-
Savio
Saldanha SJ
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18199195
Date: 09-01-2026
Ancient Indian Philosophy, Caste,
and Conscience at the Crossroads
As
I reflect on my philosophical studies, I often find myself returning to the
question of what it means to study Indian philosophy today—both as an academic
pursuit and as a personal search within a society undergoing rapid change.
Writing for my blog Conscience at Crossroads, I wanted to explore how
these ancient schools of wisdom shape my own thinking and continue to influence
India’s collective imagination.
Reflecting on the Indian
philosophical schools and their influence on Indian culture and the collective
memory of its people is a complex task. I am also interested to understand how the
concept of casteism came into being through this culture and became what it is
today. In this regards, I feel blessed to pursue my theological studies in
France, as this distance has given me the chance to view these influences from
the outside. Philosophically, there are two ways of looking at any system: from
within, as one who belongs to it and therefore shares its limits and
constraints; and from without, where a certain distance allows greater freedom,
neutrality, and critical clarity, since one is not bound by the system’s
internal pressures or expectations.
As I was reflecting on the subject,
one of my Jesuit friends, Seby Varghese sent me an article by Tony Joseph on a
related topic. Tony Joseph’s article is empirically
grounded history of how caste emerged and evolved; while I was reflecting about
its normative-philosophical and theological discernment and how to engage that
legacy today. This essay grows out of that struggle for clarity. The
challenge, as I experience it, is discerning what in this heritage still
carries life-giving insight, and what must be critically questioned or left
behind. Some elements reveal their value or their harmfulness quite clearly;
others are so deeply woven into our cultural habits and shared memory that
distinguishing wisdom from distortion becomes far more difficult. The question
for me is, ‘How to engage pro-actively with the Indian philosophical
schools and the non-negotiable demands of social-justice today?’
Classical Indian philosophy and
the formation of caste
The
classical darśanas—Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Sāṅkhya–Yoga, Mīmāṃsā, and Vedānta—offered
powerful visions of truth and liberation, and they continue to furnish key
categories for public moral debate: dharma (interchanged between
religion and duty), karma (the fruits of deeds- good or bad), saṃsāra
(world), ahiṃsā (non-violence), and mokṣa (liberation). These
concepts frame how many Indians still think about responsibility, suffering,
and the good life. Yet the metaphysical reflections of classical texts were not
socially innocent: Vedic and Dharmaśāstra traditions progressively translated
them into a hierarchical order of varṇa and later jātis, sacralizing graded
inequality.
Tony
Joseph’s historical reconstruction clarifies how contingent and contested this
development was. He shows that a fully articulated four‑fold hierarchy appears
only late in the Ṛgveda (the Puruṣa Sūkta), that varṇa in early Vedic
literature is “embryonic,” and that the first clearly definable caste is that
of the Brahmins formed around a unified oral canon in the Kuru realm through
gotra‑based endogamy. As agriculture expanded and surplus grew, an alliance
between priestly and royal power—what Joseph calls the core of the varṇa‑jāti
system—proved politically and economically convenient, and later Brāhmaṇa and
Dharma texts universalized this hierarchy by mapping it onto the cosmos itself.
The result, by the beginning of the Common Era, was an elaborated ideology of
varṇāśrama‑dharma that kings across the subcontinent could invoke to legitimise
power and extraction.
Ambedkar’s
insight that caste is a structure of “graded inequality,” an “ascending scale
of reverence and descending scale of contempt,” finds here a concrete
genealogy. Ancient philosophy did not simply “discover” an eternal order; it
helped construct and justify a historically contingent alliance that aligned
metaphysics with privilege.
Is “Indian philosophy” really pan‑Indian?
This
raises a disturbing question: whose thought is being presented when we speak of
“Indian philosophy”? The classical systems are profound achievements, but they
largely emerged within and often reinforced a Brahmanical social order that
normalized caste hierarchy and restricted access to learning. Large sections of
India’s population—Dalits, tribal communities, women, and other subaltern
groups—were excluded from recognised philosophical discourse and often from
literacy itself.
Joseph’s
geography of caste strengthens this critique. He traces how the Brahmanical varṇa
project arose in a specific region—Kurukṣetra and later “Āryāvarta”—and met
persistent resistance in what Johannes Bronkhorst calls “Greater Magadha,”
where Śramaṇa traditions such as Buddhism and Jainism rejected Vedic authority,
opposed sacrificial violence, and admitted members regardless of varṇa. Gana‑saṅgha
polities like the Śākyas did not easily accommodate the priest‑king alliance;
Buddhist texts record Brahmin resentment when their ritual status was not
honoured in such settings. Even the semantics of “dharma” became a
battleground, with Aśoka’s edicts and Śramaṇa usage pressing a moral meaning
centred on compassion, generosity, and non‑violence, while early Dharmasūtras
rushed to re‑assert a varṇa‑ordered dharma policed by Brahmins.
The
classical philosophical schools—Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Sāṅkhya–Yoga, Mīmāṃsā, and
Vedānta—are undoubtedly profound intellectual achievements. They have shaped
India’s metaphysical vocabulary and ethical imagination for centuries. Yet, it
must be acknowledged honestly that these systems largely emerged within, and
often reinforced, a Brahmanical social order. Their reflections on liberation,
knowledge, and duty were frequently articulated from within a social framework
that accepted caste hierarchy as normative, even sacred. As a result, large
sections of India’s population—Dalits, tribal communities, women, and other
marginalized groups—were excluded not only from philosophical debate but from
being recognized as legitimate bearers of wisdom.
From this perspective, the question
is not whether these classical systems are valuable—they clearly are—but
whether they can claim to exhaust what counts as “Indian philosophy.”
For me, the answer must be no. India has always been home to multiple
philosophies, many of which were philosophies of dissent rather than
system-building. Dalit philosophies, tribal cosmologies rooted in land and
community, women’s embodied wisdom transmitted through oral traditions, and
materialist schools such as the Cārvāka tradition represent alternative ways of
thinking about life, suffering, freedom, and truth. These traditions were not
merely different; they were often actively suppressed because they challenged
ritual authority, caste privilege, and metaphysical justifications of
inequality.
The case of the Cārvākas is
particularly revealing. As my paper on this subject (2023) shows, Cārvāka
philosophy represents one of the earliest traditions of philosophical dissent
in India. Rejecting Vedic authority, ritual sacrifice, and the metaphysics of
karma and rebirth, the Cārvākas grounded ethics in lived experience, material
reality, and human flourishing in this world. Their near-erasure from
mainstream philosophical curricula is not accidental; it reflects a long
history of privileging metaphysical systems that aligned with Brahmanical power
over philosophies that questioned its foundations. Similar dynamics can be
observed in the marginalization of Dalit and tribal philosophies, whose
critiques of caste and hierarchy were often dismissed as “non-philosophical”
precisely because they threatened the dominant order.
These philosophies are not aligned
with the mainstream darśanas—and they do not seek to be. They are philosophies
of rebellion, resistance, and survival. Yet they are no less philosophical for
that reason. On the contrary, they engage some of the most fundamental
philosophical questions: What counts as a good life? Who has the authority to
define truth? How should power, suffering, and dignity be understood? In many
ways, they speak more directly to the lived reality of the majority of Indian
people than the abstract metaphysical systems that dominate textbooks.
Contemporary Indian thought:
argument, dissent, and liberation
Among
modern thinkers, B. R. Ambedkar engages this legacy with unmatched moral
urgency. In Annihilation of Caste, he argues that caste is not an abnormality
but a structural outcome of key scriptural and philosophical resources, and
that doctrines of divinely sanctioned varṇa‑dharma and ritual purity are
incompatible with constitutional ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Any
philosophy adequate to a democratic India must therefore be measured by its
capacity to dismantle caste rather than sacralise it. This is where Hindutva
philosophy fails as it struggles to uphold the varna system rather than the
ideals of the Indian Constitution, but that is a topic for another discussion.
Amartya
Sen, in The Argumentative Indian, insists that India’s past is not only
metaphysical but deeply argumentative: Buddhist councils, epic dialogues, and
scholastic disputations embody a tradition of public reasoning that can nourish
democratic dissent today. Sen’s retrieval of an indigenous culture of argument
complements Ambedkar’s call to annihilate caste: both refuse the image of an
inherently “hierarchical” India and highlight counter‑traditions of critique
and debate. Dialogue and rebellion against injustice are the soul of Indian
cultural and philosophical heritage, and not reverence of unjust hierarchies
which regard certain class of individuals, castes and groups as superior and others
inferior in a societal system.
Daya
Krishna pushes this further by challenging the closure of “Indian philosophy”
itself. In Indian Philosophy: A Counter Perspective and The Future of
Indian Philosophy, he argues that concepts like dharma, karma, and mokṣa
must be reopened to contemporary questioning rather than treated as frozen
authorities. In his view, genuine Indian philosophy is not the repetition of
classical positions but an ongoing, dialogical interrogation that must make
room for subaltern and dissenting voices. In other words, these ideas should
be revisited and reviewed from the modern perspectives of social justice and
humanism.
A Catholic Perspective
The
Catholic social teaching provides a convergent yet distinct critique. Gaudium
et Spes insists that every form of discrimination based on “sex, race,
color, social condition, language, or religion” contradicts God’s intent,
thereby implicitly condemning caste‑based exclusion. Fratelli Tutti
calls for social friendship and universal fraternity, offering a theological
language for solidarity that resonates with constitutional morality and
Ambedkar’s fraternity. In India, the Church’s schools and social apostolates
can embody practices of inclusion that challenge caste boundaries, even as the
Church must repent of having sometimes mirrored those very hierarchies. In this
regard, strict internal assessment of practices which harbor and encourage
casteism and other related forms of injustices must be identified and rooted
out. Only when this is done can the Church in India truly stand up for the
protection of those oppressed for millennia by the unjust social order.
Ignatian discernment and the
limits of inculturation
At this stage of my reflection, the
question is no longer simply what Indian philosophy offers, but how
one should engage it responsibly. Here Ignatian discernment has become an
indispensable guide for me—and, I believe, for others who stand at similar
crossroads of culture, faith, and conscience. Ignatian spirituality does not
ask us to accept traditions wholesale, nor does it encourage a posture of
suspicion toward everything inherited. Instead, it invites a disciplined
freedom: the freedom to receive with gratitude what leads to life and the
courage to refuse what diminishes human dignity, even when such elements come
wrapped in the language of tradition, sanctity or inculturation.
Ignatius of Loyola’s insistence on
discernment of spirits—attending carefully to movements that lead towards
greater faith, hope, love and justice and resisting those that foster fear,
domination, or exclusion—offers a powerful framework for engaging Indian
philosophy with partiality. By partiality, I do not mean arbitrariness
or cultural disdain, but a morally responsible selectivity. Not every insight
that is ancient is therefore liberating; not every cultural form is
automatically compatible with the Gospel or with the demands of justice.
Ignatian discernment teaches us to “test” traditions by their fruits,
especially by how they affect the most vulnerable.
In this sense, Ignatian discernment
resonates strikingly with the Buddha’s advice to the Kālāmas: not to accept
teachings merely because they are ancient, authoritative, or widely revered,
but to examine whether they lead to compassion, wisdom, and the reduction of
suffering. This convergence is significant. It suggests that critical
discernment is not a foreign imposition on Indian thought, but a practice
deeply consonant with some of its most ethical and emancipatory strands. Both
traditions resist blind conformity and invite a reflective, experience-tested
commitment to truth.
This approach also helps clarify the
limits of inculturation. Inculturation, when rightly understood, is not the
uncritical baptism of cultural practices, but a discerning encounter between
faith and culture. History offers sobering lessons here. In the Indian context,
the misplaced zeal of certain early missionaries—who equated cultural
accommodation with Gospel fidelity—allowed caste distinctions to enter
ecclesial life, sometimes even being justified as “Indian” expressions of
Christianity. What was presented as inculturation often amounted to the
sacralization of social hierarchy. The result was a Church that, at times,
mirrored the very structures of exclusion it was called to challenge.
Ignatian discernment exposes this
failure not as a lack of cultural sensitivity, but as a failure of conscience.
It reminds us that the ultimate criterion for inculturation is not cultural
continuity but the promotion of greater justice, equality, and human dignity.
Any philosophical or cultural element—whether Brahmanical metaphysics, ritual
purity codes, or inherited social hierarchies—that normalizes exclusion must be
subjected to critical scrutiny, regardless of its antiquity or prestige.
For me, then, Ignatian discernment
offers a way of inhabiting Indian philosophy without being captive to it. It
allows me to learn from Nyāya’s rigor, Yoga’s discipline, Vedānta’s depth, and
Buddhism’s compassion, while simultaneously standing in solidarity with Dalit,
tribal, and dissenting traditions that expose the violence hidden beneath
certain metaphysical ideals. It resists both romanticization and rejection.
Most importantly, it places conscience—not tradition, caste, or cultural
pride—at the center of philosophical engagement.
This discerning posture prepares the
ground for the conclusion that follows. If ancient Indian philosophy is to
contribute meaningfully to India’s evolving social thought today, it must be
approached neither as untouchable scripture nor as a relic to be discarded, but
as a field of moral testing. Ignatian discernment equips us for precisely this
task: to walk with our traditions, question them honestly, and allow them to be
transformed in the light of justice, compassion, and the common good.
Conscience at the crossroads
The
distance afforded by studying in France has sharpened, rather than resolved,
the tension between reverence and critique. From outside, it becomes clearer
that what is presented as “Indian philosophy” is often a curated Brahmanical
canon whose transmission has systematically marginalised other voices. From
within, as a Jesuit trained in discernment, it becomes impossible to accept any
philosophical claim without asking about its ethical and social consequences.
Ancient
Indian philosophy shapes contemporary Indian social thought in an ambivalent
way. On the one hand, it offers resources for rational inquiry, inner freedom,
ecological sensitivity, and inter‑religious dialogue. On the other hand, it
provides narratives that have justified caste hierarchy, gender inequality, and
ritualised exclusion, often by presenting a contingent social order as a cosmic
necessity. Joseph’s notion of Homo opportunisticus—political and
economic actors who build sacralised orders to entrench their power—reminds us
that philosophy and theology can become instruments of this opportunism when
they lose contact with the victims of the systems they justify.
For
a society committed to constitutional morality and social justice, nostalgia
for a putatively golden past or outright rejection of tradition are equally
inadequate. What is needed is discernment. Sen’s “argumentative” heritage,
Ambedkar’s uncompromising critique, Daya Krishna’s call to reopen canonical
concepts, Śramaṇa and Dalit resistances, and Catholic social teaching on human
dignity can together form a kind of ecumenical “school of conscience.”
Hence
for me, my engagement with Indian philosophy is therefore not merely academic
but moral and spiritual. It asks which philosophies help me see the human
person more fully/completely, and which normalize domination. It asks whose
voices have shaped the canon, and whose have been erased. The path forward is
not to abandon India’s philosophical past, but to walk with it critically:
retrieving what gives life, resisting what dehumanizes, and welcoming
suppressed traditions of dissent as equal partners in imagining India’s social
future. Only such a discerning engagement can honour both the depth of India’s
ancient wisdom and the non‑negotiable demands of social-justice today.
Key references
- Ambedkar,
B. R. Annihilation of Caste.
- Bronkhorst,
Johannes. Greater Magadha: Studies in the Culture of Early India.
- Daya
Krishna. Indian Philosophy: A Counter Perspective; The Future of
Indian Philosophy.
- Gaudium
et Spes (1965), Vatican II.
- Francis,
Pope. Fratelli Tutti (2020).
- Joseph,
Tony. “Homo opportunisticus: The contingent, contested evolution of
caste.” The Hindu, 2025.
- Sen,
Amartya. The Argumentative Indian.
- Saldanha,
S. “Cārvāka philosophy, the first philosophy of dissent.” 2023. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8167185
