The upper caste anger at the University Grants Commission (UGC) Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions Regulations, 2026 (the “Equity Regulations”), and the prompt stay granted by the Supreme Court on fears of its misuse, have implications that go beyond the implementation of the regulations. They offer an insight into how castelessness is manufactured and weaponised against Bahujan students in India today. As sociologist Satish Deshpande points out, the structure of the constitution explicitly recognises caste as a source of deprivation but not as a source of privilege. This framing allows the privileged upper castes or the “general” castes to frame themselves as casteless citizens. This means that the story of the conversion of their hereditary caste capital (such as historical access to education) into more modern forms of capital like property, and dominance over lucrative professions, is individualised. Freed from considering or acknowledging the role played by their own caste privilege, their success is narrated entirely in terms of individual effort or brilliance. The “reserved” category (in effect, all other castes) on the other hand have their stories stripped of individuality, effort and brilliance and their success is presumed to be solely or predominantly due to reservation.Assumptions of upper caste castelessness form and shape ideas of merit in our educational institutions in a manner that can create a hostile and exclusionary space for young students entering university through the reserved categories. First, the belief in meritocracy can paradoxically reinforce discriminatory behaviour. Second, the ascription of merit to certain castes often encourages and legitimises casteist and exclusionary behaviour and third, the constitutional framing of affirmative action as an exception to the principle of equality encourages upper castes to view themselves as the casteless victims of affirmative action. These conditions have grave and material consequences for SC, ST and OBC students, including high drop-out rates and several deaths by suicide. The meritocracy paradoxEmilio Castilla and Stephen Benard coined what is termed the “paradox of meritocracy,” where they demonstrate that emphasising meritocracy has the causal effect of increasing ascriptive bias. Simply put, people who are convinced of their own lack of bias become less inclined to examine their own behaviour for signs of prejudice, leading to a reinforcement of their biases. Due to their strong self-perception of objectivity, they also have the confidence to act on those biases leading to active discrimination. In the context of Indian universities, the conviction that the upper castes are casteless and guided solely by a belief in meritocracy makes them extraordinarily unwilling to question their own internal caste biases. The idea that their evaluations of Dalit and OBC students on campus may not be fully objective is rarely considered seriously. Dalit or OBC students often find their university experience defined by their entrance examination ranks and the tag of the quota. When they are repeatedly denied basic opportunities, their upper caste evaluators, instead of examining why, often simply take it as further confirmation of their pre-existing biases with respect to the merit of such students. The public discourse also rarely questions why the entrance exam is so widely seen as a better indicator of merit that the exit examinations, even in courses like medicine, where a huge amount of knowledge gained during the course is required to pass exit examinations. The ascription of merit to casteThe invisibilisation of the role played by caste capital in modern admission processes where success is put down solely to individual brilliance, can paradoxically result in these examinations reinforcing existing notions of caste superiority. For example, a student who repeatedly sees examples of individualised success stories from his own caste can easily become convinced that there is something inherently brilliant about the members of his caste. Ajantha Subramanian in her work on Tamil Brahmins in technical education in Madras points to a curious paradox where her subjects believe in their own individualized brilliance, and simultaneously ascribe such brilliance to their caste. They believe that their individual success in entrance examinations demonstrates that Tamil Brahmins as a group are exceptionally meritorious. From there it is a short step to extend the presumption of such brilliance to all the members of the caste, whether their individualised merit is proven or not. In Champakam Dorairajan v. State of Madras, the 1951 case which tackled the constitutionality of community-based quotas in Madras colleges, the petitioner had not even applied for the college in question. As a Tamil Brahmin woman, she argued that she had been discouraged from applying by the communal quota in the college. The Supreme Court, while noting this oddity, did not take it into consideration because the state of Madras didn’t raise an objection on this ground. The presumption of merit based on her caste was so strong that the Madras government even promised to hold a seat for Dorairajan pending the outcome of the case.Assumptions of merit often begin well before the entrance exams are written. The general category applicants are lumped together and described as intelligent and hardworking. The structure of competitive exams in India means that a vast majority of these students will not clear the entrance exams they sit for and would not do so even if no quotas existed. And yet, when they fail, instead of being described as lacking in merit, their failure is put down en masse to their seats having been stolen from them by reservations. These caste-based ascriptions and denials of merit effectively create university spaces where students are included or excluded based on their caste. Certain castes are encouraged to feel inherently more entitled to university places, and such casteist behaviour, instead of being criticised, is legitimised under the umbrella of meritocracy. The inversion of victimhoodThe constitution frames affirmative action as a necessary exception to the principle of equality. Article 15 specifically exempts state actions to promote the welfare of disadvantaged groups from challenges based on the right to equality. This framing of reservation as an exception to the right to equality, reiterated multiple times by the judiciary, encourages upper castes to see themselves as casteless victims paying the price for a historical wrong committed by their forefathers. The language of caste discrimination is appropriated for upper caste victimhood, arguing that they are a group that is unfairly deprived of their constitutional right to equality solely because of their caste. This is particularly interesting, because while the current discourse frames social justice initiatives as an aberration to a core meritocratic norm, it is useful to remember that historically, the debate around social justice was primarily about representation. The pre-constitutional reservations, including in the princely state of Mysore and the colonial presidency of Madras, both expressly sought to address the lack of representation of non-Brahmin castes in governance. The terms of reference of the Justice Miller Committee constituted in 1918 by the state of Mysore for example specifically frames the problem they are tasked to solve as the “preponderance of the Brahmin community in public service” and notes the government’s express desire to increase the representation of other communities in the services. While the alleviation of the backwardness of communities was certainly a driver, the primary norm sought to be protected was fair representation of all communities. In the reservations issued pursuant to the report, almost 95% of the population was entitled to claim some form of reservation. When reservation becomes predominantly about representation in the public discourse, the supposed castelessness of the general category begins to crumble. The opposition to reservation both in Mysore and Madras for example was generally seen as Brahmin-led. This discursive shift also has a lasting impact on the public discourse. In both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, neither the Mandal Commission nor, more recently, the Equity Regulations snowballed into big issues. Anti-discrimination legislationThe question of how best to create less hostile spaces often turns into a litmus test of the castelessness of the general category. A genuine commitment to building high quality educational institutions would see discrimination as corrosive to the health of the system and embrace a shared commitment to weed it out. A truly individualised, casteless political discourse would see discrimination as an individual crime, deserving of investigation and punishment. And yet, both in the US and in India, it is telling that anti-caste discrimination laws are seen first and foremost as measures targeting the upper castes and are met with collective upper caste hostility. The Supreme Court’s stay of the Equity Regulations legitimates this upper caste hostility. The Equity Regulations, which were formulated by the government pursuant to the directions of the Supreme Court in a public interest litigation filed by the mothers of Rohit Vemula and Dr. Payal Tadvi are far from draconian. They are not limited to caste discrimination. They also cover religious, gender, ethnicity, disability and region-based discrimination. Contrary to the claim that they target upper caste students, any student can be accused of discrimination on the grounds covered. The staying of the Equity Regulations on the grounds of misuse despite no evidence of false cases, signals that the Supreme Court sees the hypothetical threat of misuse as a more immediate concern than the actual material harm being suffered by Dalit and OBC students. Justice Surya Kant’s comments that the regulations are a setback towards forging a casteless society again invert victimhood. The victims of caste discrimination are, by seeking redressal, accused of perpetuating caste, while the perpetrators are presumed to be striving for a casteless meritocracy. Addressing discrimination on campuses with the seriousness that it deserves first requires the public discourse to break away from this vicious cycle where merit is ascribed to caste and the idea of meritocracy itself is used to legitimate discrimination. Anti- discrimination laws like the Equity Regulations play an important role here. While there are areas where the regulations can be strengthened, their existence itself is important. By subjecting institutional decisions, including academic evaluations of merit, to frequent scrutiny for casteism, they open the discourse to the broader possibility that these assertions of merit were never casteless in the first place. This, over time, has the power to reshape the dominant discourse and strip casteism within universities of the cover of meritocracy which otherwise shields it from scrutiny. Sarayu Pani is a lawyer by training and posts on X @sarayupani.Missing Link is her column on the social aspects of the events that move India.