangement, where various components like armies, capitalists, technologists, and ethno-nationalists contend to become the singular, all-encompassing law, thus causing a worldwide state of stasis. In the Indian context, the persistent stasis in the subcontinent for centuries is characterized by the ongoing battle between the governance of the upper-caste minority and the quest for liberation by the subjugated lower-caste majority. This “stasis” has been “accelerating since modern law arrived with colonial rule,” showing a conflict between the constitutional law of equality and the tenacious law of social hierarchy.
“Anastasis” is presented as the philosophical notion for emerging from stasis; in other words, anastasis is the true name by which alone revolution will heed our call. This is recognized as a transformative theory that arises when a stagnant system (in stasis) is seized by a new governing principle, which doesn’t recognize any component as the supreme. This will lead to a profound transition in which not all elements and their interrelations from a prior era will survive in the current system. By associating anastasis with a novel understanding of law (as the statement of regularity) which supersedes the old theological concepts of law, the writers raise revolution beyond a mere political occurrence or governmental transition. They posit that genuine transformation necessitating not just exterior alterations but also an internal reconstitution of the system’s fundamental principles, rendering anastasis a metaphysical notion that explains and leads to systemic revolution. In other words, anastasis is the seizure of a society by a law that does not privilege any one of the social components—all are vanguards or none at all. The construction of such a principle for each individual society is the beginning of revolutions.
As elaborated in IPIR, in the Indian context, anastasis is precisely “the annihilation of caste and the raising of the lower caste people across religions up to the stages, podiums, theatres, courts, and libraries to which they were forced to bow down to”. This transformative process seeks to establish a democratic reality characterized by the equitable sharing of freedom among all individuals without exception. Otherwise, according to Mohan, “democracy” will itself be another hoax, “The people who thus apportion together the conditions of life in the responsibility of reason to develop polynomia are democratic; in any other sense this term “democracy” means shit […] democracy is the quality of the people who are without the qualities of inequalities”.
* Kamran Baradaran is an Iranian political theorist, author, critic, translator and journalist. He has translated various philosophical and literary works into Persian, including works by Jean Baudrillard, Antonio Gramsci, Paul Virilio, Slavoj Žižek, Hector Munro, Georges Perec, and Luigi Pirandello.
