Is caste "sovereign"? Ambedkar, the courts and the idea of a law above the law

Laws against caste discrimination are on India’s statute books. Untouchability was abolished by the constitution in 1950. And yet, as the Supreme Court found in 2018, village assemblies still summon couples who married across caste lines, sit in judgment on them, and order them punished.

An idea often heard in anti-caste writing explains this: caste is “sovereign”. It does not depend on a king, a government or a market. It governs itself, through its own social and religious rules, and decides who may be respected, who may marry whom, and how people must behave. This explainer, the first of three, tests that idea against B. R. Ambedkar’s own words and against what the courts have found.

What Ambedkar argued

Ambedkar wrote Annihilation of Caste as an address for a Hindu reform group in Lahore in 1936. The group cancelled the event when he would not cut it, and he published it himself.

Society punishes harder than the state. Ambedkar praised the reformers for attacking caste head on, and gave his reason: “Political tyranny is nothing compared to social tyranny, and a reformer who defies society is a much more courageous man than a politician who defies the government” (§20 [6]).

Caste has its own punishment. “A caste has an unquestioned right to excommunicate any man who is guilty of breaking the rules of the caste,” he wrote. Since that means “a complete cesser [= cessation] of social intercourse”, there is “really little to choose between excommunication and death” (§12 [2]). A caste, he added, insists “upon complete conformity to its code in letter and in spirit” (§12 [3]).

It makes its own rules for others. In 1928, he recounted from a Times of India report, high-caste Hindus in Kanaria, Bicholi-Hafsi, Bicholi-Mardana and about 15 other villages of the Indore district told the Balais, an untouchable community, that they could stay only if they kept new rules. Among them: no gold-lace-bordered turbans, no gold or silver ornaments for Balai women, music at every Hindu wedding, and services rendered without demanding pay. When the Balais refused, they were cut off from village wells and grazing land, and hundreds of Balais and their families left their homes (§2 [9]–[10]).

It rules the mind. “Caste is not a physical object like a wall of bricks or a line of barbed wire,” Ambedkar wrote. “Caste is a notion, it is a state of the mind” (§20 [8]). People keep caste, he argued, not because they are cruel but because their religion teaches it, so the authority to break is that of the Shastras, the sacred law books (§20 [9]).

The idea it is paired with: sovereignty

Sovereignty means supreme authority: the power to make rules and punish those who break them, answerable to no one above. Ambedkar himself turned to the theory of sovereignty. He quoted the British jurist A. V. Dicey, who argued that even the most supreme ruler faces two limits. One is external, “the possibility or certainty that his subjects or a large number of them will disobey or resist his laws”. The other is internal: a ruler acts “in accordance with his character”, shaped by the society he lives in (quoted at §21 [8]). Dicey’s example was that “a revolutionist is not the kind of man who becomes a Pope”. Ambedkar’s point was that a man born a Brahmin has even less wish to lead a revolt against caste (§21 [9]).

Where the idea holds

The courts call it a parallel authority. In Arumugam Servai v. State of Tamil Nadu (2011), a case of Dalit men beaten after a quarrel at a temple festival, the Supreme Court turned to caste panchayats, “Khap Panchayats (known as katta panchayats in Tamil Nadu)”, which “often decree or encourage honour killings or other atrocities in an institutionalized way”. These, the court said, “take the law into their own hands, and amount to kangaroo courts, which are wholly illegal” (para 16).

They judge and punish. In Shakti Vahini v. Union of India (2018), the court described how such assemblies “meet, summon and forcefully ensure the presence of the couple and the family members and then adjudicate and impose punishment” (para 45). It quoted the Law Commission of India’s 242nd report, which found that “caste combinations and assemblies” regard “themselves as being outside the pale of law”, and that the law as it stood did not deter them (para 25). The court cited official figures of 288 honour killings reported between 2014 and 2016 (para 49).

Marriage is the frontier. Both judgments are about who may marry whom. The court in 2018 held that the panchayats “cannot assume the character of the law implementing agency, for that authority has not been conferred upon them under any law” (para 47). That is the language of a contest over who rules.

Scholars are naming it. In April 2026 the political scientist Sambaiah Gundimeda gave a talk at the University of Hyderabad on “caste sovereignty”, which, as his university reported, treats caste “as a non-state power regulating intimacy, honour, punishment, and belonging through extra-legal mechanisms”. The talk is not yet published.

Where the idea breaks

Caste has leaned on kings and officials. The claim that caste needs no king is the weakest part. Ambedkar argued that even the ideal order of four varnas, Chaturvarnya, could not stand on its own: “Chaturvarnya cannot subsist by its own inherent goodness. It must be enforced by law” (§16 [6]). His example was the Ramayana, in which King Rama kills Shambuka, a Shudra who sought to rise above his varna: “As a king, Rama was bound to maintain Chaturvarnya” (§16 [7]). The broom an untouchable had to carry in Poona dates from “the rule of the Peshwas” (§2 [8]). And among those who imposed rules on the Balais were the Patels and Patwaris, village headmen and record-keepers (§2 [9]); the Balais petitioned the court of Indore, “but as they could get no timely relief”, they left (§2 [10]).

The law protected caste’s own courts. Ambedkar complained that caste excommunication was not a crime: “even law gives each caste an autonomy to regulate its membership and punish dissenters” (§12 [4]). Caste’s power to rule itself was, in part, granted and protected by the state.

Many sovereigns, not one. When Ambedkar used the word, it was in the plural: “Castes form a graded system of sovereignties, high and low, which are jealous of their status” (§21 [18]). Each caste guards its rank against those below it. That is why, he argued, Marx’s call to lose nothing but one’s chains could not rally Hindus against caste: some “stand to lose more of their prestige and power than others do” (§21 [18]). Caste is less one ruler than many, ranked against each other.

Its rule can be resisted. Dicey’s external limit applies. The Balais refused the rules (§2 [10]). And the state is not powerless when it acts: the court in 2011 ordered that district magistrates and police chiefs be suspended if they failed to prevent such crimes (para 17), and in 2018 it set out preventive, remedial and punitive steps for every state (para 53).

Why it matters

• Law and life. The idea explains why abolishing untouchability on paper has not ended it: caste’s rules are enforced by family, village and community, often where the state does not reach or chooses not to.
• Policy. If caste works as a parallel authority, laws that only punish individuals after the fact may not be enough. The Law Commission’s report argued for making the assembly itself an offence (Shakti Vahini, para 25).
• The limits of the slogan. Calling caste “sovereign” can make it sound unstoppable. Ambedkar’s own evidence shows a system that has needed kings, officials and laws, and that has been refused by those it ruled.

The fine print

• Our framing. “Sovereign”, in this sense, is our word for the series. Ambedkar used “sovereignties” for castes ranked against one another, not for caste against the state.
• A speech, not a survey. Annihilation of Caste is an argument from 1936. Its examples come from the 1920s and from Hindu society.
• Narrow cases. The two judgments concern honour crimes and caste panchayats, mostly over marriage. Other forms of caste rule, at work, in schools or in housing, are not covered here.
• Who else to read. Sambaiah Gundimeda’s work on caste sovereignty is not yet published. Dalit scholars have written at length on caste and the law; we have not read book-length work on caste and sovereignty for this piece.

Talking points

• Ambedkar said a reformer who defies society is braver than a politician who defies the government. Is that still true where you live?
• If caste “rules the mind”, can a court order or a new law change it, or only punish its worst acts?
• A counter-view: calling caste “sovereign” may let the state off the hook, when Ambedkar’s examples show officials enforcing it. Which framing better helps those fighting it?

The works

• B. R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste, 1936; third edition, 1944. Online edition by Frances W. Pritchett, Columbia University. Cited by section and paragraph. The quotation from A. V. Dicey is at §21 [8].
• Supreme Court of India, Arumugam Servai v. State of Tamil Nadu, judgment of 19 April 2011 (Markandey Katju and Gyan Sudha Misra, JJ.).
• Supreme Court of India, Shakti Vahini v. Union of India, Writ Petition (Civil) No. 231 of 2010, judgment of 27 March 2018 (Dipak Misra, CJI, A. M. Khanwilkar and D. Y. Chandrachud, JJ.), (2018) 7 SCC 192.
• Krea University, “Dr Sambaiah Gundimeda delivers a talk at University of Hyderabad”, 24 April 2026, reporting his talk “Caste Sovereignty and Constitutional Authority” of 22 April 2026. Krea University