‘Lol even poor Brahmin discriminates poor Dalit’: intersections of class mobility and caste immobility in negotiating support for caste-based reservations in India

We examine how economic inequality is considered at the intersection of one form of structural inequity: caste in India. While caste and class intersections are topics of extensive study in social sciences, we focus on how people make sense of these intersections in rejecting or defending reservation policies. We undertake a discursive analysis of discussions on the social media platform Quora, with a particular focus on how class-predicates are ascribed to caste groups in downgrading or upgrading privilege normatively associated with caste groups. Posters ascribed features suggestive of class to caste groups to indicate relative economic privilege in questioning the use of reservations. Constructions of economic progress for oppressed caste groups meant that principles of meritocracy and egalitarianism could be used to treat caste-based reservations as unfair. These findings are discussed in relation to current qualitative psychological research on economic inequality and the cultural salience of intersecting inequities.