Vaibhav Kharat
An example of ‘Savarna allyship’ can be understood through the digital and virtual interactions with self-proclaimed liberal, secular, progressive friends/peers belonging to Savarna/Dominant caste groups. These interactions manifest in the form of messages, videos, or you tube or news links shared with their Scheduled Caste (SC)/Tribe (ST) acquaintances. For instance, various messages/videos/links are received from my Savarna/dominant caste peers to me , the content of which relates to Dr. Ambedkar or Buddha or Kanshiram or the leaders who are Dalit by caste or anti-caste writers, poets, academics, scholars, or their texts, opinions, or philosophies, especially on their birth or death anniversaries, in a positive sense, highlighting how they aspired to create an egalitarian and progressive society. Sometimes these messages also include content related to how casteism prevails in our society: how one or another individual faces systematic discrimination or subtle untouchability in their respective workplaces, corporate jobs, government offices, NGOs, academia, politics, or even in the homes of friends because of their SC or ST identity. Such messages highlight how their merit is reduced to their immediate caste identity.
Furthermore, these messages often depict incidents of physical violence by dominant castes or Savarna’s, such as rape, urination, public lynching, public physical abuse, and slurs, or news about violence against Dalits and Tribes while demanding their rights and resources. On the other hand, some messages contain content about SC/ST professors, authors, or activists discussing anti-caste-related issues. If there is an inauguration of a book, article, or text—any form of anti-caste writing or their book reviews or opinions—these Savarna/dominant caste progressive friends immediately send these messages to me, as they know my social location as a SC individual active in anti-caste scholarship and activism.
While sending such messages might seem like a good thing, there is another layer to it. These Savarna friends and I (SC/ST students) are often part of the same one or two WhatsApp groups, but they will never send these same messages to the group. Instead, they will only send them to the SC/ST individuals they know. If I ask them to share these messages in the group we both are part of, or in any other group of their friends or kin, they often ignore the request or respond with a thumbs-up emoji. When I ask them to put such content on their status, they sometimes stop updating their WhatsApp status for two or three days. However, some Savarna friends are more strategic: they will post the message as their status but make it visible only to me, deleting it as soon as I see it. This Savarna behaviour is not only involved in sending messages but also in responding to my WhatsApp statuses that have anti-caste content. The Savarna peers will acknowledge this by replying to the status with a ‘thumbs-up emoji’ or ‘100% true’ or ‘absolutely right.’ However, when at the same time I send that content message in the respective WhatsApp group (e.g., academic or class group or other groups where both are involved), they hardly dare to react or respond to that same content message as it is a more public space unlike the individual space of responding to a status. Most of my scheduled caste friends shared similar experiences when we were discussing.
That’s what we experienced with our so-called Savarna progressive friends with whom we have everyday interaction in campus life. Should we call it Savarna hypocrisy or online caste sensitization campaigning by Savarna peers to those who are victims of the caste system? Or do they want to situate themselves in anti-caste initiatives? Do they know that sending caste-related messages to only SC/ ST friends and not to their Savarna social interaction spaces is itself a form of casteism they are perpetuating under the allyship? Are they trying to show ‘I’m an anti-caste sympathizer or a caste-aware individual and fighting against caste in my respective individual and social space’? Or do they want to show that ‘see, I know your condition as compared to your other conservative Savarna acquaintances, so I can connect with you so you can feel I’m against caste’? Or do they understand it as their surplus action and interaction, or consider that they (Savarna) are doing a favour while sending these messages to SC/ST individuals? Or are these Savarna allies inadvertently perpetuating casteism with performative allyship, where they claim support for SC/ST discourses but their praxis nowhere matches their rhetoric?
Taking a leaf out of the conceptual insights of Afro-American thinkers, such behaviour can be interpreted as a repository or an extension of privileged dominance. Audre Lorde, in her essay ‘The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,’ shows how strategic oppression operates through superficial gestures that appear reformist but ultimately sustain the structures of dominance. Historically, Gandhi’s approach to caste reform is a prime example of this strategy. His advocacy for trusteeship, which excluded meaningful Savarna accountability, and his romanticizing rural life, paired with performative acts like manual labour or temporary association with Dalits, were carefully crafted to appear transformative. However, these efforts sidestepped the structural violence and privilege that upheld caste, strategically maintaining the oppressive order under the guise of reform.
Today, this form of strategic oppression finds a parallel in the digital arena, where Savarna individuals engage in symbolic anti-caste messaging. By sharing caste-related content with SC/ST individuals while avoiding engagement within their Savarna networks, they perform this allyship without fear. These acts of selective solidarity, designed to signal awareness, do not disrupt caste privilege in Savarna public spaces. Instead, they strategically confine caste discourse to SC/ST spheres, preserving the Savarna/dominant social order. Much like Gandhi’s superficial reforms, these online gestures maintain the “master’s house” by ensuring that systemic caste oppression remains intact under a facade of progressivism. Similarly, Bell Hooks’ work ‘Teaching to Transgress’ argues that “allyship without risk is simply an extension of privilege.” This assertion highlights the limitations of digital caste allyship as performed by many Savarna individuals. By selectively sharing content related to anti-caste issues exclusively with their SC or ST acquaintances, Savarna allies often avoid the discomfort of confronting caste privilege within their own closer and social spaces. Instead, these actions become a performance of solidarity, directed towards the very individuals who are already acutely aware of caste-based oppression.
In addition, her notion of “eating the other” highlights how dominant groups often appropriate the struggles and cultural symbols of the oppressed for their own moral gratification without addressing systemic inequities and without actionable change against their own groups, which can be seen in the context of Savarna allyship where they are appropriating whatever we have so they can sustain their hegemony over us by performative allyship, which further can cause what W. E. B. Du Bois called “double consciousness” in which SC/ST individuals are compelled to navigate dual realities: their lived experiences of caste-based oppression and the performative solidarity of their Savarna peers. This double consciousness forces SC/ST individuals into a fragmented subjectivity, where they must interpret Savarna gestures of solidarity as both potentially genuine and fundamentally complicit in maintaining caste hierarchies. This fractured perception is not a passive by-product of caste dynamics; it actively constitutes the Savarna identity as an “anti-caste ally” in the eyes of SC/ST individuals. The emotional labour demanded of SC/ST individuals acknowledging, engaging with, or even responding to Savarna performances creates a distorted framework in which the Savarna ally is falsely legitimized as an agent of social justice. For instance, when SC/ST individuals recognize a Savarna’s performative gesture, such as private messages or selective social media activism, as a step towards solidarity, it unintentionally affirms the Savarna’s claim to allyship, even when these actions lack substantive engagement with caste oppression.
Judith Butler’s concept of performativity can offers a critical lens to understand this process. As she argues that “identity is not a fixed essence but is constituted through repeated acts,” performativity entails repeated acts that solidify an identity over time. For Savarna individuals, the repetitive gestures of allyship sharing caste-related content, privately reaching out to SC/ST individuals, or invoking Ambedkarite language in isolated context constitute their identity as “anti-caste allies.” Yet, this identity is constructed through a relational dynamic with SC/ST individuals who, under the pressures of double consciousness, are compelled to validate these performances, if only to navigate the oppressive structures they inhabit. However, this constructed identity is inherently fragile and deceptive. The Savarna “anti-caste ally” emerges not from genuine praxis but from the external recognition imposed by SC/ST individuals operating within the constraints of double consciousness. This recognition, often reluctant or coerced by social ascription, allows Savarna performativity to masquerade as solidarity while evading accountability or risk. In this way, the double consciousness of SC/ST individuals serves to justify and sustain the performativity of Savarna allyship. By interpreting and responding to these performative acts, SC/ST individuals are drawn into a cycle that legitimizes the Savarna claim to allyship, even as it perpetuates caste privilege. Far from being a dismantling of caste, this dynamic reconfigures caste order within the framework of modern progressivism, where the Savarna ally is both the author and beneficiary of a narrative that centres their moral virtue rather than systemic transformation. This dynamic exposes the fundamental untruth of the Savarna identity as an “anti-caste ally.” It is not solidarity rooted in risk, confrontation, or systemic change but an identity constituted through the exploitation of SC/ST double consciousness.
To move beyond performative allyship, Savarna allies must confront their active complicity in sustaining the caste system. True solidarity requires dismantling caste privilege at its roots, not with empty gestures but by waging direct challenges against Savarna domination in both public and private spaces. Sharing anti-caste content without disrupting power privileged structures is a hollow act, a continuation of caste oppression cloaked in progressivism, betraying the very liberation it pretends to support. As Frantz Fanon writes in The Wretched of the Earth, “The settler’s work is to make even dreams of liberty impossible for the native. The native’s work is to imagine all possible methods for destroying the settler.” In the caste system, the Savarna/ dominant groups work is to keep genuine solidarity out of reach, turning anti-caste discourse into performative gestures that reinforce and reproduces caste privileged power. Savarna allies who post anti-caste content online but remain silent in their Savarna/ dominant real-world spaces are complicit in this charade. They maintain a system that makes real change unthinkable by prioritizing safe, symbolic acts over the hard work of dismantling the privilege they hold. If we are serious about justice, performative allyship must be blasted and real disruption must begin.
~~~
Vaibhav Kharat is a Navayanist, and a postgraduate in Sociology from CSSS, JNU. He can be contacted at vaibhavkharat210@gmail.com
