Reproduction of caste inequality and anti-caste resistance among the Indian diaspora in the United Kingdom

This article examines the reproduction of caste and the emergence of anti-caste resistance among the Indian diaspora in the United Kingdom. While existing scholarship has analysed caste in the diaspora largely through frameworks of cultural continuity and tradition, it has paid limited attention to how resistance against caste simultaneously reshapes its reproduction. Drawing on qualitative research that combines ethnography, participant observation and in-depth interviews conducted across multiple UK cities, the study foregrounds Dalit perspectives to conceptualize caste as power, humiliation and lived experience. The findings demonstrate that caste is reproduced through socio-religious institutions, endogamy, dietary practices, community organizations and informal caste-based networks, resulting in discrimination, exclusion and humiliation in religious spaces and workplaces. These practices have generated sustained anti-caste resistance in the form of religious, sociopolitical and student-led organizations. The article demonstrates that anti-caste resistance not only challenges caste hierarchies but also contributes to the emergence of new modes of institutional and cultural reproduction, including the creation of independent religious and organizational spaces within the diaspora. By analysing caste reproduction and resistance as interconnected processes, it advances diaspora and caste scholarship, demonstrating how caste persists, mutates and is contested within a liberal multicultural context, such as the United Kingdom.