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Paper short abstract

This paper argues that caste is a historically constituted mode of production transformed, not dismantled, by capitalism. By integrating caste–class–patriarchy with racial capitalism, it shows how Indian labour is caste-oppressed domestically and racialised globally.

Paper long abstract

This paper intervenes in debates on caste capitalism by arguing that dominant Marxist and historical-materialist analyses remain limited insofar as they fail to theorise caste as a historically constituted mode of production and exchange that is transformed, but not dismantled, under capitalism. Drawing on Sharad Patil’s Marxist–Phule–Ambedkarite multilinear historical materialism and Umesh Bagade’s theorisation of the caste economy, the paper foregrounds Patil’s central insight that caste and patriarchy function as material forces, successively restructured through historical transitions—from caste-patriarchal to caste–class–patriarchal formations under capitalism. While Patil offers a powerful account of how caste, class, and patriarchy are materially reworked within Indian capitalism, his framework does not fully theorise the global racialisation of Indian working classes, composed largely of Dalit, Adivasi, and Shudra populations across religious communities, under colonial and postcolonial capitalism.

Addressing this absence is analytically unavoidable. The paper therefore extends the caste–class–patriarchy framework by engaging Cedric Robinson’s theory of racial capitalism, not to collapse caste into race, but to argue that caste and race operate as distinct yet integrated structures within global capitalism. Colonialism racialised large sections of the Indian population as surplus and disposable labour, a process intersecting with and stabilised by caste hierarchies. Contemporary capitalism reproduces this racial–caste ordering through imperial labour regimes, migration, and neoliberal accumulation, rendering caste-oppressed populations simultaneously caste-subordinated domestically and racially subordinated globally.