“Turn in the direction you want, the caste is the monster that crosses your path.” This powerful image of Dr Ambedkar caste annihilation, published in 1936, still rings true today. This would be quite obvious from the point of view of the oppressed castes, but they are not the only victims of the caste system. All of India’s society, culture and politics are also victims.

If you are not convinced, you can read The Republic of Castes, by Anand Teltumbde. The book isn’t just about caste – it’s an extensive collection of essays that “deal with issues that can be seen as crucial to our collective survival as a democratic republic”, as the author puts it. However, the caste crosses it as it crosses India itself.

From communalism to sanitation and from elections to economics, Teltumbde helps us see the pervasive and pernicious role of caste in contemporary India. It restores the centrality of caste to our understanding of Indian society and how to change it.

It is a destabilizing book. It is likely to cause you some discomfort at times, regardless of your political leanings. Anand Teltumbde is a radical and fiercely independent thinker who is not afraid to think outside the box. For example, he criticizes India’s “status quo” Constitution, and even holds it responsible for the persistence of caste. The main reason, he says, is that the Constitution laid the groundwork for caste-based reservations. Teltumbde presents a rare and provocative critique of the reservation from a Dalit perspective.

This critique is in line with his belief that the destruction of the caste system calls for the abandonment of caste-based mobilization, as it reinforces divisive caste identities. Thereupon he split from certain sections of the Dalit movement. “There can be no caste-based solution to the problem of inequality,” he says. Instead, Teltumbde advocates working class unity on an anti-caste platform, or rather, a platform that includes the annihilation of caste as a fundamental commitment – “class struggle with a anti-caste core”, as he puts it. He does not believe in the Bahujan approach that attempts to unite a wide range of castes on the basis of their caste identity, ignoring the conflicts that divide them (for example, the exploitative relationships that often prevail between Dalits and the “other backward classes”). He believes that workers must organize as a class around their collective interests, including an end to the caste system.

This may seem like a natural strategy, since most workers fall victim to the caste system in one way or another. One would expect that the rejection of the caste system would appeal to them and also help them to unite. Class struggle and caste struggle seem to be made for each other. Instead, the two diverged and even became mutually hostile. The communist movement and the Dalit movement in India have become rivals if not adversaries. There have been some reconciliation efforts in recent years, but the legacy of mutual suspicion is hard to eradicate. According to Teltumbde, “the greatest obstacle to the growth of a politics of change has been the growing divergence between the Dalit and leftist movements”.

In her diagnosis of this estrangement, Teltumbde reexamines the beginnings of the communist and Dalit movements in India. The communist leaders, or at least the ideologues, were mostly from the upper castes (“mainly a group of Brahmin boys”, as Ambedkar said in an interview), and they did not take caste seriously. This was partly because communist ideologues had a simplistic understanding of the Marxist distinction between “base” and “superstructure” (a broad distinction between the mode of production, on the one hand, and institutions of a more cultural, ideological nature or politics, on the other hand). other). Caste, they thought, would disappear on its own after the Revolution – meanwhile, it was futile to fight it without resolving class contradictions. Some of them, perhaps, felt that the best way to fight caste is to ignore it. The failure of communist leaders to address the caste issue subsequently alienated Dalit activists. The alienation was mutual, as communist leaders felt that the Dalit movement was dividing the working class.

Teltumbde’s analysis is compelling, but I suspect there is a deeper problem. When former communist leaders “feared that confronting the question of caste would lead to organizational breakdown”, as Teltumbde puts it, they certainly lacked the courage to overcome this fear, but the fear itself may not have been not moved. Caste culture is deeply rooted in India and it is not easy to persuade anyone, even among its victims, that the caste system is inherently wrong – not just untouchability, or caste discrimination, or what Hindu nationalists call “casteism”.

For many people, caste is a fact of life, and the idea of ​​getting rid of it does not arise. Moreover, even those who resent the oppression of privileged castes often appreciate the modicum of unity and solidarity they feel within their own caste.

The caste-based mobilizations that Teltumbde laments reflect the tendency of collective action in India to coalesce around caste or community (caste bloc voting is a prominent example). Even Ambedkar’s visionary call for mass conversion to Buddhism failed to find an echo far beyond his own community, the Mahars. In other words, the destruction of the caste system necessarily includes the destruction of one’s own caste – it’s a bit like asking people to walk around without clothes.

No wonder, then, that it is often difficult to incite workers against the caste system per se. This is not to deny that this may still be the way forward. After all, there have been vibrant anti-caste movements in at least some parts of the country, including Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. Teltumbde’s vision of working class unity with an anti-caste core may or may not be easily achievable, but it is at the very least an important line of thought and action.

As mentioned earlier, this book is not just about caste. It is also a broader reflection on Indian society and politics. Many sections of the book are gems in their own right, from the author’s incisive analysis of communalism to his astute profile of Kanshi Ram and his critical assessment of the Aam Aadmi party.

If there is one overriding message in these essays, other than the pervasive monstrosity of caste, it is the failure of Indian democracy – a “masquerade” as Teltumbde calls it.

Indian democracy tends to look rosy in the eyes of the privileged classes because democratic institutions work quite well for them. But the same institutions (elections, parliament, courts, media, education system, etc.) often work in very different, if not diametrically opposed, ways for disadvantaged people. A prime example is the so-called justice system, which is more likely to look like a system of injustice to victims of arbitrary arrests, fabricated cases, gratuitous imprisonments and other forms of harassment. forensic – a common way to keep people out of line. Teltumbde himself is a victim of this system of injustice, incarcerated as he is today under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, or UAPA, a draconian law that has no place in a real democracy.

The health of Indian democracy looks even worse if we consider democracy not only as a method of government but also as a way of life based on freedom, equality and brotherhood. With regard to these constitutional values, “there is not an iota of improvement”, as Teltumbde so aptly puts it. In fact, right now, the country seems to be going backwards every time.

There is a curious omission in the book – the absence of any discussion of gender issues. This is not a review (the author is free to write about what he likes), but a disappointment. Just as communalism and class conflict are linked to caste, as Teltumbde argues, so is patriarchy. Caste reinforces men’s obsession with the subjugation of women, especially among privileged castes, because a free woman is a threat to the purity and unity of the caste. The link between patriarchy and the caste system has been well recognized by a long line of anti-caste and feminist thinkers. Teltumbde’s reflections on gender issues would have enriched this enlightening book.

The Republic of Castes is an invaluable introduction to the essential ideas of Anand Teltumbde, one of the most important thinkers of our time. The book is all the more gripping because it is written in a clear and lively style. Teltumbde is a master at getting to the heart of complex issues and expressing them in simple, powerful words. Few books have made a bigger impression on me since 2002, when I came across The Annihilation of Caste in a dusty library in Allahabad and read it in one sitting.

Jean Drèze is an independent development economist.