Everyday casteism in cyberspace and what it means for cybersecurity

In our second blogpost article for the International Studies and Emerging Technologies Working Group (ISET), Anubha Gupta talks about 'everyday casteism in cyberspace', and the implications of this for cybersecurity. She draws on insights from sociotechnical work to rethink how feminist and anti-racist approaches to cybersecurity are essential for our understanding of how caste operates as another vector for human-experienced security in online spaces.

Anubha Gupta is a PhD candidate at Centre for International Politics, Organization and Disarmament (CIPOD), School of International Studies (SIS), Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Her doctoral research focuses on Ambedkarite Approach and Cybersecurity. Her areas of interest include Ambedkarite thought, International Relations, Critical Security Studies and Cybersecurity. She has presented her research papers at International Studies Association (ISA), British International Studies Association (BISA) and European Workshops in International Studies (EWIS). She works as a research associate at Indian Council of World Affairs, Sapru House, New Delhi, India.

Why is talking about cyber important in IR?

As humans become increasingly intertwined and integrated with Information and Communication technologies (ICTs), particularly internet, cybersecurity has come to occupy an important place in global security conversations. There are new threats and vulnerabilities originating in cyberspace (a human made space where people interact through global networks, grounded in technical systems and institutional rules) in the form of cyber-attacks on the critical infrastructure of the states, ransomware attacks (WannaCry), cyber espionage, cyber operations happening during the various conflicts like Ukraine-Russia, Israel-Gaza etc. Like any other security issue, cybersecurity has become a state security issue with the prime focus on states and macro-politics of cybersecurity. An increasing number of states are developing their own cyber capabilities for offence, defense and security purposes. This has been accompanied by development of cyber military strategies, cyber commands, cyber arms race, etc. which is heavily borrowed from the nuclear era. The behavior and conduct of states in cyberspace are a top priority in the United Nations at the Group of Government Experts (UN GGE) agenda as well. This contemporary framework of cybersecurity, which is all about securing the state through and in cyberspace, is an important lens no doubt but is it sufficient and encompassing? 

The everyday of international cybersecurity

Not only states but societies too are going through fundamental change as they adopt these new technologies. Various cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure, cybercrimes like digital arrest, ransomware attacks etc., are no doubt impacting people too. But there is unique aspect of this totally human-made cyberspace where people interreact, socialize, communicate, share and connect. According to Statista, as of October 2025, 6.04 billion individuals worldwide were internet users, which amounted to 73.2% of the global population and of this total, 5.66 billion, or 68.7% of the world's population, were social media users. And as these people engage everyday in cyberspace not only do they bring the baggage of physical offline social life to cyberspace but reproduce and reassert the ascriptive identities, biases, discrimination that they carry. There is a micro, everyday experiential part of cybersecurity which people and communities face due to their distinct positionality in the social system which is conspicuous by its absence in the current state centric cybersecurity. While it is true that Russia-Ukraine war has witnessed cyber operations and cyber warfare, but it is also true that everyday women, blacks, LGBTQI etc face a different kind of threat and vulnerability i.e. a different cybersecurity which they experience not because they are a citizen of X country but due to their position in the social hierarchy. Critical perspective on cybersecurity have started questioning this Global North focus of cybersecurity while arguing that cybersecurity cannot and should not be confined to state cybersecurity only. And as Andrew Dywer et. al (2022) advocate that critical cybersecurity must “work across communities, in intersection with the dynamics of gender, socio-economic deprivation, financial markets, and nonhuman agencies i.e. the everyday uneven practices of cybersecurity”. Scholars of securitisation studies like Cavelty, Hansen & Nissenbaum, etc show how cybersecurity narratives are built around as a threat to the states is itself a political act. Further the scholars of Science and Technology studies (STS) talk about the cyber practices of the States through actor network theory, boundary work, socio-technical systems etc highlighting that there is a multiplicity of actors, sites, experiences, interests in the practice of cybersecurity i.e. there are multiple cybersecurities (Tobias and Christensen 2021) at the same time. 

Insights from feminist and anti-racial cybersecurity

Beyond this, feminist and gender studies scholars have critically analysed and problematised the statist assumptions and focus of the cybersecurity. The feminist analysis of cybersecurity brings focus on cyber(in)security and violence. Evidence has shown that as and when women gain digital access, they face intensified vulnerabilities and threats in cyberspace in the form of cyberstalking, bullying, doxxing, and image-based abuse etc exacerbating existing gendered inequalities but also generating new forms of oppression. Upon gaining access when females start participating in cyberspace, a gendered social order with patriarchal norms, misogyny, and unequal power relations awaits them. It not only Rather reproducing offline inequalities, but cyberspace also generates a new kind of harm and vulnerabilities facilitated by anonymity, speed, expanded public visibility, and amplified algorithms. Anwar Mhajne (2025) shows that the activist activism on X (formerly Twitter) following Amini’s death in Iran showcased how women are vulnerable due to their gender in online space too. Cybersecurity affects women differently than it impacts the state. Their primary threats and vulnerabilities as shown by a UN study are cyberstalking, image-based abuse, doxxing, spyware used by partners, and gendered trolling which have immediate consequences for their security.

Further, studies have shown that there is a racial aspect of cybersecurity too.  Racism constitutes a form of symbolic violence that persists across social media platforms, facilitated by the anonymity these platforms allow. Safia Umoja Noble (2018) in her book Algorithms of Oppression has argued that search engines like Google have embedded whiteness in their algorithms discriminate and create a bias against coloured people especially women of colour. For example, Noble points out that Google map searches on the word N*gg** led to a map of the White House during the tenure of President Obama.

The curious case of caste in cybersecurity?

While critical cybersecurity scholarship has begun to highlight the everyday dimensions of cybersecurity through the  lens of gender and race and the associated violence, harms, threats,  vulnerabilities, but it has largely overlooked caste (a social system which dates back to about 3,000 years), a living system of social segregation that originated in South Asia and has since traveled globally through migration and diaspora. But as Thakur et al. (2025) says Caste in international terminology is considered a domestic issue and largely seen as being enclosed within Hindu religion in the context of India thus regarded Caste as an issue to be addressed purely at the national level.

Before examining how everyday caste-based harm is reproduced online, making Dalit subjugation a defining feature of cybersecurity, it is essential to first understand what caste is. Gajendran Ayyathurai (2021) has called caste a birth mode of segregating Indians into high and low categories, a social disorder. Caste system represents a system of social stratification and segregation rooted primarily in the Hindu religion but not limited to it as caste system along with the resulting caste discrimination have spread into Christian, Buddhist, Muslim and Sikh communities. This segregation and stratification translate into four broad hereditary groups known as varnas (consisting of the Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra) and outside the varnas are the Dalits or the “untouchables”. Historically, Dalits performed and still perform most menial inhuman tasks like manual scavenging that continues till day. For non-Dalits, says Kancha Illaiah (1996), Dalits are permanently polluted, inherently defiled and incapable of redeeming themselves thus non-Dalits should avoid both bodily interaction and social engagement with the Dalits. Baba Sahib Ambedkar, the longstanding voice of Dalits called caste system as “an ascending scale of reference and descending scale of contempt”. Vineet Thakur et al. has argued that the Caste operates as a systemic barrier that shapes an individual’s social position, limits their life choices due to structural inequalities and restricts their access to political, economic and social opportunities. In simpler terms, once you inherit your caste and it cannot be changed. 

Unlike race and gender, caste and caste-based discrimination remain underexplored and insufficiently examined within international relations says Svensson (2025) let alone within the field of Cybersecurity. Historically, associated with India and South Asia, caste is now a global issue because the diaspora carried with it caste. A 2018 Equality Lab survey found 1.5% of Indian immigrants in the U.S. are Dalits, with a quarter reporting caste-based assault. These are offline harassment that have been reported at workplaces, common spaces etc. But what about when a Dalit goes online. Dalits are discriminated against for merely going online as one of the interviewers told me. A recent study found that 13% of hate content on Facebook in India is linked to caste-based hate speech. This includes caste slurs, disparaging remarks about caste-associated occupations like manual scavenging, and posts targeting B.R. Ambedkar etc. Caste has not only travelled to foreign lands with diaspora it has travelled to cyberspace as well. Upon interviewing few Dalit respondents who have access to internet and are active online at various platforms told that caste has become a new normal in the cyberspace. 

The interviews with Dalit correspondents revealed how deeply caste shapes everyday experiences of cybersecurity. For some, simply identifying themselves as Dalit brings a constant vulnerability and threat leading them to hide their identity or stay silent on sensitive issues. Others who openly assert their identity and their views, especially around Ambedkar and reservation, face targeted trolling, image-based harassment, and mocked over appearance. There were also accounts of erasure and non-acknowledgement, such as Dalit Christians not being recognised as Dalit at all, and of knowledge theft within online social networking spaces. Across online social networking spaces like Instagram, X, dating apps, online newsrooms etc caste has quietly started shaping who feels safe, who is heard and who is targeted. Cybersecurity for Dalit users is not only about national security threats, but also about confronting caste enabled vulnerabilities embedded in cyberspace.

I’ll end this blog with this interview of my correspondent to emphasise the vitality of beginning conversation around caste in cybersecurity and what can caste do for cybersecurity.

“I posted my photo on twitter wearing a sunglass, my friends told me how great I looked but there were accounts who said, ‘you don’t look like a Dalit’. As I am open about my social identity in my social media bio. Then there are serious to and fro abuse, comments, and troll from the casteist handlers. But various Ambedkarite handles came and supported me and handled the issue” (Interviewee, PhD candidate at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; August 2023).

References

Ayyathurai, Gajendran. “It Is Time for a New Subfield of Critical Caste Studies.” LSE South Asia Blog, July 5, 2021. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/southasia/2021/07/05/it-is-time-for-a-new-subfield-critical-caste-studies.

Dwyer, Andrew C., Clare Stevens, Lilly Pijnenburg Muller, Myriam Dunn Cavelty, Lizzie Coles-Kemp, and Pip Thornton. “What Can a Critical Cybersecurity Do?” International Political Sociology 16, no. 3 (September 2022): olac013. https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olac013.

Equality Labs. Caste in the United States: A Survey of Caste Among South Asian Americans. Oakland, CA: Equality Labs, 2018. Accessed December 9, 2025. https://equalitylabs.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Caste_in_the_United_States_Report2018.pdf

Ilaiah, Kancha. Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy. Calcutta: Samya, 1996.

Liebetrau, Tobias, and Kristoffer Kjærgaard Christensen. “The Ontological Politics of Cyber Security: Emerging Agencies, Actors, Sites, and Spaces.” European Journal of International Security 6, no. 1 (2021): 25–43. https://doi.org/10.1017/eis.2020.10.

Mhajne, Anwar. “The Digital Repression of the Iranian Women’s Movement.” Binding Hook, August 19, 2025. https://bindinghook.com/the-digital-repression-of-the-iranian-womens-movement/.

Noble, Safiya Umoja. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York: New York University Press, 2018.

Svensson, Ted. “International Relations, Silent Erasure, and the Cruelty of Caste.” International Political Sociology 19, no. 3 (September 2025) https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olaf022

Statista Research Department. “Digital Population Worldwide as of January 2025.” Statista, accessed December 9, 2025. https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-worldwide/

Thakur, Vineet, Pavan Kumar, and Kalathmika Natarajan. “The Caste of Diplomacy.” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 20, no. 3 (2025): 377–404. https://doi.org/10.1163/1871191X-bja10221.

United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). “Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV).” Accessed December 9, 2025. https://www.unfpa.org/TFGBV