Progressivism in Indian Politics

Progressivism is defined by the drive for social reform: expanding equality and rights for marginalised groups and challenging inherited hierarchies. In India, that agenda is anchored above all in the struggle against caste.

• Social justice and the dismantling of caste, gender, and other hierarchies.
• Expansion of civil rights and minority protections.
• Reform of tradition where it sustains inequality.

Progressivism often supports redistribution, but it is defined more by its social agenda than by a fixed economic doctrine; its priority is who holds power and dignity, not only who holds wealth.

Socially, progressivism stands for anti-discrimination, gender and sexual equality, secular pluralism, and the widening of rights, treating reform of unjust custom as a moral imperative rather than a threat to identity.

Globally, progressivism draws on civil-rights and feminist movements. In India its towering figure is B. R. Ambedkar, whose anti-caste politics reshaped the Constitution, alongside Jyotirao Phule and Periyar E. V. Ramasamy, who built the self-respect and social-reform traditions.

Western progressivism has centred on civil rights, gender equality, and more recently identity and climate politics. India's version overlaps but is distinct in placing caste, a hierarchy with no exact Western parallel, at the heart of its project.

Ambedkarite and Dalit-Bahujan movements, women's and LGBTQ rights campaigns, and the secular-progressive intelligentsia carry the tradition. It frequently clashes with cultural nationalism over questions of tradition, religion, and social reform.