The market is flooded with editions of Annihilation of Caste. This desire of all publishers, from mainstream giants to small regional-language presses, to bring out Ambedkar’s works clearly indicates that it has become profitable to use his name. Does this also indicate that there is a general interest in seeing his ideas come to fruition? The jury is out. After all, Ambedkar has come to signify different things to different groups of people. To the sanatanis, he is a ‘margdarshak’. To the liberals, he is a status quoist. To the left, he is a figure to latch on to in the wake of their self-betrayal. Amidst this churn, what of the idea of the ‘annihilation of caste’? Can we imagine an end to this nightmare?

On 15 May 1936, Ambedkar brought out the first edition of Annihilation of Caste on his own dime, after he was disallowed from giving the speech he had prepared for the Jat-Pat Todak Mandal’s conference in Lahore. The speech is often mistaken as prescriptive. But it is tinged with melancholy. Ambedkar offers scant positive advice. He prefers to traverse the negative. He surveys the obstacles to the task of annihilating caste, and towards the end of the speech he concedes his inability to achieve it. All he can hope to do, he writes, is to find some amelioration for his people. The task even in his time, which was decidedly a time of ferment, seemed too insurmountable.

What of our own time? Despite our pretentions of greater radicalism, caste in our time has become even more entrenched. We get deeper and deeper into its mire, content with state-given sops, as human personality becomes attuned to birth-based identities. Now our dreams of regime change are reduced to wishing for a return of old regimes. Ambedkar wasn’t limited by such fantasies. He embraced becoming—‘I have decided to change.’ He realized that there was no fixity to be had, change could only be achieved by embodying its movement. Can we risk changing too? Can we risk our own annihilation?

Ambedkar mustn’t become mere window dressing for our existing identities. He must become a catalyst for unthinkable possibilities. We must attend to his words.

Original Article

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The Nazis used the legal and social category of Asoziale (Asocials). This label was slapped onto anyone who didn't fit into the structured, formal, state-approved economy, including the homeless, beggars, and migrant workers.

The general German public felt completely morally justified in harassing them. When Jewish businesses were boycotted, the privileged classes cheered or looked the other way. They had been convinced that these people "deserved it" because they were a hazard to the structural order of the nation.

We are witnessing a real-time descent into "hyperreality," where the obsession with social media views, engagement and viral pranks completely overrides basic human empathy.

A trend has exploded where content creators use an app to turn off an e-rickshaw mid-trip. As a consequence, drivers are forced to push their vehicles for kilometres, leaving them exhausted, helpless and denied daily wages.

E-rickshaw drivers are part of an informal workforce where class and caste directly determine economic opportunities. The majority of them belong to OBC and Scheduled Caste categories, forced into this work due to systemic exclusion from stable employment.

If you look at the viral videos of this trend, the person adds captions such as "time for revenge," "karma." It labels the e-rickshaw drivers as "tirri wala" and accuses them of rash driving. This goes hand in hand with what would be the process of dehumanising a marginalised group by stereotyping them. Harassing them is targeted, caste-and-class-based exploitation.

The internet has a way of rewarding this behaviour. Social media giants don't care if your videos are cruel, as long as they generate engagement. Then there was the phase where "social experiments" involved exploiting the poor and day-to-day labourers by content creators, labelled with "Poorism". Usually, the intended victim is someone who doesn't possess the resources to respond.

credit: @musaibhussein

It's pathetic how they'll brainwash kids about varna system being somehow good because it didn't start out as rigid castes? What about millennia of systemic discrimination, denial of basic rights to the lower caste communities?

You'll teach them that their oppression actually started out as a good ancient knowledge system?

Source :- BAWS Vol. 17

The Ambedkarite movement exists to challenge caste hierarchy, not to accommodate those who profit from it. Solidarity is welcome, but leadership and representation must remain with the communities that bear the consequences of caste oppression.

So, stay out.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DYNEtr-GNFy

Vajra guru pema siddhi hum...☸️🪷

Hinduism has 2 sects

Spiritualism = Varkari, Naths, Moksha seeking, Bhagavad Gita, Brotherhood etc etc

Ritualism = Manuvaadi, Failed Varna Theory supporters, Cow urine drinking, Cow Dung eating, Oppressors, Jadu Tona BS, Rituals and customs which make zero sense,