Reading ‘Annihilation of Caste’ in 2019

The Savitri Ambedkar Cultural Forum from the Azim Premji University will facilitate a reading of excerpts from Ambedkar’s ‘Annihilation of Caste.’ In this session, the group will lead the discussion, illuminating the philosophical depth of the insights it provides. The discussion will also highlight the contemporary relevance of the text in 21st century cultural-political environment. 

‘Annihilation of Caste’ is one of the most important texts of the 20th century – especially for India, as well as the South Asian population across the globe. It was supposed to be a speech at the Annual Conference of 1936, of the Jat Pat Todak Mandal (Society for abolition of the caste system). Babasaheb Ambedkar critically examines the arguments that support such an organization of the society and the fundamental fissures that it has created in the Indian social life.

Reading this text has been one of the most liberatory acts for anyone who has faced exclusion or discrimination in India, and for that reason it draws us back to it time and again. We revisit it today asking how and why has a piece written over 80 years ago survived as one of today’s most relevant political texts?

About Savitri Ambedkar Cultural Forum:

It is a vibrant intellectual and cultural space at the Azim Premji University Bangalore, grounded in Ambedkarite and feminist principles, and has been able to create a space for the students from marginalized background to come together and voice out their concerns, which hardly finds a space for expression. What started as a reading group in its initial days (with the reading of Annihilation of Caste) has become a bigger forum to engage with social, cultural, political and intellectual problems including Universities. As we have seen in the past few years, Universities have become the key spaces where both exclusion and discrimination is experienced in its most vicious forms, as well as new articulations of resistance and reconstruction of Indian sociality is being experimented. The forum provides the space for expression and experimentation, which can provide new ideas and practices for democratic living.

About Exploring Exciting Texts: 

Exploring Exciting Texts, that began in 2017, is a series of monthly events hosted by Indian Ensemble with the aim to academically engage with various kinds of texts. The idea of the event is to use a text as a starting point to generate conversation around a theme. Over 22 events, the event has developed a regular audience base of people who are curious and want to engage in discussion and debate.