Most of the times when the Ambedkarite movements are discussed and debated, the focus turns the to reservation and it becomes the centre of discussion. It is true that the reservation as representation is a key issue and it ensures that the community gets proper representation in all the walks of governance and decision making. It is important indeed to ensure that the representation through reservation in all the sectors that are publicly funded, including the businesses that benefit from the state machinery and structures.

The larger mass of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes lives in the villages and slums of India. There is a remarkable and at times indelible physical line that separates the Caste Hindus from the SCs and STs. This is clear. The SCs and STs, alongwith the converted among them in other religions like Islam and Christianity, live in the slums of the big cities. And they are largely concentrated in the villages. The rising well to do classes among them are concentrated in the cities, but their distribution is not concentrated unlike the other dominant castes.

The movement must reach to the people in the villages. This is not to say that the movement is not there in the villages and the slums. In fact, these are the spaces that have kept the movement alive, but their questions do not become the part of the movement. For example, the labourers, and among them the landless labourers, remain completely unorganised when it comes to consolidation of the Ambedkarite movement. Most of the people who work in the unorganised sector in the cities are from SC and ST communities, but there is no conscious effort to organise them as the Ambedkarite movement, and whatever efforts there are, they are localised and limited to celebrating Jayanti etc.

How would therefore the political mobilisation reach to the majority of the SCs and STs is therefore vital for the success of the movement. This deepening of the movement vertically and its horizontal expansion regionally must go hand in hand if our movement is to succeed in reaching its logical end: the end of Brahmanism and Banianism (The caste based capitalism in India).

Author – Mangesh Dahiwale

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