Indian indentured workers broke caste through inter-caste marriage and revolt

Evidence

For the first time in twenty years, Gandhi aligned himself politically with the people he had previously taken care to distance himself from. He stepped in to ‘lead’ the Indian workers’ strike. In fact, they did not need ‘leading’. For years before, during and after Gandhi, they had waged their own heroic resistance. It could be argued that they were fortunate to have escaped Gandhi’s attentions, because they did not just wage a resistance, they also broke caste in the only way it can be broken—they transgressed caste barriers, got married to each other, made love and had babies. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 262

Categorization

• XREF: Core to the reader’s purpose: caste is broken by transgression and exogamy, not by legislation — resonates with Ambedkar’s argument in the main text that caste is sustained by endogamy.
• SEED: An essay angle: how diasporic labor (indenture, plantation migration) shattered caste endogamy where reform movements inside India failed.