Why Caste and Religion Continue to Shape India’s Democracy

77 years.
That’s how long India has walked free.
We’ve sent missions to the moon, coded our way into global tech giants, and grown into a trillion-dollar economy. Yet—when it’s time to choose our leaders, the conversation comes back to surnames, gods, temples, mosques, and mandates on identity.

Why does it feel like our democracy still sleeps in the past?

Let’s talk about it. Not as experts or analysts—but as people who live, vote, and dream in this country.

Imagine going to vote thinking about better roads or education—but being told subtly (or not-so-subtly) that your caste group needs to "stay united" or that your religion is “under threat.”

This isn’t rare. It’s the blueprint of Indian elections.

Entire constituencies are decided based on how a particular caste votes. Candidates are fielded not for their ideas, but for their surnames. Entire campaigns are tailored for “your community”—not the country. It’s not even hidden anymore.

India has over 3,000 castes and sub-castes, and election data shows how constituencies are sliced demographically to predict outcomes. It’s not strategy—it’s social engineering.

The result? A democracy that votes with fear, loyalty, and identity—not hope or accountability. Let’s look at the kind of debates we see in our Parliament:

Should interfaith couples marry?

Should caste-based reservations expand or shrink?

Should religious processions be banned or protected?

These conversations matter—but they dominate. Meanwhile, over 30% of India’s rural schools lack toilets, and out-of-pocket health expenses push 63 million people into poverty each year (WHO, 2022).

Urgent bills on public health funding, climate action, gig worker protection, or school reforms get buried under identity rhetoric.

Policies are increasingly crafted not to solve real problems—but to strike chords of identity and keep emotions high. The louder the divide, the quieter the accountability. From caste-based clashes in universities to violence over religious symbols, India’s streets have seen identity-fueled conflicts time and again. People have lost lives over interfaith marriages, beef allegations, or simply being the wrong caste in the wrong place.

In 2023 alone, India saw over 650 incidents of communal or caste-based violence reported officially—many more likely went unrecorded.

And yet, these flashpoints aren’t treated as tragedies. They become headlines. Then hashtags. Then vote banks.

The nation watches, divided—while the very real human cost becomes background noise.

This is the silent impact.

Children grow up hearing which castes they should marry into, which festivals are “ours” and which are “theirs,” which parts of the neighborhood are unsafe because of who lives there.

Bias becomes behavior.

A 2023 UNICEF study highlighted that caste-based seating arrangements persist in many rural schools in India. In urban areas, caste divides manifest through more subtle means such as coded language, housing segregation, and peer exclusion.

Young minds, instead of being excited by careers or ideas, are taught to guard their surname or religion. What begins at home, festers through WhatsApp, and explodes on election day.

The cycle continues—and generations grow up with walls already built in their minds. Let’s not pretend it's just politics. Society feeds it too.

Over 92% of Indian marriages still happen within the same caste (NFHS-5).
Discrimination in elite institutions remains subtle but prevalent—only 1 in 20 IIT professors belong to a Scheduled Caste or Tribe.

We’ve normalized a democracy where being a citizen takes a backseat to being a community member. And that makes it easy for those in power to exploit it.
While we obsess over identity, here’s what’s happening outside the noise:

This is the real crisis: a democracy that’s distracted. Distracted from progress. From reform. From the dignity of everyday life. Democracy was never meant to be about just voting. It’s supposed to be about choosing futures.
But when the only question asked is “What are you?”—not “What do you want to change?”—we lose that power.

India is capable of miracles. We’ve seen it in our scientists, our startups, our artists, our youth. But those miracles deserve a system that believes in people—not just in their labels.

The question is no longer why caste and religion shape our democracy—we’ve seen how.
The real question is: