Introduction: From Football Commentary to Assam’s Public Life

Language often reveals its paradoxes in the most unexpected places. My reflection on the duality of the word untouchable did not begin with a sociological text or a political debate, but during a late-night broadcast of the English Premier League 6 years ago.  As the match unfolded, the commentator described Egyptian talisman Mohamed Salah as “untouchable” at Liverpool. In his prime, he has been a player whose value is deemed beyond measure, whom rival clubs could desire but not acquire, and whom his own club would never willingly let go. The word recurred in different contexts across football commentaries, podcasts and discussion forums by fans and content creators. Kevin De Bruyne at Manchester City was described in similar terms during his peak, orchestrating the game with such precision that his absence was unthinkable. Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo had long been cast in this mould, framed as irreplaceable icons whose very mention of transfer was a fantasy. More recently, Kylian Mbappé at Real Madrid carries the aura of being “untouchable” in both market value and symbolic presence, much as Francesco Totti once embodied an untouchable loyalty to Roma, and Steven Gerrard at Liverpool. The word appeared almost casually, as if it carried no historical weight, yet it struck me as profoundly dissonant.

This line of thought was not mine alone. I first began to discuss these resonances during my master’s programme at Gauhati University, in long conversations with my late friend Hrisikesh Deka, fondly known as Laau. Under the shade of what we called the “Social Tree” on campus, we often moved from football to philosophy, from film reviews to commentaries on various social facts, weaving together many sociological imaginations. What began as an abstract curiosity in those conversations has, over the years, taken root, becoming more concrete, empirical, and real. By the time we got acquainted with structuralism, post-structuralism and deconstructive approaches, our conversations became more interesting and critical, yet fun to hear. So we were told by our friends Samved and Ripunjoy, who would accompany us, sitting on the roots of the trees, sipping coffee.

The dissonance around the notion of untouchability deepened when six years later, I found myself in conversations about the recent saga surrounding the demise of Zubeen Garg, whose death reverberated across cultural and political life in the region. While many ordinary individuals and cultural figures came under intense public scrutiny in relation to the event, certain powerful figures remained immune, while some managed to delay prompt investigation. These figures that are often associated with a complex nexus of political and economic influence in Assam seemed beyond the kind of accountability or critical exposure faced by others. Once again, the word untouchable floated to the surface of our conversations, but now in a sharply different register. Here, it did not signify indispensability on a football field but immunity from legal scrutiny, if not from the public. This applies not only to such figures alone, but to those people as well who reap the fruits of the social capital they possess by harnessing their familiarity with politically powerful figures.

It was in this disjuncture, between Salah’s irreplaceability at Liverpool and the socio-politically and economically astute people’s immunity in Assam and beyond, that the sociological richness of untouchability revealed itself. In one sense, it is a word of humiliation, historically branding Dalits as impure, marginal, and socially excluded within India’s caste system. In another sense, it is a word of privilege. It describes elites as carrying such an immense power that no law, institution, or public outrage can easily touch them. This article attempts to unravel this paradox: to examine the word untouchable as it oscillates between stigma and immunity, between the Dalits at the margins and the elites at the centre of power.

Untouchability and Caste: The Historical Burden

We are aware, especially in the Indian context, that the most entrenched association of untouchability is with the caste system. Within the Hindu social order of organisation, Dalits were historically condemned as untouchables. They were excluded from the fourfold Varna hierarchy and assigned occupations marked by their ritual impurity. They were segregated into various hamlets at the periphery of villages, denied access to wells, temples, schools, and common spaces, and forced into stigmatised forms of labour such as manual scavenging or corpse disposal (Ghurye, 1969). This very practice of untouchability, as Louis Dumont (1970) argued, was not merely about economic roles but about the symbolic logic of purity and pollution.

For B.R. Ambedkar, untouchability represented the cruellest form of “graded inequality” (Ambedkar, 1936/2014). It was not an accidental prejudice. It was a systemic denial of humanity,  which was codified in scriptures and reinforced through everyday practices. He described it as a social death, in which Dalits were treated as less than human. They were comprehensively barred from the basic rights of dignity and mobility. The category of untouchable was thus not only descriptive but prescriptive. It created and maintained boundaries that structured Indian society for centuries.

Even after India gained its independence, when Article 17 of the Indian Constitution abolished untouchability, its practices persisted in subtler but equally damaging forms. Segregated settlements still exist in rural India. Dalits continue to face disproportionate violence.  Caste remains a determinant of access to education, land, and employment (Thorat & Newman, 2010). Untouchability in this register remains a condition of exclusion, a marker of those relegated to the margins of dignity and opportunity.

The Contemporary Turn: Untouchability as Immunity

In contemporary discourse, however, untouchable often appears in an inverted sense. Rather than stigma, it has started to often connote privilege and insulation. Political leaders accused of corruption but never convicted, corporate houses implicated in financial frauds yet flourishing, celebrities who survive scandals unscathed, all are frequently described as “untouchable.” In football, the term describes indispensability. In politics and society, it describes impunity.

In Assam, the legal histories of politically or socially prominent individuals reveal how acquittal often functions as a mechanism of rehabilitation. The Special TADA Court judgment of August 2025, which acquitted thirty-one United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) leaders, including Arabinda Rajkhowa and Anup Chetia, is a striking instance. The prosecution failed to produce adequate evidence in a case that had persisted since 1991, leading to the end of a thirty-five-year trial (Assam Tribune, 2025; NE Now, 2025; Sentinel Assam, 2025). The acquittal occurred within a broader climate of reconciliation between sections of the ULFA leadership and the state. This timing suggests that political negotiations and shifting alignments were closely tied to the legal outcome. Justice for the powerful is often not the result of exoneration through evidence, but of political accommodation and procedural delay. Similarly, investigations involving public figures from the entertainment and media industries, such as the ongoing Nandini Kashyap hit-and-run case, draw significant attention but often proceed without closure.

The contrast between these unresolved trials and the swift acquittal of politically significant individuals highlights a dual system of justice. Elite figures benefit from prolonged investigations, lenient interpretations, and judicial fatigue that together generate immunity. This form of “untouchability” differs from the caste-based exclusion of traditional Hindu society. Caste untouchability-imposed segregation through social and ritual prohibition, whereas elite untouchability operates through inclusion within networks of privilege and power. The former excluded individuals from law and society, while the latter shields them from the law itself.

The same logic extends beyond Assam. In Mumbai, the acquittal of Salman Khan in the 2002 hit-and-run case illustrated how celebrity status, procedural inconsistencies, and the benefit of doubt converged to overturn a lower-court conviction (Reuters, 2015; Time, 2015). Likewise, the exoneration of Aryan Khan, son of actor Shah Rukh Khan, in the 2021 drugs-on-cruise case showed how a high-profile arrest could dissolve once institutional overreach was exposed and evidence withdrawn (NDTV, 2022; India Today, 2022).

Prajwal Revanna, a former Member of Parliament from the Janata Dal (Secular), was convicted in August 2025 for the rape of a domestic worker but immediately filed an appeal in the Karnataka High Court challenging evidence and procedural issues, delaying the outcome (Deccan Herald, 2025; India Today, 2025). Similarly, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, convicted for rape and murder, has repeatedly been granted paroles and furloughs, including spending over 90 days outside prison in 2025 alone, highlighting how political and social influence affects the implementation of sentences (Times of India, 2025; Hindustan Times, 2025). Asaram Bapu, convicted of rape in 2018, has also received interim bail and medical parole, further illustrating how judicial timelines and relief mechanisms can extend the privileges of influential defendants (Times of India, 2025; Economic Times, 2025).

Together, these cases show that conviction does not necessarily translate into immediate or uninterrupted punishment when defendants hold political, social, or religious influence. The law operates unevenly, affording the privileged a buffer of influence, access, and endurance that allows them to escape lasting consequence. In contrast to historical untouchability, which was defined by exclusion, this contemporary version is defined by insulation. The elite remain fully within the social order, yet beyond the reach of accountability.

Paradoxical Untouchability and Shifting Semantics

The inversion clearly demonstrates how everyday language operates as a site of symbolic power. French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1991) emphasised that words do not merely and simply describe reality.  They shape it through what he called symbolic power: the capacity to make meanings stick and to naturalise hierarchies. I believe the word ‘untouchable’ exemplifies this. When applied to the Dalits and the marginalised, it stigmatises, reinforcing a hierarchy of purity and pollution. When applied to the elites, it glorifies and, in the process, normalises their insulation as if their immunity were natural and deserved.

Bourdieu also highlighted the concept of doxa, the taken-for-granted realm of meanings that are rarely questioned. In this doxic register, calling a footballer “untouchable” seems harmless, yet it rests on the misrecognition of the term’s violent historical connotations.

The football examples that initially sparked this reflection demonstrate how the word circulates globally with paradoxical meanings. Mohamed Salah’s tenure at Liverpool epitomised the notion of an “untouchable” player, indispensable to the club’s identity and success, beyond the reach of rival clubs’ transfer offers. Kevin De Bruyne at Manchester City commanded similar descriptions, orchestrating the game with such brilliance that his absence seemed unimaginable. Lionel Messi at Barcelona and Cristiano Ronaldo at Real Madrid represented a pinnacle of untouchability, framed as unmovable icons whose value transcended markets. Kylian Mbappé at Real Madrid today carries the same aura, while Francesco Totti’s lifelong association with Roma embodied an untouchable loyalty rather than monetary worth.

Similarly, referring to politicians or corporate barons as “untouchable” misrecognises the structural inequalities that make their immunity possible, turning a mechanism of injustice into a form of admiration or awe. Thus, the semantic slippage itself is a form of symbolic violence. It conceals domination by naturalising it through language. In these contexts, “untouchable” signifies indispensability and exceptional value. Yet, when the same word travels into the terrain of Indian politics and society, it describes elites who are insulated not because of indispensable talent but because of entrenched networks of patronage, capital, and coercion. This duality reveals how the term, though casual in football commentary, resonates with deeper structures of immunity when applied to politics and economics.

The semantic drift of untouchable also raises questions of representation. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1988) famously asked, “Can the subaltern speak?” Her concern was that subaltern voices are often appropriated or erased in dominant discourses. The application of untouchable to elites exemplifies such erasure. By using the same term to describe both Dalits and elites, public discourse risks silencing the specific historical trauma of caste-based untouchability.

For Spivak, subalternity is not only about marginality but about the impossibility of self-representation within dominant frameworks. When elites are described as “untouchable,” they are given a symbolic status that drowns out the voices of Dalits still struggling against real, material untouchability. The violence of the term lies not only in its history but in its contemporary misappropriation. In this sense, to call elites untouchable is to overwrite the suffering of Dalits with the insulation of the powerful, converting oppression into privilege without acknowledging the gulf between them.

The dual meaning of untouchable points to a broader sociological insight: power produces both exclusion and insulation. Michel Foucault (1977) showed that power operates not only through repression but also through invisibility and discourse. For Dalits, untouchability is about hypervisibility, being marked as polluting, segregated, and disciplined. For elites, untouchability is about invisibility, being shielded from critique, hidden from accountability, and protected from the law. In both cases, untouchability is a boundary that structures who can touch and who cannot, who can be touched and who must not be touched.

Conclusion

The word untouchable carries a stark paradox that exposes the extremes of social power. For Dalits, it names a history of exclusion, humiliation, and denial of humanity. For elites, it names a contemporary condition of immunity, privilege, and insulation from scrutiny. What began for me as a casual encounter during a football match, where Salah, De Bruyne, Mbappé, Messi, and Ronaldo were casually described as “untouchable,” grew into a reflection on public life in Assam and across India, where certain elite figures seemed immune to the kind of accountability faced by ordinary people.

The same society that treats sanitation workers as “untouchable” for reasons of caste purity also shields politicians with criminal charges, rendering them “untouchable” for reasons of power. Untouchability thus stretches across the spectrum, marking both the powerless and the powerful. In Weberian terms, both are status groups defined by boundaries. One is denied honour and visibility, the other is elevated to such honour that critique is stifled (Weber, 1978). The common thread is that in both cases, others do not touch: in one, because they dare not pollute themselves; in the other, because they dare not provoke retaliation.

This reflection underscores the sociological importance of language. Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic power reminds us that words shape hierarchies even as they appear neutral. Spivak warns us that the misappropriation of terms like untouchable can silence the very subaltern voices it once oppressed. The sociology of being untouchable thus lies in holding both meanings together: recognising how it stigmatises the powerless while insulating the powerful.

Ultimately, the paradox of ‘untouchable’ is that it names both social death and social invincibility. To grasp this paradox is to confront the contradictions of modern society, where the same word can wound the marginalised and glorify the elite.

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Aashirwad Chakravarty is a PhD candidate in Sociology at Cotton University, Assam (India). He is currently teaching Sociology at the National Law University and Judicial Academy, Assam. His research interests lie in food and culture, the Sociology of numbers and the Sociology of sports.