‘I’m an Upper Caste Myself’: Caste Identities in Negotiating Casteism

Caste is the single most important determinant of life outcomes in India (Pathania et al., 2023; Teltumbde, 2022; Yengde, 2019). Caste is pervasive—in our homes, friendships, places of worship, love and marriage, clothing, language, food, and more. Caste as a ‘system’ of oppression is, at its core, a means of organizing social groups and memberships. Social psychologists have examined inter-caste attitudes and possible reasons for discrimination (Jogdand et al., 2016; Prasad et al., 2020; Sharma & Jogdand, 2024) Sidanius, Bhardwaj, and Kumar’s (2014). What has been less examined is what it means for persons to engage with caste and casteism. In this article, I examine how individuals construct specific caste identities for themselves in addressing casteism. Using discursive psychology, I examined interviews with 20 students who were protesting the death of Rohit Vemula. Findings show that interviewees negotiated their positions on casteism through softening their attachment to caste identities. Interviewee accounts developed their own and others’ caste identities in ways that grounded these in contexts of higher education to downgrade or upgrade claims about prevalent casteism.