Written by: Siya Arora, Moitrayee Das
A regular day of doom scrolling on Instagram made me stumble upon a reel featuring a group of young men dancing synchronously—they had bleach-blonde highlights and donned skinny ripped denims. Both the caption and an overwhelming number of comments collectively assigned the group a label: Chapri. My friend, glancing over my shoulder, voiced her agreement. The word soon became ubiquitous and followed me beyond virtual spaces; listening to a certain hip-hop artist made you “Chapri,” so did wearing a mass-market Chikankari Kurti.
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Anything too flashy or gaudy triggered the term “Chapri,” and it gradually replaced “cringe” in our collective vocabulary. Just as “cringe” operates, it was a harmless slang used to mock performative, “try-hard” behavior. Previously untainted aesthetic choices, post-becoming accessible, became “Chapri,” especially when adopted by the “wrong” kind of people.
The term “Chapri” has origins in Marathi, Kannada, and Hindi words, deriving from “chappar” or roof. Additionally, the term is associated with the Chapparband caste (Cardozo & Waghule, 2023). What starts off as an occupational reference becomes a caste-coded slur today.
The Cultural and Psychological Politics of “Chapri”
To problematize the label and to understand the determinants of the aforementioned “wrong,” Bourdieu’s theoretical framework of cultural capital proves especially relevant. Bourdieu (1997) posited that cultural capital helps reproduce social hierarchies across generations. His concept of habitus, a system of dispositions shaped by one’s position in the social structure, governs our aesthetic preferences and sense of what is appropriate. It consequently shapes our practices in ways that might feel natural but, in the Indian context, are deeply structured by class and caste location.
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“Chapri” is a label applied through a middle- and upper-class, upper-caste habitus. It becomes a dismissal of those whose modes of self-expression don’t align with dominant taste. As Lareau and Weininger write in their reinterpretation of Bourdieu (2003), cultural capital is not merely about knowing highbrow art or classical music. It underlies the micro-interactional skills and aesthetic cues valued by dominant institutions. When working-class youth produce flashy reels or follow viral trends, they are engaging in aspirational participation in digital culture. However, instead of acceptance, they are met with mockery.
The determinants of this label include: dark skin tones, regional and vernacular accents, flamboyant clothes, or simply a digitally mediated mimicry of aspirational lifestyles. “Chapri” thus signifies a perceived lack of taste (something that is itself manufactured by the cultural preferences of hegemonic groups).
This weaponization of taste, then, is not value-neutral. While privileged groups are increasingly praised for their eclectic tastes, marginalized groups face ridicule for cultural expressions that are seen as out of place. This double standard echoes what Bourdieu would call symbolic violence: a process through which dominant norms are imposed as universal. The result is alternative forms of expression become inferior and “uncool.” It punishes the act of being seen in spaces that weren’t traditionally theirs. “Chapri” thus impersonates aesthetic critique to mask its violence. The proliferation of the internet and social media provided space for all kinds of content from all kinds of people. It is not shocking, then, that we have managed to segregate that space.
Furthermore, the label can be further dissected from a psychological lens in relation to the affect of disgust. Originally a survival mechanism to avoid contamination, disgust has evolved into a moral emotion used to police social boundaries. Moralized disgust now plays a cardinal role in social exclusion (Terrizzi et al., 2023). Thus, when someone is called “Chapri,” it’s not merely that their content is seen as unappealing. They are perceived as contaminating the space, violating unwritten class and caste norms.
This disgust further fuels in-group/out-group dynamics. In digital spaces, dominant groups (upper-class, upper-caste users) form the aesthetic “in-group” that defines what is tasteful. Those who deviate (by virtue of class-coded accents, fashion, etc.) are relegated to the out-group. They are marked as “other” and thus become targets.
This segregation polices access to digital space and cultural expression. Certain forms of self-presentation become inherently illegitimate. In doing so, it reinforces caste hierarchies in spaces that are perceived as democratizing. It thus becomes a digital form of caste gatekeeping.
Economic and Psychological Impact
This form of virtual and symbolic hate speech is sometimes more overt, yet still disguised in anti-reservation discourse. It is made visible when Anuradha Tiwari, a self-proclaimed anti-reservation CEO, boasts about her “Brahmin genes” in a tweet (“‘Brahmin Genes’: What’s the Controversy That Divided Social Media?,” 2024). The underlying casteist undertones also surface when YouTube videos and meme accounts on Instagram repost profiles of DBA (Dalit, Bahujan, Adivasi) groups, engaging in an ironic reproduction of their content for engagement.
The distinction between “cringe” and “quality” content, coded through class and caste aesthetics, becomes a means of economic and social exclusion. Research shows that this dichotomy, reinforced by platform algorithms and audience bias, funnels visibility, engagement, and thus ultimately monetization, toward upper-caste influencers (Khunteta & Rahman, 2023). Meanwhile, working-class and DBA creators remain in the margins, often reduced to the object of ridicule and denied the financial benefits of virality.
But the costs are not only economic. The psychological impact of online caste hate speech is reported by the Centre for Internet and Society (Kain, Narayan, Sarkar, & Grover, 2021). The report revealed that caste-based online abuse deeply impacts the mental health of DBA users. Respondents frequently described these experiences as “attacks on dignity” and spoke of feeling dehumanized, stating that the hate “messed with [their] mental health.” Many expressed hesitation in posting caste-assertive content, citing exhaustion from constant abuse and a sense of futility in rational engagement. Some chose to leave platforms altogether.
Thus, terms like “Chapri” are embedded within a larger structure of digital precarity and symbolic caste violence. Online spaces are far from being democratized zones of free expression. In fact, they magnify the oppressive hierarchies of the offline world. Despite awareness and policy changes around cyber hate, most social media platforms still remain remiss and do not recognize caste as a protected category. While users can report harmful content based on race, gender, or religion, caste remains absent from these reporting systems (Kain, Narayan, Sarkar, & Grover, 2021).
Some artists, like rapper MC Stan, have attempted to reclaim the term “Chapri” (Cardozo & Waghule, 2023). The word has been used as a badge of identity rather than a mark of shame (parallel to the way the N-word has been reappropriated in African-American contexts). However, this reclamation remains fraught, as the term continues to be used pejoratively to mock and marginalize.
The term “Chapri” may seem trivial or humorous on the surface. I have personally seen it being directed toward individuals that look and act a certain way. The word’s power, however, lies in its ability to mark. Originating from caste-coded notions of taste and amplified through the algorithms and echo chambers, such labels are a language of symbolic violence.
They sort users into those who belong and those who don’t, those who are tasteful and those who are merely meant to mock. Consequently, what is normalized becomes invisible. And caste, as the oldest surviving system of social stratification, has mastered invisibility. It hides in memes, in jokes, in preferences on dating apps (Dattani, 2024). Sometimes it becomes (in)visible in an honor killing; other times it slips quietly into viral humor. But whether brutal or banal, caste persists.
Until we recognize “taste,” “class,” and “merit” as caste-coded constructs, and until we critically evaluate the deeply embedded casteist structures that govern everyday life (both in physical and digital spaces), we remain complicit in a culture where a Dalit student’s hands will be hacked for riding a high-end bike (“Dalit Man Dies of Injuries in Gujarat’s Amreli,” 2025)—a culture where aspiration and upward mobility is policed with caste violence, with language functioning as an imperative constituent of the same.
Siya Arora, a fourth-year undergraduate pursuing a B.A. (Hons.) in Psychology, and Moitrayee Das, Assistant Professor of Psychology, are both at FLAME University, Pune.