Poor nutrition can adversely affect the overall growth and development of children. As lower dietary-diversity leads to growth failure, especially among children, it is considered a critical indicator of child malnutrition. Limited numbers of studies are available on the children from socially marginalized communities in India who are at risk of malnutrition due to inadequate dietary-diversity. This study examines the factors influencing caste-based dietary diversity and its impact on growth patterns in children aged 6 to 23 months across different Indian states. It uses nationally representative data from the National Family Health Survey-5. The analysis includes 61,499 children in this age group, focusing on their consumption of 21 food items. These food items pertained to 8 food groups classified as minimum-dietary-diversity (MDD) collected through mothers. Descriptive analyses were performed to explore the patterns of MDD. Furthermore, multivariate logistic regression was utilized to investigate the adjusted effects of various socio-economic factors on dietary diversity and malnutrition. Results indicated that only 23.34% of children were able to meet the MDD. Consumption of breast-milk, dairy-products, grains roots, and tubers lowers the odds of stunting while intake of legumes, nuts, dairy products, eggs, grains roots, and tubers lowers wasting. Breast-milk and dairy-products reduce underweight. An adjusted-model for MDD shows lower odds of stunting among SC (AOR = 0.83; 95% CI; 0.75–0.90) and OBC (AOR = 0.93; 95% CI; 0.86–0.99), for wasted among OBC (AOR = 0.90; 95% CI; 0.83–0.97), and for underweight among SC (AOR = 0.91; 95% CI; 0.82–0.99), ST (AOR = 0.83; 95% CI; 0.72–0.94), and OBC (AOR = 0.91; 95% CI; 0.85–0.98) children for the dietary diversity and MDD > 5. The study emphasizes the need for supplementing additional nutrition-specific feeding interventions along with existing practices to improve feeding-regimen among children. The interventions should be designed as per the requirement of marginalized communities’ children who are at risk of wasting, stunting and underweight.