India's affirmative-action framework was created to address historical exclusion. The question now is whether it should remain indefinitely organised around inherited social categories, or progressively move towards a system based on contemporary, measurable disadvantage.

India's debate over reservation has for too long been conducted as though there are only two possible positions - defending the existing system or opposing social justice. The real question is more fundamental. How should a constitutional democracy address historical injustice without allowing the categories created to remedy that injustice to become permanent determinants of citizenship and opportunity?

The answer requires looking beyond the present political contest.

India's precolonial social order was complex, regionally differentiated and cannot be reduced to the rigid birth-based caste structure familiar today. Varna and jati were not interchangeable concepts. 

Varna represented a broad social and normative framework, while jatis were numerous, local and community-based formations through which social life was actually organised. Occupational identities, lineage, community affiliations, migration, trade, military service and changing economic circumstances interacted in different ways across regions and periods.

This should not be romanticised. Hierarchy, exclusion and social discrimination certainly existed, sometimes in deeply entrenched forms. But neither should India's earlier social order be retrospectively described as an unchanging system in which every individual was permanently imprisoned by birth. Historical evidence points to considerable regional variation and instances of occupational and social mobility. Reform movements also arose repeatedly within Indian society to challenge practices considered unjust.

The modern idea of caste has a more complicated history than either extreme suggests. The British did not invent every social distinction that existed in India before colonial rule. But colonial census operations and administrative classification sought to enumerate, label and rank an extraordinarily diverse society. Identities that had often been local, overlapping and fluid acquired increasing bureaucratic definition. Colonial governance thus played a major role in codifying and hardening caste into categories that became progressively more consequential for the administration of Indian society.

This historical transformation matters to the reservation debate because independent India inherited many of these categories while attempting to correct genuine historical exclusion.

The Constitution's commitment was never simply to formal equality. Articles 15 and 16 created the framework within which the State could make special provisions for socially and educationally backward classes and for disadvantaged communities. The First Constitutional Amendment, in 1951, inserted Article 15(4), giving explicit constitutional authority for such measures. Over subsequent decades, Parliament expanded the framework and the Supreme Court developed an elaborate jurisprudence around it.

Reservation of seats for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assemblies presents a particularly important question about time and purpose. Article 334 originally envisaged such political reservation for ten years. The provision was subsequently extended repeatedly through constitutional amendments and continues today. The fact that a measure originally conceived as transitional has survived through successive generations does not, by itself, prove that its purpose has disappeared. But it does raise a legitimate question: when should a temporary corrective mechanism undergo fundamental review of its objectives, outcomes and continuing necessity?

That question is not an attack on representation. It is a question about the nature of constitutional remedies.

A reserved constituency also creates an unavoidable tension between two democratic principles. During the period in which a seat is reserved for an SC or ST candidate, citizens who do not belong to the relevant category cannot contest that particular constituency. The constitutional justification is that historically excluded communities require assured representation. Yet it remains legitimate to ask whether such arrangements, when repeatedly extended across generations, should be periodically evaluated against the conditions that originally justified them.

The same debate will arise in another form with women's reservation. Greater representation of women in legislatures is an important democratic objective. But here too, the constitutional question is not whether women deserve representation - they clearly do - but how long and in what form affirmative representation should operate while preserving the broader principle that every citizen has an equal stake in the political process.

The larger issue is therefore not whether affirmative action is legitimate. It plainly is. The issue is whether inherited identity should remain the dominant proxy for disadvantage indefinitely.

That question becomes more compelling when we examine how the reservation framework has evolved.

The Constitution began with principles of equality and affirmative action. Subsequent amendments expanded the architecture. Article 16(4A), inserted by the 77th Amendment in 1995, enabled reservation in promotions for SCs and STs. The Supreme Court subsequently developed a substantial body of jurisprudence around the issue, including M. Nagaraj and Jarnail Singh. The Court has made clear that reservation in promotion is an enabling provision rather than an automatic constitutional entitlement and that constitutional conditions must be satisfied.

This raises a legitimate policy question. Entry into public employment and promotion within an existing service are not identical propositions. Recruitment creates an opportunity to enter an institution; promotion concerns advancement based upon experience, responsibility and institutional requirements. Whether reservation in promotion remains the most effective way of addressing historical disadvantage deserves continuing evidence-based examination.

The same applies to the creamy-layer principle. The idea that benefits should not indefinitely accrue to relatively advanced sections within a beneficiary category is central to the continuing debate about whether affirmative action is reaching those most in need. Economic status alone cannot capture every dimension of social discrimination. But neither can inherited caste identity necessarily tell us everything about the circumstances of an individual or family several generations after the original disadvantage.

The constitutional system itself has already begun moving towards a broader understanding of disadvantage.

The 103rd Constitutional Amendment of 2019 introduced Articles 15(6) and 16(6), enabling reservation of up to 10 per cent for Economically Weaker Sections. In Janhit Abhiyan v. Union of India, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutional validity of the amendment in 2022, including the use of economic criteria as a basis for affirmative action. 

That development is significant. It demonstrates that affirmative action need not be conceptually confined to inherited social identity. The Constitution can also recognise economic disadvantage as a legitimate basis for intervention.

The logical next question is whether India should gradually build on that principle.

A contemporary system of affirmative action need not pretend that caste discrimination has vanished. There are circumstances in which caste continues to affect social opportunity, dignity, access and mobility. Those realities cannot simply be legislated away.

But neither should the existence of continuing discrimination mean that caste must remain the principal organising category for affirmative action indefinitely.

India has also experienced other forms of historical disruption whose consequences can persist across generations. Political upheaval, conflict, religious persecution and forced migration have displaced communities and destroyed accumulated social, educational and economic capital.

Among those who suffered grievously at different points were also Brahmins, many of whom had traditionally been custodians of learning and scholarship. The martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadur, who stood in defence of Kashmiri Hindus facing religious persecution and forced conversion, remains a powerful reminder that the freedom to retain one's faith and identity has itself been a historical struggle.

The trauma of displacement did not end with the medieval period. Partition uprooted millions. Sindhi Hindus were forced to leave their ancestral homes and rebuild their lives elsewhere. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Kashmiri Hindus experienced another traumatic exodus from the Valley. Such displacement involved far more than changing residence. Land, livelihood, property, educational institutions, neighbourhoods, professional networks and accumulated social capital could be lost almost overnight.

My own family history provides a personal illustration of the longer consequences of forced mobility. Around four centuries ago, my ancestors were compelled to leave their settlements in what is now Uttar Pradesh, cross dense forests of the Indo-Gangetic plains and eventually resettle near the Son river in Bihar. Whatever the precise historical circumstances, the experience illustrates an important point: displacement itself can become an inherited disadvantage.

Yet such disadvantage does not fit neatly into a caste-based administrative framework.

That is precisely why India's future policy cannot be built exclusively around inherited categories.

The objective should increasingly be to identify the disadvantage that an individual actually faces. Caste can remain one indicator where continuing discrimination is demonstrable. But it should be considered alongside family economic circumstances, parental education, quality of schooling, geographical deprivation, first-generation access to higher education, disability, social isolation and other measurable barriers to opportunity.

This would not mean replacing caste with a crude income test. Poverty and social discrimination are not identical. A person may achieve economic success and still encounter caste prejudice. Conversely, an individual belonging to a constitutionally recognised category may have enjoyed several generations of educational and professional advancement.

The answer therefore lies in greater precision, not another single universal category.

India should progressively move towards a system in which affirmative action is increasingly responsive to contemporary disadvantage while retaining targeted protection against demonstrable discrimination.

This is also why the repeated extension of temporary measures deserves serious examination. A policy created to correct a historical imbalance should be capable of being evaluated against evidence. Has the intended objective been achieved? Who continues to suffer disadvantage? Who receives the benefits? Are benefits reaching the most deprived sections within beneficiary communities? Has the nature of disadvantage changed? Are there newer and more effective ways of achieving the constitutional promise of equality?

These questions should not be treated as attacks on social justice.

They are questions necessary to keep social justice alive.

There is an even deeper paradox that India must confront.

If colonial administrative practices helped transform diverse and often locally organised social identities into increasingly rigid caste categories, and if the independent Indian State then necessarily uses those categories to distribute opportunities, there is a danger that the State itself may perpetuate the salience of identities that an egalitarian society should ultimately seek to transcend.

A remedy can acquire a life of its own.

A system designed to overcome caste discrimination should not inadvertently make caste an increasingly permanent determinant of a citizen's prospects. The objective of affirmative action should be to make inherited disadvantage less consequential with every generation, not to make inherited identity a permanent determinant of opportunity.

This does not mean abandoning affirmative action. It means asking what its destination should be.

The destination should be a society in which a child's future is progressively less dependent upon the social identity into which he or she is born. It should be a system in which the State increasingly asks not merely, "Which category do you belong to?" but, "What disadvantage does this citizen actually face, and what intervention is necessary to overcome it?"

That is where contemporary economic and educational criteria become important.

The 103rd Amendment has already established that economic disadvantage can constitute a legitimate basis for affirmative action. The next stage should be to make the entire framework more evidence-based, more targeted and more responsive to contemporary realities.

India should not be trapped permanently between the injustices of the past and the categories created to address them.

Historical injustice must be remembered. Continuing discrimination must be confronted. But the ultimate purpose of reform should be to ensure that neither historical identity nor inherited privilege determines the future of a citizen.

The long-term goal of affirmative action should therefore be its own diminishing necessity - a progressive transition from inherited caste categories towards equal opportunity based increasingly on contemporary social, educational and economic disadvantage.

India does not need to forget its history to move beyond it.

It needs to ensure that history informs justice without becoming a permanent substitute for it.

The repeated extension of temporary measures deserves serious examination. A constitutional guarantee or a policy intended to correct a historical imbalance should be capable of being evaluated against evidence:

Has the intended objective been achieved?

Who continues to suffer disadvantage?

Who receives the benefits?

Are benefits reaching the most deprived sections within beneficiary communities?

Has the nature of disadvantage changed?

Are there newer and more effective ways of achieving the constitutional promise of equality?