India, Jan. 6 -- In Indian social discourse, certain assumptions have been repeated so often that they are now accepted as truth, even when historical outcomes do not support them. One such assumption is that the Brahmin community has, for centuries, been the natural inheritor of power, resources, and privilege. Manusmriti has been positioned as the central pillar of this belief, and over time a narrative was constructed in which Brahmins were portrayed as permanently "dominant," while others were framed as perpetually "oppressed." Yet when history is examined not through emotional slogans but through social consequences and structural realities, a far more complex and unsettling picture emerges.

If any community was subjected to the str...