India, Sept. 13 -- Come election season in India, especially State Assembly elections, one ugly truth inevitably rises to the surface: Caste politics.

With the Bihar polls looming, the conversation has turned unexpectedly revealing. A long-held myth is being shattered, the myth that caste is a 'Hindu problem'.

For decades, Left-leaning intellectuals, secularists and vote-bank politicians have projected caste as an exclusive Hindu disease.

This was not accidental. By singling out Hinduism as the exclusive carrier of the caste virus, they could simultaneously keep Hindu votes divided while consolidating minority communities into obedient vote banks. Meanwhile, Dalits within Islam and Christianity were, in effect, written out of the story...