There is a peculiar afterlife that anti-caste discourse acquires the moment it enters the corridors of liberal academia. What begins as a historically grounded, materially rooted critique of graded inequality—articulated most sharply by B. R. Ambedkar—is slowly translated into a language that is legible to institutions whose primary function is not transformation but reproduction. In this translation, something fundamental is lost: caste ceases to be a structure of power and becomes instead a site of discourse, representation, and eventually, professional specialization.

Scholars like Gopal Guru have long warned about this asymmetry between experience and theory—where the “theoretical Brahmin” appropriates the lived reality of the “empirical Shudra.” This division is not merely epistemic; it is institutional. Liberal academia thrives on the conversion of suffering into knowledge capital. The more refined the language—intersectionality, subalternity, affect—the more easily caste becomes a topic to be curated, cited, and circulated, rather than annihilated. Sharmila Rege similarly cautioned against the depoliticization of Dalit experience through its incorporation into sanitized feminist and sociological frameworks that often erase its radical edge.

This process can be understood through the lens of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic capital. Anti-caste discourse, once a site of resistance, becomes a form of capital within academia—something that can be accumulated through publications, fellowships, conferences, and curated outrage. The “right” vocabulary, the “correct” positionality, the “appropriate” anger—all become part of an academic habitus that rewards performance over transformation. In this sense, caste critique is not dismantled but domesticated.

The irony is brutal. The very institutions that historically excluded Dalits now produce “experts” on Dalit suffering. One does not need to annihilate caste when one can theorize it endlessly. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s famous question—“Can the subaltern speak?”—finds a cynical answer here: yes, but only when mediated, footnoted, and formatted according to the expectations of elite academia. The subaltern voice is not silenced; it is curated.

Neoliberalism intensifies this co-option. As Wendy Brown argues, neoliberal rationality converts all forms of critique into marketable assets. Anti-caste discourse is no exception. It becomes a niche—something to build a career on, a brand to cultivate, a grant to secure. The emergence of what one might call “Dalit discourse entrepreneurs” is not accidental; it is structurally produced. Here, to speak of caste is also to monetize it, to credentialize it, to turn it into a form of intellectual property.

And this is where the performance of radicality becomes most visible. The liberal academic space encourages a particular aesthetic of dissent—articulate, measured, often English-speaking, and crucially, non-threatening. Rage must be stylized; resistance must be legible. As a result, those who express anti-caste politics in raw, unmediated forms—on the streets, in vernacular languages, through embodied practices—are often dismissed as lacking “nuance” or “theoretical depth.” The hierarchy of caste reappears, now as a hierarchy of discourse.

Anand Teltumbde has pointed out how even Ambedkar is selectively appropriated—his radical critique of capitalism and Hinduism softened, his image turned into a symbol that can be safely displayed without engaging with its implications. Similarly, Suraj Yengde notes how global academia often exoticizes Dalit identity, turning it into a consumable category within diversity frameworks.

What emerges, then, is not the annihilation of caste but its rearticulation within a different regime of power. Liberal academia does not oppose caste so much as it reorganizes it—transforming it from a system of social oppression into a field of intellectual production. The struggle moves from the street to the seminar room, from the collective to the individual, from politics to career.

And perhaps the most unsettling aspect of this transformation is that it is not imposed from outside alone. Sections of anti-caste scholars themselves become complicit in this process, adapting their language, their methods, even their politics to fit the demands of the academic marketplace. The critique of caste becomes indistinguishable from the pursuit of recognition.

In the end, one is left with a strange spectacle: caste persists, but now as a well-theorized, well-funded, and well-cited phenomenon. The system remains intact, even as its critique flourishes. Or to put it more bluntly—in liberal academia, caste is not annihilated; it is curated.