Warrior, rebel, north star

BR Ambedkar's sweeping, searing Annihilation of Caste — his manifesto, enclosing all that he wished for, for his people and his country — turns 90 this month. It is many things: a compass orienting the reader, a mirror held up to a nation, a love letter to reason. See how it was born (from a speech he wasn’t allowed to deliver); how it defined for him the path he would follow for the rest of his life; and how far short we have fallen of the dreams he had for the new India

- Dhrubo Jyoti

Freedom of mind is the real freedom. Democracy is not... It is essentially an a toward The Caste system is not merely a division of labour. It is also a division of labourers. I would prefer any other fold if

He was told, in a hundred different ways and from an early age, that he occupied a place at the bottom of an order that was both natural and sacred.

He was made to sit apart and on the floor in classrooms, denied water from common pots, turned away from guesthouses, and barred from facilities in tourist spots. He spent years trying to create a space for marginalised castes — organising, petitioning, negotiating — only to watch platitudes arrive and evaporate.

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar watched caste operate as the architecture of daily life, shaping thirst, silence, death.

In 1935, something shifted. He was still smarting from the moral coercion of Mahatma Gandhi's fast unto death, which saw him yield and sign the Poona Pact in 1932 (which eliminated separate electorates for “depressed classes” and replaced them with reserved seats within a general electorate).

He was growing steadily exasperated with Hindu society, cynical about the intentions of so-called reformers, and disillusioned with the Congress. A flurry of temple-entry movements had been stonewalled. Meanwhile, caste reformers were excitedly dining with Dalits in token events that did little to alter anything outside their circle.