Divided by Borders, United by Caste Power: The South Asian Savarna–Ashraf Ruling Nexus

Every human society produces elites. These elites design, dominate, and reproduce political, social, economic, ecological, and cultural institutions in that society. History is shaped either by these elites or by resistance against them. In South Asia—home to more than one-fourth of the world’s population—understanding power requires a comparative examination of elite formations across national borders. Despite sovereign separation, the ruling classes of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal share a strikingly similar caste-based social and political character.

These countries were forged through violent political ruptures, colonial manipulation, and postcolonial nationalism. Yet beneath these differences lies a shared structure of elite dominance rooted in caste privilege. In the case of South Asian nations, borders changed, flags changed, and constitutions changed—but the power of their elites derived from their caste nexus largely did not.

Partition and the Elite Capture of Nation-States

The dominant explanation for the partition of British India rests on the Two-Nation Theory, framed as a Hindu–Muslim religious divide. This narrative obscures a deeper political and social reality in South Asian society. Partition was not merely a communal separation. It was a strategic project through which Hindu Savarna and Muslim Ashraf elites secured sovereign control over the newly created nation-states of India and Pakistan.

In the case of Hindu nationalist forces in India, such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, imagined civilizational continuity with Nepal based on shared Hindu cultural heritage. Nepal, despite its long struggle to transform it in to constitutional democracy, continues to be governed by upper-caste hill elites majorly consisting of the Arya Khas and Brahmans caste groups.

In Pakistan, the upper caste Ashraf Muslim elites articulated an Islamic republic state that preserved their dominance over lower-caste Muslims, ethnic and religious minorities, which collectively constitute a substantial chunk of Pakistani society. Bangladesh, since 1971, has oscillated between secularism and religious nationalism, but elite control of Upper caste Ashraf/Bhadralok Bengali Muslim elites  has remained intact.

This shows that national borders may divide South Asia politically, but the nature of social, political, cultural and economic power of its ruling classes is established around its caste and social hierarchy.

Colonial Anxiety and the Reassertion of Caste Authority

Before British colonialism, political authority in South Asia was largely fragmented and loosely localised. Power rested largely with upper-caste social elites who controlled land, religious institutions, military forces, and social and cultural life through princely states and feudal arrangements. British colonial rule disrupted this system by centralising administration across the Indian subcontinent.

This transformation produced deep anxiety among Savarna Hindu and Ashraf Muslim elites. Their social  and caste legitimacy was threatened for the first time. The failed 1857 revolt of India reflected this crisis. Although the 1857 revolt mobilised masses in a limited sense, it continued to centre around elite leadership and communal symbolism. Hindu and Muslim unity was imagined only through the social and political gaze of the upper caste Hindu- Muslim power elites, not at the level of social equality and distribution of power in the hands of the lower caste Bahujan, Arjal, Ajlaaf, Pasmanda masses. Great anti caste social reformer Mahatma Jyotiba Phule who was witnessing this revolt first hand in Pune, criticised the feudal, communal and upper caste centric political leadership of the revolt and recognised the roots of the 1857 revolt in the political aspirations of the upper caste Hindu and Muslim natives to snatch power from the British East India Company  and reestablish their repressive traditional caste based feudal power over Bahujan, Dalit, Pasmanda masses. In its nutshell, the 1857 failed to give any radically new social, political, economic and cultural imagination to the redressal of caste-based unequal social and power relations in the Indian society.

Following 1857, these same caste elites came to dominate the intellectual, political and organisational facets of the Indian nationalist movement. They mobilised lower-caste masses against colonial rule while positioning themselves as legitimate future rulers of post-colonial British India. Anti-colonial resistance of India thus became a pathway for upper-caste elite power consolidation, which shaped the nature of post-colonial South Asian nation-states.

Independence Without Meaningful Democratisation

The end of British colonial rule did not dismantle the social, economic, cultural and political structures of South Asian caste elites. It merely transferred authority from colonial administrators to native South Asian elites. This can be seen in the nations like India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, where nation-building institutions—political parties, bureaucracy, judiciary, military, media, universities, and religious bodies—were captured by their respective upper-caste elites.

This shows that the promise of freedom in the case of South Asia/ Indian Subcontinent was replaced by the continuity of elite rule. These nations state continued the paternalistic and at times, police state logic of the “Mai-Baap Sarkar,” treating their lower-caste majority masses as dependents rather than rights-bearing equal citizens in day-to-day life. Dalit, Bahujan, Adivasi, Arzal, Ajlaf, and Pasmanda populations remained politically marginalised and economically vulnerable.

Hence, one can say that the partition of British India was predominantly an elite project which benefited Hindu and Muslim elites by securing their elite national sovereignty in newly created India and Pakistan. Lower-caste populations, who constitute the majority population among the Hindus and Muslims, were rarely consulted during the partition process. Their aspirations for land reform, social justice, and political representation were mostly sidelined. It is the lower caste masses of all the religions who paid the heavy price of the upper caste elite's nationalistic political projects through the gruesome bloodshed and one of the devastating human tragedies in human history.

 Land, Capital, and the Political Economy of Caste

The management of the legitimacy and hegemony over the domestic lower caste majority population by the South Asian elite shares striking similarities. At the core of South Asian elite power lies their disproportionate accumulation of land and capital. South Asian capitalism is inseparable from caste-capital relations prevalent in these societies. Control over land enabled surplus extraction, political coercion, and capital accumulation of these power elites. This nexus remains the backbone of South Asian elite dominance in their rural and urban life.

Hence, bitter opposition by these South Asian caste elites to meaningful land reforms is not accidental. It is a deliberate strategy to preserve their power over the masses. As a result, billions of people in South Asia face a precarious quality of life, vulnerable to the underdevelopment of their productive potential. This clearly highlights that economic inequality in South Asia is not merely class-based. It is a caste-structured social phenomenon.

Jingoistic Nationalism: A Tool to Deviate Public Scrutiny of the Elites' Power Nexus

Ideas of South Asian nationalism is predominantly a byproduct of an upper-caste intellectual, political, social and cultural worldviews. South Asian upper caste elites imagine themselves as natural rulers of their lower caste majority population. When their legitimacy weakens, they revive communal and nationalist hysteria against neighbouring states as a political tool to avoid intense public scrutiny, which may expose their deeper exploitative nature of power over the lower caste masses.

The elite-driven narrative of the national enmity against neighbouring South nations functions as a blanket excuse to defend their political grip over their nation-state. But actually, it diverts attention from domestic inequality and suppresses internal dissent in their domestic front. Interestingly, these same elites unite globally as “Global South” actors when confronting the global system of racialised capitalism, which may shake their levers of power in their home country. This shows that the true priority among the South Asian upper caste power elites lies not with their masses, but with safeguarding their own domestic and international vested power interests.

Communal Violence as Tool to Enforce Caste Power  

Communal violence in South Asia including India is routinely misdiagnosed as an example of religious or class violence. Media narratives frame it as a religious conflict while ignoring its underlying caste character. Such communal violence functions as a mechanism of social control and claim the mainstream social, cultural and political narrative of through upper caste lense.

In India, communal violence on Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, and Buddhists disproportionately target Dalits, Adivasis, OBCs, and nomadic communities, which are majority lower caste communities who converted into these religions to escape Brahminical oppression. Instances of public lynching, communal riots, sexual violence against women from religious minorities, and cast based social boycotts in India are instruments of reproduction and enforcement of communal caste power, polarisation of lower caste Hindu and Muslim masses on communal lines disguised as communal clashes.

In Pakistan, caste denial dominates mainstream public discourse, which considers caste system absent in the social and cultural norms of Pakistani society being a part of Islamic society. Yet Dalit Christians, Hindus, and Pasmanda Muslims continue to perform the most degrading labor like manual scavenging, sex work in the Pakistani society. Blasphemy accusations and public attacks on these communities disproportionately target these lower caste communities, serving as tools of social terror and reproduction of caste-based social, communal and political power dynamics.

Bangladesh and Nepal: Case of Caste-Based Violence and Repression

In Bangladesh, Ashraf Muslim elites—many descended from so called ‘higher pedigree Muslims’ of Arabic, Punjabi, Afghan, North Indian, Persian or Turkic lineage and Bhadralok Hindu converts to Islam—dominate political, social, religious and cultural institutions of Bangladeshi society. Recent Islamist opposition to Baul folk music reveals hostility toward syncretic cultural traditions rooted in the lives of the marginalised caste communities like Atrap, Pasmanda Muslims, Dalit Hindu, Buddhist and Christian communities in the Bengali society. The recent gruesome incident of lynchings and public burning of a Hindu Dalit individual under blasphemy accusations exposes the same pattern of the caste-based communal violence of upper caste elites against the lower caste masses in the South Asian society.

In the case of Nepal, the nation’s political, social, economic, military and bureaucratic institutions remain dominated by Khas Arya and Brahmin upper caste elites from Nepalese society. Nepalese society continues to be deeply stratified by the caste-based social hierarchy, which creates instances of the caste-based atrocities on the historically marginalised caste communities by the upper caste Nepali section of the society. The recent Nepalese youth unrest against the power elites of Nepal also shares the deep frustration against the entrenched caste nexus and exploitation of the masses by these Nepali power elites.

What South Asia’s Lower Castes Must Do

One must realise that Partition, aggressive military conflicts, and perpetual hostility through jingoistic nationalism in South Asia have build the political, economic fortunes and legitimacy of the South Asian caste elites over their lower caste majority masses. The primary beneficiaries of project of nation states and nationalism in South Asia has mostly been upper caste south Asian elites at the expense of lower-caste majorities across borders. Hence, without independent political consciousness, a clear understanding of their social, political and economic exploitation by the elites, the lower caste South Asian communities will continue to remain subject to manipulation by their power elites. It is an urgent need to revisit the upper caste-driven and upper caste-centred historical narratives of partition and social, political legitimacy of the national projects in post-colonial South Asia.

Unequal accumulation of Land remains the fundamental factor through which South Asian elites suppress the economic and political potential of their lower caste masses. Hence, any social, political and economic movements claiming empowerment of South Asian masses must reassert the policy agenda of land redistribution and land reforms at the forefront of the policy dialogue. Lower-caste intellectuals, artists, policymakers, and students must interrogate caste-sanitized narratives of nationalism, partition and communalism prevalent in upper-caste-driven mainstream political, economic and social life of the South Asian society. It is also important to develop the vision and public awareness about exposing the caste nature of the communal violence in the South Asian society.

The national identities of the South Asian nations and terms of their cooperation a political, economic and cultural policy, must be reimagined through shared social, cultural fabric born out of the life experiences of the South Asian lower caste majority population, and not by the exclusionary political and communal doctrines of South Asian elite narratives. There is an urgent need to break the social, cultural, political monopoly of the upper-caste-dominated narratives of cross border people to people diplomacy in South Asia. The foundation of the People-to-people dialogue among South Asian nations must be centred around Dalit, tribal, Bahujan, Aajlaaf, Atrap, Pasmanda marginalised social and political voices across the borders.

The lower caste majority population of all the religions are the bedrock of the South Asian society, which builds the strong fabric of the social and cultural mutual coexistence. Only a clear anti-Brahmanical, anti-caste political, social, cultural and economic imagination has the capacity to empower the 1/4^th of global population to reclaim their dignity and rightful place in the process of social and economic transformation of the South Asian region. It is the only credible antidote to the warmongering, communal and violent politics of South Asian upper caste-derived politics of nationalistic mutual hate, which is not only dangerous to the South Asian region, but can put the whole world in to grave humanitarian crisis.

South Asian caste elites across the border are united in preserving their power and privilege over their masses and keep their masses divided to so that they would organise themselves under the common political, economic and social program. It is time for the lower-caste majorities of these regions to build unity across borders as well—to reclaim the future of peace and prosperity, not for the select few, but for whole region.