Caste bias in Indian civil services: An IPS officer in Haryana ended his life recently. His name was Y. Puran Kumar. He was fifty-two. A man of rank, of service, of power, and of law. His wife is an IAS officer, a symbol of India’s administrative elite. Together they belonged to the class that is supposed to command respect, not seek mercy. Yet the officer died with a note that said he was humiliated, harassed, and broken by caste.
IPS Officer Suicide Exposes Caste Bias
When an officer who wears the uniform of the Indian Police Service says he could not bear the pain of being treated as less because of his caste, it strikes at the heart of what India claims to be. We call ourselves the largest democracy, but seventy-eight years after independence, what kind of freedom do we really live with? Elections are on in Bihar. Leaders speak of development, of welfare, of roads and bridges. But how many speak about the right of an Indian citizen to live with dignity? On the ground, do people even bother about rights anymore, or have we turned numb to the idea that freedom must mean equality too?
The story of Puran Kumar is not an isolated tragedy. It is a mirror that shows the invisible cracks of Indian society, cracks that stretch from dusty villages to the corridors of the civil secretariats.
Even those who clear the hardest exams and reach the top of government cannot escape the poison of caste. The very system meant to serve justice often becomes the weapon that wounds. In his note, Kumar spoke of mental torture and public humiliation. This was not a man without power; this was a man who had given decades to the system, a man trained to protect citizens from injustice, begging for relief from the same structure he served.
Caste, Power, and the Elite: When Administrative Services Fail
Indian Administrative and Police Services were once seen as symbols of equality. They were supposed to represent the new Indian identity after the British left, a meritocratic class beyond caste. Yet the truth is that caste did not vanish; it only put on uniform. Inside offices, promotions are whispered about, surnames are judged, and old social walls quietly decide who belongs and who doesn’t. When a Dalit or backward-class officer succeeds, his colleagues often whisper: “quota.” When he fails, they say: “see, he couldn’t handle it.” It is a double punishment, to be doubted when you rise, and to be blamed when you fall.
Haryana, where the officer served, has about twenty percent Scheduled Caste population. Punjab next door has almost thirty-two percent, the highest in India. Bihar, where elections are underway, has nearly sixteen percent. These numbers are not small. They are the faces of millions who, despite constitutional promises, still live at the bottom of India’s invisible pyramid. They clean drains, guard fields, serve as daily wagers, and even when they enter elite services, they remain marked by the shadow of birth.
British strengthened this pyramid, not weakened it. Under colonial rule, caste was counted, labelled, and frozen in census records. What was once a fluid social category became a rigid administrative one? The British used caste to control India, rewarding some, punishing others, creating loyal classes to rule through. After independence, the names changed, but the system stayed. The colonial habit of hierarchy merged with the native habit of discrimination. A society once chained by religion was now bound by bureaucracy too.
IPS: Marked by the Shadow of Birth – commission to compassion
Punjab, Sikhism, and the Struggle for Equality
In Punjab, Sikhism had long stood against caste. Guru Nanak rejected the idea of high and low birth. The langar in every Gurudwara feeds everyone the same food, seated in the same row. Yet even in Punjab, outside those Gurudwara walls, caste remains. Landholding patterns, marriage practices, and local politics often follow caste lines. The irony is cruel a faith built on equality, still surrounded by inequality. When the Akal Takht, Sikhism’s highest seat, condemned the officer’s suicide and reminded that castism is anti-Sikh, it was more than a religious message; it was a moral reminder that Punjab too must look at its own soul.
In Haryana, the Chief Minister belongs to the backward community. In Bihar, entire election manifestos are written around caste arithmetic. In Punjab, parties woo Mazhabi, Ramdasia, and Valmiki groups before elections but forget them afterward. Caste has not only survived; it has evolved into political currency. And when caste becomes a vote bank, equality becomes a slogan, not a mission.
The widow of the IPS officer now faces not only personal grief but also public scrutiny. She is an IAS officer, part of the elite structure of Indian governance. Yet she too must fight for justice, file complaints, and demand accountability. This alone reveals how deep the rot runs. If those who run the government cannot get justice within it, what chance does an ordinary citizen have? The system protects its own, but only some of its own. The rest, even in uniform, remain outsiders.
Political Promise vs. Social Reality: Independence Yet to Reach All
One wonders where the so-called protectors of justice are now. The country has commissions for every form of grievance, the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, internal complaints committees, vigilance units, inquiry boards. Each time a tragedy happens, officials announce another committee, another promise of a fair probe. But after the cameras leave, silence returns. Files gather dust. No one walks the streets for justice. The oppressed classes do not march together because they are fragmented by caste, region, and politics. And those among them who have climbed the administrative ladder often prefer silence, afraid of losing their position or reputation.
There is a question we rarely ask: when did these people get independence? The answer is painful, they never did. Political freedom in 1947 brought flags and speeches, but social freedom still waits at the doorstep. Each flood, each riot, each suicide, each discriminatory remark, tells us that the Indian soul remains chained. In villages of Bihar, Dalit families still seek shelter on school roofs during floods because no one lets them inside temples or upper-caste homes. In Haryana, sanitation workers die cleaning sewers without safety gear. In Punjab, young Dalit men migrate abroad because dignity at home feels unreachable. This is not freedom; this is survival.
What is most disturbing is the silence of privilege. Many upper-caste liberals and progressive voices speak about global issues, climate change, gender, democracy, but when caste violence occurs, they grow quiet.
They treat caste as a rural problem, a backward relic, something that does not touch their drawing rooms. But it does. It sits in hiring panels, in newsroom hierarchies, in police promotions, in everyday jokes. It decides who speaks, who listens, who gets invited, and who is forgotten.
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Commission to Compassion
India is full of commissions but empty of compassion. Every suicide note becomes another file. Every inquiry becomes another report. But no one asks why an officer, trained to be fearless, felt so helpless. It is because dignity cannot be given by law alone; it must be lived in behavior, in attitude, in the small courtesies that build equality. The Constitution gave us the right to equality, but society still gives us the habit of discrimination.
The British left in 1947, but their hierarchy of obedience remains. They trained us to bow before authority, to silence dissent, to measure worth by rank. The caste system fits neatly inside this colonial feather. That is why bureaucratic India finds it easy to worship power and ignore pain. When the powerless speak, they are called rebels; when the powerful cry, they are called victims of fate.
From a Sikh point of view, this tragedy is not just social but spiritual. Guru Nanak spoke of Ek Onkar — one God, one creation, one humanity. To divide humans by birth is to deny that truth. Punjab once produced revolutionaries who broke chains of empire. Today it must produce voices that break chains of prejudice. Equality must be reclaimed not as policy but as faith.
Marked by the Shadow of Birth
Death of an IPS officer should not be allowed to fade into routine news. It should shake our conscience. It should remind us that caste is not only a village problem or a poor man’s problem. It lives inside the very institutions that claim to be modern. The widow’s dignity, the officer’s despair, the silence of colleagues, all of it together tells us that India’s freedom is incomplete.
Real independence will come the day when a person’s surname no longer decides how much respect they get, when government servants serve without fear of humiliation, when elections are fought on ideas, not castes, when a widow need not plead for justice in a system that already knows the truth.
Until then, every tricolour flag we wave hides a shadow beneath it. A shadow of unfinished promises, of unhealed wounds, of equality delayed. And in that shadow, the spirit of men like Y. Puran Kumar dies again and again, not by the bullet, but by the slow poison of a society that still does not see its own.
