Asang Wankhede

Asang Wankhede is a Dalit legal scholar, anti-caste author, and poet from a slum colony in Nagpur, Maharashtra. He holds a B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) from National Law University, Delhi (2016), and an LLM in Human Rights, Conflict, and Justice from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London (2018, Distinction), where he read as a Felix Scholar. He subsequently pursued graduate legal study at the University of Oxford, completing an MPhil in Law (awarded without corrections) before embarking on a DPhil in Law, affiliated with Balliol College and Wolfson College. His doctoral research undertakes a doctrinal assessment of Indian constitutional law jurisprudence on the interaction of caste and poverty in affirmative action policy, with particular attention to the proliferation of reservation policies in favour of dominant upper-caste and middle-caste groups.

In 2022, Wankhede published his monograph "Affirmative Action for Economically Weaker Sections and Upper-Castes in Indian Constitutional Law: Context, Judicial Discourse, and Critique" (Routledge, UK) — the first doctrinal analysis of upper-caste reservations in India. The book examines the 103rd Constitutional Amendment, which introduced an income- and asset-based standard for determining backwardness, and includes case studies of Maharashtra, Haryana, and Gujarat. The Bar Council of India subsequently designated it a compulsory reference book for Constitutional Law-I courses in Indian law schools. In 2024, he served as Lead Research Consultant for the Australian Human Rights Commission's National Community Consultations on Caste Discrimination. He also serves as Associate Editor of the Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal.

Beyond his academic work, Wankhede has been active in Dalit student politics against institutional caste-based segregation and discrimination in university spaces. He writes opinion journalism for publications including The Wire, The Leaflet, The Quint, Outlook India, and Countercurrents, and contributes poetry — including "Ripples of Revolution," published for Ambedkar Jayanti — that draws directly on his experience as a Dalit from Nagpur. His research interests span discrimination law, comparative equality law, international human rights law, critical legal theory, and socio-legal studies.