Philosophy
Dharma can feel like liberation because it gives even the most “degrading” work cosmic meaning and spiritual worth.
The Crisis That Launches a Philosophy
Before we get critical, let us explore what is genuinely powerful here. Imagine you are a Shudra in ancient India, doing work society considers degrading. Then someone tells you: Your work has cosmic significance. One is not less valuable than the Brahmin priest; you’re fulfilling a different but equally essential purpose in the divine order. Your life matters exactly as it is. This is profound. It offers inherent worth, relief from choice paralysis, spiritual equality (in theory), cosmic belonging, and meaning in suffering. For people living with hierarchy and uncertainty, this framework provides genuine relief. The sweeper who experiences their work as seva (service) that brings them closer to the divine, that’s not false consciousness. That is the real meaning of a hard life.
Where It Gets Dark- Now, notice what else is happening. Your “essential nature” just happens to correspond to the caste you were born into. The cosmic order aligns perfectly withthe existing social hierarchy. And who determined this cosmic order? Brahmins, the priests and scholars who wrote these texts. Who conveniently decided their own purpose was the highest, closest to spiritual liberation. Women’s dharma is restricted to submission to fathers, husbands and sons. Service, reproduction, and household management. Never independence.
Lower caste dharma would be serving the upper castes. The Dalit’s essential nature is to do work others will not touch; cleaning toilets, handling dead animals, removing waste. And here is the mechanism that makes resistance nearly impossible: karma theory. Your current caste position is the result of actions in past lives. Born Dalit? You are working off bad karma! Born Brahmin? You have earned spiritual merit! Therefore, accept your position. Trying to transcend it is not just socially rebellious; it may be spiritually destructive. Your purpose is to perform your caste duty so perfectly that you might be reborn higher next time.
Meanwhile, the social hierarchy remains perfectly intact.
Even Gandhi, widely celebrated for his role in India’s independence movement, reinforced this logic. While he opposed untouchability as a practice, he defended the varna system itself. He argued that Dalits, whom he called “Harijans” (children of God), a term many Dalits rejected as patronising, should continue doing their traditional work, but do it with dignity and without being treated as untouchable. He believed caste-based occupations were natural and spiritually valid, as long as they were performed with mutual respect. This is where reform becomes complicit with hierarchy. Gandhi wanted to make caste kinder, not abolish it. He spiritualized the very work that degraded people, arguing that manual scavenging could be noble if done with the right consciousness. This is a purpose-assignment wearing the dress of liberation, you can keep your dignity while “staying in your place”.
Dr B.R. Ambedkar saw through this completely. He called the Bhagavad Gita “a philosophy of counter-revolution.” It was written, he argued, to stop lower castes from challenging Brahminical dominance. By making hierarchy cosmic and eternal, the text transforms resistance into spiritual error. And Gandhi’s reformed Hinduism, for all its talk of dignity, maintained the fundamental structure: some people’s purpose is to serve, others’ purpose is to be served. Ambedkar’s devastating critique of Gandhi was precisely this: You cannot reform a system whose purpose is hierarchy. You cannot make slavery dignified. You cannot spiritualize oppression and call it liberation.
A Concrete Example
A Dalit woman works in sanitation, manually cleaning sewers, work that regularly kills people through toxic gas exposure. When asked why, she might say this is her karma, her dharma. The result of past lives. If she does this work with devotion and without resentment, will she be reborn into better circumstances? Meanwhile, the upper-caste person whose toilet she cleans; their comfort is also dharma, also cosmic order. They have a higher spiritual status because they have earned it. Her suffering is spiritualized. His privilege is naturalised. Both are told this arrangement reflects cosmic truth rather than social construction.
Now consider: How is this different from an AI hiring algorithm trained on historical data that learns to recommend Dalit candidates for manual labour and upper-caste candidates for management? The algorithm is not being discriminatory; it is just reading patterns, discovering people’s “essential nature” based on their background. The mechanism is ancient. The technology is new. The logic is identical: Your purpose is discovered, not chosen; read from signs (birth, body, data profile) by those who control the interpretive system (priests, algorithms).
The Impossible Question
Here is what makes this difficult: The purpose provided by dharma is real. People do find genuine meaning in these frameworks. The Dalit sanitation worker might truly experience her work as spiritually significant, might genuinely believe in karma and rebirth. Is that authentic spirituality or internalised oppression? Can it be both? If she says it is her freely chosen spiritual path, but she is socialised from birth into this belief, what does “free choice” mean? Who gets to decide? Is it her, or the critics, activists, and scholars? These are rhetorical questions, and the most complex situation. We are not just fighting lies. We are asking people to give up meaning, and meaning is what makes unbearable lives bearable.
Credits: TCA, LLC.