The Casteist Undercurrent of Convenient Rage

When Prada introduced footwear modelled on Kolhapuri chappals, Indians on the internet erupted with rage. We felt violated by cultural theft and appropriation; robbed and discredited. This response isn’t unique to Prada and Kholapuri chappals. Similar outrage surfaces when a white woman rebrands oiling her hair as the “clean girl aesthetic,” while Indians were mocked for the same practice not very long ago. We see influencers and netzines calling out the Western world for commodifying yoga and stripping it of its “true” essence. Reaction videos of Indians fuming with anger are quick to pop up when an American eats naan the “wrong” way, when someone dismisses Indian cuisine as “subcontinental pound-of-spice slop,” or when casual comments label Indian food as disgusting.  

This rage is neither surprising nor new. It emerges from long histories of misrecognition and cultural dismissal under colonial regimes and within global cultural hierarchies, only to be later celebrated when reframed through Western approval (Chakrabarty, 2000; Dirks, 2001). Yet it is also politically convenient. Outrage is quickly directed at cultural appropriation by the Western world—but far less often at the caste, class, and labour structures within India that rendered these practices marginal or disposable within India. It leaves the internal hierarchies that have long shaped ‘who was permitted to practise, preserve, or profit’ from these cultural forms, largely unexamined. What emerges is a form of cultural defensiveness. It seeks recognition from outside while postponing accountability at home. What enables this selective outrage is not simply wounded national pride, but the persistence of deep rooted casteism. Caste has long determined whose labour is visible, whose bodies are respectable, and whose cultural practices are deemed worthy of preservation (Ambedkar, 1936; Srinivas, 1962). When these practices were associated with lower-caste work, rural life, or manual labour, they were stigmatised (Ambedkar, 1936; Dumont, 1980). It is only once they acquire value through Western recognition that they are reclaimed as culture worth defending.

Across these cases, caste operates as a structuring logic that organises cultural value, labour, and legitimacy within India. Kolhapuri chappals are produced primarily by Dalit leather-working communities such as the Charmakars, whose association with animal hides placed their work at the lower end of the caste hierarchy. Leather labour was historically classified as polluting rather than skilled (Ambedkar, 1936; Dumont, 1980). This moral classification has enduring material consequences. It continues to shape who captures value from the craft today. Well before any Western fashion intervention, artisans faced limited bargaining power within the domestic market. Those who sustained the craft across generations receive little recognition; while branding and monetisation were largely controlled by intermediaries and commercial actors (Omvedt, 2011).

In the colonial and early postcolonial period, dominant standards of grooming increasingly aligned with upper-caste, urban, and Western-inflected ideals of cleanliness and modernity. These standards were not neutral but reflected the social power of groups. These groups could define what counted as respectable appearance and behaviour. External bodily practices continue to serve as markers of one’s position in the social order. It defines which bodies are legible as “modern”. Contemporary defences of oiled hair as cultural tradition thus tend to overlook how these hierarchies of taste were produced internally over time rather than imposed solely from the outside.

Yoga, now defended as an authentic tradition threatened by Western dilution, has long been shaped by caste-based control over knowledge and authority (Singleton, 2010; Samuel, 2008). Classical yogic and philosophical texts such as the Yoga Sutras were composed, preserved, and interpreted within Brahminical traditions where language and learning were restricted. This made them inaccessible to lower-caste and non-elite communities. Sociological critiques of contemporary yoga spaces note that casteism continues to manifest in who feels welcome, who is at centre stage, and who is excluded (Bhardwaj, 2023). Many mainstream studios and teacher training systems remain expensive, socially exclusive, and oriented toward privileged classes. This makes yoga less accessible to historically marginalised groups even within India. Thus, western commodification builds on an earlier internal consolidation of cultural authority.

Food practices further illustrate how caste structures cultural defence. While foreign critiques and misinterpretation of Indian food provoke collective anger, internal food hierarchies organised through ideas of purity and pollution remain largely intact. Dominant representations of Indian cuisine privilege upper-caste norms, while Dalit and Adivasi traditions are excluded (Omvedt, 2011). Upper-caste dietary preferences, especially vegetarianism, have been elevated as morally superior. They are normalised in public spaces such as temples, restaurants, and cookery media. This reinforces exclusion of non-vegetarian and otherwise stigmatised cuisines. What is defended as “Indian food” is thus already shaped by exclusion.

In this sense, convenient rage functions as a displacement. It ultimately limits the very justice it claims to seek.  It redirects anger away from the uncomfortable truth of exclusion within India and towards a safer external target. Confronting Western appropriation requires little introspection, while confronting caste requires reckoning with social privilege and inherited hierarchies. The former is politically easy, the latter deeply unsettling.

Ambedkar, B. R. (2014). Annihilation of caste. Verso. (Original work published 1936)

Bhardwaj, R. (2023). Medicalization of yoga: A sociological understanding.

Chakrabarty, D. (2000). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial thought and historical difference

Dirks, N. B. (2001). Castes of mind: Colonialism and the making of modern India.

Dumont, L. (1980). Homo hierarchicus: The caste system and its implications (Complete rev. ed.).

Omvedt, G. (2011). Understanding caste: From Buddha to Ambedkar and beyond.

Samuel, G. (2008). The origins of yoga and tantra: Indic religions to the thirteenth century.

Singleton, M. (2010). Yoga body: The origins of modern posture practice.

Srinivas, M. N. (1962). Caste in modern India and other essays.