How Ahimsa Enables Untouchability

Ahimsa is presented as the highest Hindu virtue.

- Devdutt Pattanaik

It evokes images of gentle sages, compassionate saints, and morally superior lives. But beneath this halo lies a social technology that has, for centuries, enabled and reinforced untouchability. People often confuse caste with untouchability. When they speak of caste mobility they refer to ‘touchable’ castes only.

There are two dominant forms of ahimsa in contemporary India. The first is Gandhian ahimsa, rooted in political strategy. It rejects weapons, promotes civil disobedience, and uses moral pressure rather than physical force to confront injustice. This form of ahimsa played a crucial role in India’s freedom struggle, but today it is rejected by large sections of the Sanatani Hindutva lobby, which believes that violence is necessary to defend the nation and protect religious identity. For them, nonviolence is weakness, even betrayal.

The second form of ahimsa is dietary ahimsa, the idea that those who eat plant-based food are morally superior to those who eat meat, fish, or eggs. This belief is far more socially powerful. It is embedded in everyday practices, institutional rules, temple regulations, corporate culture, and political symbolism. And it is this form of ahimsa that quietly introduces the notion of untouchability and the hierarchy of purity. Significantly, this ahimsa is endorsed by Gandhians as well as Sanatanis. This is openly practiced in the name of food preferences and food choices. If Muslims can have haram-halal dichotomy why can’t Hindus divide food, and people, on lines of purity.