Thinking Caste and Remembering Ambedkar

Yesterday, I met my ex-neighbour at a temple. Not just any temple. The Umiya Devi temple—the unofficial parliament for a certain caste’s community matters. He was beaming. Turns out, his caste group is organising a National Business Summit. Not a business summit. A caste-based business summit. For businesspersons of their caste only, thank you very much.

Proudly, he informed me that he’s on the executive organising team. Big deal. Big pride. Big caste.

And then it hit me. Again.

My city just hosted a Global Patidar Business Summit. Before that, a Global Brahmin Summit. Add a couple of Yadav Yatras and Vaishya Ventures, and we’ve basically got an unofficial caste-based G20 happening every few months.

Now, as someone who eats, sleeps and occasionally overthinks sociology, caste always felt like that stubborn stain on your white shirt. It fades, sure. But it never disappears. And yesterday, I saw why.

Caste survives because it accommodates.

It makes room for people who are left out by the merit-worshipping, English-speaking, LinkedIn-updating formal world. It gives leadership roles to those who might not be ‘qualified’ by traditional metrics—but are powerful within their jaat. Caste creates heroes where the system refuses to look. It’s not meritocratic. It’s compensatory.

And today feels like a good day to reflect. Because it’s Ambedkar’s birthday. The man who didn’t just write about caste. He tried to bury it. With reason, rage, and a pen that hit harder than any sword.

Now, let me rewind to my days at Central University of Gujarat. My first assignment? Reviewing Annihilation of Caste. That was not a book. That was a bomb. Ambedkar didn’t suggest improving caste. He wanted to incinerate it.

He didn’t say: “Let’s make caste inclusive.”

He said: “Let’s make caste extinct.”

For him, caste wasn’t a cultural oddity. It was a violent script, written in the language of ritual, canonised by religion, and performed daily by people too conditioned to notice the blood on their hands.

He even went after Gandhi. Yes, that Gandhi. Ambedkar didn’t flinch. He accused the Mahatma of cosmetic reform—of treating untouchability like a rash when the disease ran in the veins.

He wasn’t here to negotiate. He was here to dismantle.

But let’s pause the fire for a second.

Because here comes another perspective—a softer, myth-friendly one. This view tells us that caste isn’t just a Hindu problem. It exists in every religion in India. Christians have it. Muslims have it. Even Uber drivers in San Francisco might have preferences. Caste, they say, is a human impulse—like groupism in HD.

And fair enough. That’s true. But where does this argument go? Not towards revolution. It drifts gently into resignation. Into explanations. Into anthropological comfort zones.

Ah, caste is natural. Universal. Embedded in culture. Soothing, isn’t it?

And yes, we’re told, religion shouldn’t be annihilated either. Why? Because myths make life beautiful. They give meaning, not malice. They provide poetry. Without them, we’re left with algorithms and air-conditioned apathy.

Lovely, poetic even.

Except when those myths also prescribe purity. Justify hierarchy. Teach you that someone else’s touch, food, or shadow is sin. That’s not poetry. That’s power play. That’s priests building thrones out of your spine.

Here’s a classic Indian paradox: every community wants to be the victim, but also the forgotten king. Even the lowest rungs claim descent from royalty who were ‘cheated’ into degradation. Nobody wants to abolish caste. Everyone wants to rise within it.

Rewriting humiliation into misplaced grandeur? Understandable. But that’s still climbing the same dirty ladder.

Ambedkar didn’t want us to climb it. He wanted to kick it down.

He wasn’t interested in spiritual therapy. He practised truth surgery. And that truth hurts. Especially when it tells you your sacred thread might just be someone else’s shackle.

Now let’s be fair. All communities discriminate. But who codified it? Who made it divine? Who turned social prejudice into divine command?

So when someone says, “But caste gives identity,” ask: at whose cost?

When someone romanticises it as tradition, ask: how many people had to be buried to preserve it?

And next time someone says caste is just “too complex,” don’t give them a statue of Ambedkar.

Give them his book.

And whisper —

He didn’t come to decorate your temple.

He came to dismantle it.