The caste monster in our path

It is in many ways tragic though hardly surprising to see that many upper castes and wannabe upper castes in India have shed their disdain for the lower castes of the Hindu hierarchical system The current fight between the Union Human Resources Ministry which looks after education IITMadras and the students of the AmbedkarPeriyar Study Circle is a case in pointDr Babasaheb Ambedkar seen here with Dr Sharada Kabir his wife wrote lsquoCaste is the monster that crosses your path You cannot have political reform you cannot have economic reform unless you kill this monsterrsquo PicGetty ImagesMany people claim to be great admirers of Dr BR Ambedkar But they allude if at all to the Constitution of India and stop there It might occur to any of them with a little bit of thinking that the reason that the Constitution sets a high standard for justice and fair play is because of the views which Ambedkar held He was scathing about Hinduism and upper caste tyranny and he tore into every argument that justifies injustice Unlike MK Gandhi he did not idealise Indian village life and Indian religious life The warts he saw in both were warts which had plagued his own life and the barbs and injustices he himself sufferedThis is from Ambedkarrsquos ldquoAnnihilation of Casterdquo ldquoturn in any direction you like Caste is the monster that crosses your path You cannot have political reform you cannot have economic reform unless you kill this monsterldquoIt is a social system which embodies the arrogance and selfishness of a perverse section of the Hindus who were superior enough in social status to set it in fashion and who had the authority to force it on their inferiorsrdquoSocial reform in India has been a long and tortuous journey Consider that caste discrimination has been banned since the Constitution was accepted in 1950 But caste prejudice has not yet vanished It remains in small insidious destructive ways and sometimes in large violent ways Its reach extends beyond Hindus and many converts to Islam Christianity and Sikhism practise castebased biasSince the Mandal Commission protests however to be antiDalit has become fashionable for some using the umbrella of reservations to hide their hateful racism It may be true that reservations have not been as effective as they should have that students in the ldquogeneralrdquo category feel they have no wiggle room that not all Dalits and Other Backward Castes need job or educational reservations or that all Brahmins are rich and therefore need no help But at the risk of upsetting everyone especially the smallminded and the ungenerous is there any easy way of wiping out thousands of years of institutionalised humiliating degrading and disgusting inhumane crueltyIt is very easy to portray the fight between the AmbedkarPeriyar Study Circle and the management of the institute into one of technical propriety But it is not easy to ignore just who is being targeted here students who are asking difficult questions of our society using the writings of those who asked Hinduism some of its toughest questions The issue also underlines what is now an easily visible trend in the new India to cast everyone in opposing lights of goodbad blackwhite upperlower and so on It is as if we have lost the ability to grasp that life is not necessarily either this or that It can be many things some confusing all at onceIt is worth making the effort to read Ambedkarrsquos writings to understand how his sharp mind worked and the excoriating arguments he made against both caste and Hinduism Luckily after years of being ignored by Mumbai University which held its publishing rights Riddles in Hinduism is available online It is a careful and erudite takedown of the religion which rejected Ambedkar and dismissed him and the majority of Indians to live a life of slavery the target of bigotry and hatredAmbedkar died a Buddhist but he fought to the end for a secular liberal India Politicians of all hues are getting ready to compete to celebrate Ambedkarrsquos 125th birth anniversary If they understand only half of what he stood for and fought for however India by now would have become a far far better nationRanjona Banerji is a senior journalist You can follow her on twitter ranjona