My sociological observation, based on closely watching my parents and other Dalits who grew up in rural settings, is that caste society historically exercised strong control over the everyday pleasures, desires, and social freedoms of Dalit communities. In many villages dominated by Brahmanical social norms, Dalits often faced severe social consequences — ranging from ostracism to violence — if they publicly consumed alcohol, engaged in sexual relationships considered “improper,” or crossed caste boundaries in intimate relations. This reflects what B. R. Ambedkar identified in Castes in India as the caste system’s dependence on regulating endogamy and intimate life, and what Uma Chakravarti later theorised as “Brahmanical patriarchy,” where caste hierarchy survives through strict control over sexuality, especially inter-caste relations.

Because of this historical atmosphere of surveillance and punishment, many Dalits from rural backgrounds came to associate restraint, moral discipline, and respectability with survival itself. What is often interpreted today as “moral conservatism” among sections of Dalit communities can therefore also be understood sociologically as a survival mechanism shaped by caste oppression and the constant threat of social sanction. In this sense, Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus becomes relevant: structures of domination gradually become internalised as everyday dispositions, moral attitudes, and behavioural strategies. Similarly, Erving Goffman’s work on stigma helps explain how oppressed groups often regulate their own behaviour to avoid humiliation, punishment, or exclusion.

For instance, if a Dalit man in a village were seen drinking alcohol openly or engaging in a relationship with an upper-caste woman, the consequences could historically be extremely harsh. Such reactions reveal how caste society attempted to regulate not only labour and social mobility, but also pleasure, intimacy, and bodily autonomy. Michel Foucault’s analysis in Discipline and Punish is useful here, as it demonstrates how systems of power govern bodies through surveillance, fear, and the internalisation of punishment. Likewise, Sharmila Rege argues that caste society disciplines Dalit bodies through notions of purity, pollution, and respectability.

From this perspective, caste hierarchy functioned not merely as an economic or ritual system, but also as a system of control over desire and personal freedom. At the same time, dominant castes often enjoyed greater social latitude in matters of alcohol consumption, sexuality, and leisure, highlighting the unequal moral expectations imposed across caste lines. Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd, in Why I Am Not a Hindu, similarly critiques Brahmanical moral frameworks for regulating food, drink, labour, and bodily practices differently across caste groups while presenting upper-caste norms as universally moral.

Contemporary psychology and critical theory also suggest that prolonged social repression, denial of autonomy, restriction over intimacy, and lack of meaningful leisure can negatively affect psychological well-being and selfhood. Research in psychology increasingly links chronic deprivation of social intimacy, emotional fulfilment, and recreational autonomy to stress, anxiety, depression, diminished self-esteem, and poorer cognitive well-being. For example, Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs places intimacy, belonging, pleasure, and self-fulfilment among fundamental human requirements, while Erich Fromm argued in The Sane Society that societies denying emotional and existential fulfilment produce alienation and psychological distress. Similarly, Frantz Fanon demonstrated how systems of domination penetrate the emotional and cognitive life of oppressed populations, shaping both selfhood and social behaviour.

Critical theorists such as Herbert Marcuse and Wilhelm Reich further argued that systems of domination often regulate pleasure, sexuality, and bodily autonomy as mechanisms of social control. Their work suggests that repression is not merely moral regulation but also political regulation over human desire itself.

Therefore, the issue is not simply about morality in isolation, but about how caste society historically structured unequal access to dignity, intimacy, pleasure, leisure, and freedom, while simultaneously producing moral frameworks that oppressed communities often internalised as necessary for survival.