Meet the Savarnas: Ravikant Kisana's book on millennials and exclusion

For a society so deeply entrenched in caste and class, the cognitive dissonance is astonishing. Caste is ancient history one moment, yet dictates marriage or who works at your house the next

Meet the Savarnas: Indian Millennials Whose Mediocrity Broke Everything

by Ravikant Kisana Published by Ebury Press

256 pages   ₹699

  “Aapka naam kya hai? (What’s your name?)” “Amritesh.” “Poora naam kya hai? (what’s your full name?)” “Amritesh Mukherjee.” A satisfied smile would follow, if not another question. “Ye Mukherjee kya hote hain? (Which caste do the Mukherjees belong to?)” The dance of social sorting proceeds thus.

 

This ritual, perfected over millennia, requires no formal training. Every Savarna child absorbs its rhythms through osmosis. The questioner’s satisfaction is the visible manifestation of a system that has spent centuries perfecting the art of human categorisation. In that pause between surname and recognition, hierarchies older than empires are reasserted.

 

For a society so deeply entrenched in caste and class lines, the extent of cognitive dissonance would be astonishing to any outsider. In one breath, caste is ancient history; in the next, it determines who cleans your home and deserves your child’s hand in marriage. In Savarna drawing rooms, caste is declared dead with the same confidence that marriage proposals specify: “Wanted: Brahmin boy for Brahmin girl.”

 

The cognitive dissonance enables Savarna society to maintain hierarchical privilege while claiming moral innocence. They’ve perfected the art of having their caste cake and eating it too, preserving every advantage while disclaiming all responsibility for the system that provides those advantages.

 

Studying this worldview and its impact on Indian society is Ravikant Kisana’s Meet the Savarnas. It examines how this so-called upper class has modernised its methods of exclusion while preserving its fundamental architecture of inequality into the 21st century.

 

The “varna system,” a euphemistic rebranding of caste for textbooks, shows a neat four-tier pyramid. The reality, Mr Kisana points out, is a system of two fundamental divisions: The Savarnas (Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and even Shudras) who exist within the system, and the Avarnas (Dalits and Adivasis) who are outside it. The Savarna-Avarna divide operates like citizenship: Those within enjoy inherited protections, while those outside remain perpetual refugees in their own land.

 

Discrimination, therefore, operates like a perfectly calibrated machine. As social prejudice lubricates institutional barriers, institutional exclusion normalises social prejudice. The genius of modern caste lies in its ability to make exclusion look like choice. When private universities (41 per cent of higher education) become Savarna preserves, it’s blamed on “merit” rather than millennia of accumulated advantage. When cinema, sports, business, and media remain Savarna domains, it’s attributed to “talent” rather than systematic gatekeeping.

 

Like the geography of Indian cities— Savarna neighbourhoods with tree-lined streets and Dalit slums without even basic amenities — corporate hierarchies too have Dalits clustered in menial positions while Savarnas dominate management. Language becomes a weapon as well: “Freeloaders” for beneficiaries of reservations, “chapri” for anyone who dares aspire beyond their designated station.

 

Flipping the term “glass ceiling” on its head, Mr Kisana coins the phrase “glass floor”. His phrase denotes the lack of equal opportunity in the first place. Most live below that floor, dependent upon the whims of the very few roaming above, the Savarnas. For those above, the masses trapped below are invisible.

 

Even the few who manage to make it out, the room still isn’t accessible. “Being ‘successful’ as a marginalised person in Savarna society is like walking on eggshells — carefully avoiding the wrath of Savarna masters while constantly losing bits of yourself through erosion and distance from your community, identity and sense of self.”

 

In the architecture of caste, marriage functions as the primary load-bearing wall. The statistics tell the story of the strategic genetic preservation of social capital. Barely 5 per cent of marriages cross caste lines, and even these tend to occur within Savarna boundaries. Mr Kisana highlights how even progressive Savarnas, armed with postgraduate degrees and cosmopolitan pretensions, retreat to Manu’s marriage manual lest they bring home the “wrong” partner.

 

For those who dare transgress, society offers lynching and honour killing as final arguments. Even when families stop short of murder, social death follows: Ostracism, cultural excommunication. The few inter-caste couples who survive usually do so by accepting permanent exile from their communities.

 

Bollywood functions as casteism’s dream factory, mass-producing fantasies. “The grand Savarna weddings,” he writes, “essentially are hollow, narcissistic family-branding performances, sustained by the willing consensus of the young, the old and everyone in between, all jostling and cooperating in union.”

 

The elaborate rituals, each costing more than most families earn in years, demonstrate economic dominance while the guest lists map social networks that will govern the next generation’s opportunities.

 

The mathematics of Savarna nationalism means that the louder the claims of ancient greatness, the more mediocre the modern achievements. And so, attacks on reservations and welfare continue to mask the welfare system of inherited advantage. Cultural chauvinism gets emboldened despite every economic disappointment. And the glass floor remains intact.

 

The reviewer is a journalist, writer, and editor fascinated by the stories that shape our world.

 

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