The Indian women trumpeting their caste on Instagram

Young women in small towns and villages across India are proudly trumpeting their caste identities on Instagram, making it the latest battleground for caste politics.

The BBC tracked 100 accounts and spoke to a dozen such influencers across the caste divide to understand what’s driving the trend.

The camera focuses on a woman in a black dress. She is pointing a rifle at the sky with her hand on the trigger.

“Who are you?” asks an accompanying voiceover. “We are Brahmins,” a voice responds. The woman smiles, and the sound of two gunshots is heard.

This is just one of hundreds of Instagram Reels made by Shivi Dikshit, a 24-year-old from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh who shares short videos about her Brahmin caste with her 150,000 followers on Instagram.

Hinduism’s deeply hierarchical caste system, which dates back at least 3,000 years, puts Brahmins or priests at the top and Dalits (formerly untouchables) at the bottom.

Caste-based discrimination has been illegal in India for decades, but the country’s 200 million Dalits continue to find themselves among the most marginalised citizens. Despite reforms, caste also remains a strong marker of identity in everyday conversations in many parts of the country.

In the videos, which are shot at home and have more than a million views, Ms Dikshit talks about the “superiority” of Brahmins as she pours scorn on the notion of inter-caste relations and rejects affirmative policies aimed at empowering Dalits.

“Brahmins have a cultural upbringing [unlike other caste groups]. Everyone in my family is a practising priest. I want to propagate the values we practice and dispel myths about my community,” she tells me while sitting on the terrace of her family-owned temple in the northern town of Meerut.

Ms Dikshit is among the thousands of Indian women who are using Instagram to talk about their caste in new and imaginative ways.

Most of them are from small towns and villages – unusual in a country where, unlike men, very few women speak publicly about their religious and caste identities. But access to social media, they say, has given them a platform to freely express themselves and challenge patriarchal controls.