When Discrimination is Treated as a One-Way Street

• Who decides who is an ‘oppressor’ and who is a ‘victim’ — history, law, or lived reality?
• At what point does ‘protection’ mutate into ‘privilege,’ and redress into ‘retaliation’?
• Can justice remain just when it listens to ‘only one side’ of the grievance ledger?
• And what happens to ‘social harmony’ when the law itself appears ‘asymmetrically deaf’?

India’s anti-discrimination framework is morally anchored in a painful historical truth: Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), Other Backward Classes (OBCs), women, and religious minorities have endured entrenched exclusion. That moral anchor was necessary. It still is. But a framework designed to correct historic wrongs must not ossify into a system that refuses to recognize contemporary misuse, reverse discrimination, or retaliatory harassment. Justice that is blind to one set of injuries is not equity; it is selectivity dressed up as virtue.

Across campuses, workplaces, recruitment boards, and local administrations, there is a quiet but growing counter-narrative. General category candidates and forward-caste individuals increasingly report harassment, false implication, social ostracism, and institutional bias, often with little legal recourse. The uncomfortable truth is this: power, once redistributed, can also be abused. Law does not automatically sanctify the oppressed; it regulates behavior. When regulation stops being even-handed, it stops being justice.

Consider the repeated judicial observations, most notably by the Supreme Court of India, that certain provisions of the ‘Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act’ have been misused in specific cases, particularly in personal disputes, service matters, or political rivalries. The Court has, on multiple occasions, acknowledged that false or motivated complaints can and do occur, even while reiterating the Act’s vital protective purpose. That acknowledgment itself is evidence that discrimination and abuse are not unidirectional phenomena.

In university settings, there have been documented instances where general category faculty or students were suspended, denied promotions, or subjected to prolonged inquiries based solely on unproven allegations, with reputational damage preceding any finding of guilt. In public sector employment, reservation-linked seniority and promotion policies have sometimes resulted in junior officers exercising disproportionate authority over seniors, creating environments of intimidation rather than inclusion. In electoral and local governance contexts, allegations of caste-based abuse have occasionally been weaponized to neutralize political opponents from forward castes, with arrests and social stigma imposed first, investigation later.

None of this negates caste oppression. It complicates it. And complexity is precisely what mature legal systems are expected to handle.

Equally, it would be dishonest — and dangerous — to deny the overwhelming evidence of discrimination in the other direction. Dalits denied temple entry, tribal land alienation, honor crimes, workplace glass ceilings for women, communal targeting of minorities — these are not theoretical constructs. They are daily realities. The asymmetry lies not in the ‘existence of discrimination,’ but in the ‘state’s legal imagination’: one form is ‘structurally anticipated and penalized’; the other is treated as either ‘impossible or morally inconvenient.’

That is where “equity of justice” collapses.

True equity does not mean equal outcomes; it means equal access to protection, equal standards of proof, and equal consequences for misuse of power, regardless of who wields it. A law that presumes guilt based on identity corrodes the rule of law, even when enacted with noble intent. A system that refuses to recognize reverse discrimination breeds resentment, cynicism, and social fracture, ironically undermining the very goal of social justice.

What, then, should change?

First, discrimination law must be behavior-centric, not identity-centric. The act of discrimination — not the caste, class, gender, or religion of the alleged perpetrator — should be the fulcrum. Second, procedural safeguards must be symmetrical. False complaints, malicious prosecution, and abuse of protective statutes must attract real penalties, not moral excuses. Third, data transparency is essential. The state must be willing to study and publish evidence of misuse alongside evidence of oppression, instead of treating one as taboo. Finally, grievance redressal mechanisms must be insulated from ideological pressure, ensuring that every complainant and every accused receives due process, not predetermined moral labeling.

A republic cannot run on inherited guilt or inherited innocence. It must run on accountable conduct.

If discrimination is wrong, it is wrong in ‘every direction.’

If justice is sacred, it cannot be ‘selective.’

If equity is the goal, why does the law fear ‘symmetry’?

And if we refuse to look at both sides of the coin, are we still ‘pursuing justice,’ or merely ‘protecting a narrative’?

Until the state answers these questions honestly, India will continue to confuse ‘historical correction’ with ‘permanent moral asymmetry.’ And that confusion, left unaddressed, will cost us something far more precious than policy credibility: social trust itself.