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The Logics of Dalit Religion: A Preliminary Scripture of Refusal and Becoming

(not a book of obedience, but a grammar of breaking and making)

Prologue: Not Exodus, but Exit

In other traditions, there is always an origin of bondage and a promise of liberation—a movement from slavery to freedom, from exile to homeland. The figure of Moses leads his people out, guided by a divine command, toward a promised land that is yet to come. But the Dalit condition does not begin in a single moment of captivity, nor does it move toward a singular destination of redemption. It is not a story of exile; it is a structure of continuous placement.

To write a Dalit “bible” is therefore not to narrate an exodus, but to mark an exit without destination. There is no promised land waiting. There is only the refusal of what exists and the creation of what does not yet have a name.

This is not a religion of faith. It is a religion of logic—a set of principles that do not ask for belief, but for recognition.

Book I: On Refusal

In the beginning, there was no purity. There was only division, enforced and named as sacred. The first act of Dalit religion is therefore not worship, but refusal.

Refuse the name given to you.

Refuse the place assigned to you.

Refuse the idea that your life must be explained through another’s language.

This refusal is not passive. It is an active withdrawal from the frameworks that define you. It is the breaking of a mirror in which you have been forced to see yourself as lesser.

Refusal is the first logic because without it, all other acts are absorbed.

Book II: On Non-Reference

You are not born in relation to the Brahmin. You are not defined by opposition. To constantly negate is to remain tied to what you negate.

The second logic is therefore non-reference.

Do not ask: how do we become equal?

Ask: why must equality be measured through them?

Build thought, culture, and desire that do not take the upper caste as their horizon. Let them become irrelevant, not through erasure, but through displacement.

The highest form of critique is not confrontation—it is indifference.

Book III: On the Body

The body has been the primary site of caste. It has been marked, disciplined, and made to carry the weight of hierarchy. Dalit religion begins by reclaiming the body—not as symbol, but as ground of existence.

Your touch is not pollution.

Your labour is not degradation.

Your desire is not excess.

The body is not to be purified; it is to be inhabited fully.

To eat, to love, to dress, to move—these are not trivial acts. They are practices through which the body refuses its assigned meaning.

Book IV: On Anger

Anger has been named as a problem. It has been disciplined, moderated, and redirected into acceptable forms. But Dalit religion recognizes anger as knowledge.

Anger knows what politeness hides.

It remembers what history forgets.

It refuses what comfort normalizes.

Do not be ashamed of anger. But do not let it be captured either. Let it remain untranslatable—a force that cannot be fully absorbed into discourse.

Book V: On Pleasure

The Dalit body has been confined to labour and suffering. Pleasure has been denied, regulated, or made invisible. Dalit religion insists on the right to pleasure without justification.

To enjoy is not betrayal.

To desire is not excess.

To rest is not weakness.

Pleasure is not separate from politics. It is part of the reclamation of life itself.

Book VI: On Merit and Prestige

Merit is the language through which hierarchy disguises itself as fairness. It rewards those who inherit advantage and names it achievement. Dalit religion does not reject excellence, but it rejects the idea that recognition defines worth.

If you enter their institutions, do so without reverence.

If you gain their credentials, do not become their reflection.

Prestige is a tool, not a destination.

Use it, but do not be used by it.

Book VII: On Community

Community is not given; it is made. It does not require permission or recognition. Dalit religion calls for the creation of worlds within the world.

Spaces where language is not corrected.

Where bodies are not judged.

Where presence is not conditional.

These spaces may be temporary, fragmented, incomplete. But they are real.

Belonging is not something to be awaited—it is something to be constructed.

Book VIII: On Memory

Memory is not only about the past; it is about how the present is understood. Dalit memory is often reduced to suffering, to trauma, to documentation of violence. While these are necessary, they are not sufficient.

Remember not only what was done to you, but what you have done.

Remember resistance, creation, survival.

Do not let memory become a cage. Let it be a resource for transformation.

Book IX: On Secrecy and Opacity

Not everything must be revealed. Not everything must be explained. Dalit religion recognizes the value of opacity—of remaining partially unreadable.

You do not owe transparency.

You do not owe access.

In a world that seeks to know you in order to control you, opacity becomes a form of freedom.

Book X: On the Future

The final logic is not about the present, but about what comes after.

Do not imagine liberation as inclusion.

Do not imagine equality as arrival.

The future is not a place where caste disappears by itself. It is something that must be actively created, through practices that do not replicate the structures of the past.

This future may not be fully visible. It may exist only in fragments, in moments, in experiments. But it is already here, in every act that refuses and reimagines.

Epilogue: No Promised Land

There is no final chapter. No arrival. No completion.

Dalit religion does not promise salvation. It offers something else: a set of logics through which life can be lived without reference, without apology, and without waiting.

If there is a Moses here, he does not lead to a promised land.

He leads to a point where the idea of a promised land is no longer necessary.

And from there, the work begins.

Guilty Pleasures of Merit: Dalit Aspiration, Ambedkar’s Foreign Credentials, and the Seduction of Prestige

The critique of “merit” has been central to anti-caste thought. From B. R. Ambedkar onward, it has been repeatedly argued that what is celebrated as merit in caste society is neither neutral nor purely individual—it is structured by access, privilege, and inherited advantage. Education, language, cultural capital, and institutional familiarity all shape who appears “meritorious,” while others are systematically excluded from the conditions that produce such recognition. Yet despite this critique, the idea of merit continues to exert a powerful pull—even within spaces that seek to dismantle it.

This produces a tension that is not easily resolved.

On the one hand, merit is understood as a mechanism of exclusion—a way of legitimizing inequality by presenting it as the outcome of ability rather than structure. On the other hand, it remains a currency of recognition, a means through which individuals can gain access to spaces that would otherwise remain closed. The rejection of merit, therefore, is never absolute; it coexists with a pragmatic engagement with the very structures that are being critiqued.

This tension becomes particularly visible in the way figures like B. R. Ambedkar are remembered and invoked. Ambedkar’s intellectual and political contributions are vast, but in popular discourse, a recurring emphasis is placed on his educational credentials—his studies at Columbia University and the London School of Economics. These credentials are often highlighted as evidence of his brilliance, as if his authority requires validation through recognition by Western institutions.

This emphasis raises an important question: why do such credentials matter so much?

Part of the answer lies in the structure of recognition itself. In a society where Dalit intellectual capacity has historically been denied or questioned, credentials from globally prestigious institutions function as a form of counter-proof. They disrupt the assumption of inferiority by demonstrating excellence within frameworks that are widely acknowledged as authoritative.

But this reliance on external validation also reveals a deeper problem: the persistence of a hierarchy of knowledge and prestige that remains intact even within anti-caste discourse. The value of Ambedkar’s thought becomes intertwined with the institutions that recognized him, rather than being grounded solely in the content and transformative power of his ideas.

This is not unique to Dalit communities; it reflects a broader social condition in which prestige is unevenly distributed and deeply internalized. However, for those who have been historically excluded, the stakes are different. Recognition is not merely symbolic; it is tied to access, mobility, and survival.

This produces what might be called a politics of aspiration.

Aspiration, in this context, is not simply a desire for upward mobility; it is a response to structural denial. It involves navigating systems that are not designed to accommodate one’s presence, and using available markers of success—education, credentials, professional achievement—to claim space within them.

Yet aspiration is not free from contradiction. It can reproduce the very hierarchies it seeks to overcome. When prestige becomes the primary measure of value, it risks reinforcing the logic that only certain forms of achievement are worthy of recognition. It can create a situation where inclusion is pursued within existing frameworks rather than through their transformation.

This is where the critique of merit returns with renewed force.

If merit is structured by inequality, then achieving recognition through merit does not necessarily dismantle that inequality. It may enable individual mobility, but it does not automatically alter the conditions that shape collective experience. The system remains, even as some individuals move within it.

At the same time, rejecting merit entirely is not a straightforward solution. Doing so would mean disengaging from the very structures that provide access to education, employment, and resources. For many, this is not a viable option. The challenge, then, is not simply to reject merit, but to redefine what counts as merit and to question the hierarchies that underpin it.

Ambedkar himself offers a way of thinking through this tension. While he excelled within elite institutions, his project was not to validate those institutions, but to use the knowledge and tools he acquired to challenge the system of caste. His engagement with prestige was strategic, not deferential.

This distinction is crucial.

The issue is not the pursuit of education or achievement, but the terms on which they are valued. When credentials become ends in themselves, they risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that exclude. When they are used as tools for critique and transformation, they can become part of a broader emancipatory project.

The persistence of merit as an idea, even within anti-caste spaces, reflects the difficulty of escaping the structures one inhabits. It is not simply a matter of belief, but of material conditions, institutional frameworks, and social expectations.

Rather than framing this as a failure or contradiction, it may be more productive to see it as a site of struggle—a space where competing logics coexist and must be negotiated. The task is not to purify this space, but to engage with its complexity.

Ultimately, the question is not whether merit should be accepted or rejected, but how it can be reimagined. Can recognition be decoupled from prestige? Can value be defined in ways that do not reproduce hierarchy? Can aspiration be aligned with transformation rather than assimilation?

These are not easy questions, and they do not have immediate answers. But they point toward a necessary rethinking of how anti-caste politics engages with the structures of recognition that continue to shape social life.

In this rethinking lies the possibility of moving beyond the tension between critique and participation—toward a politics that does not simply navigate existing hierarchies, but seeks to transform them.

Living Like a Dalit, Living Like a Cockroach: Sewage Is My Abode

To live “like a Dalit” in a caste society has often meant being forced into a relationship with what the rest of society refuses to see. Not metaphorically, but materially—through sewage, waste, drains, and the infrastructures that carry the city’s excess. The city prides itself on cleanliness, on the smooth disappearance of filth, on the illusion that waste is managed, contained, and removed. But this disappearance is never complete. It depends on bodies—specific bodies—whose lives are tied to what is discarded.

For generations, Dalit communities have been positioned at this intersection between the city and its waste. The sewer is not just a site of labour; it becomes a condition of existence. It shapes where one lives, how one is seen, and what one is allowed to become. The proximity to sewage is not accidental—it is structurally assigned.

This assignment produces a life lived under conditions of constant exposure. The smell of drains, the texture of waste, the risk of toxic gases, the physical danger of entering confined spaces—these are not occasional encounters but recurring realities. The body learns to navigate them, but it is never untouched by them.

Yet what is most striking is not only the material condition, but the way it is translated into social meaning.

The one who works with waste is made to carry its stigma. The labour becomes identity. The person is not seen as someone who handles sewage, but as someone who belongs to it. This is how caste operates—not only by assigning work, but by attaching that work to the body in ways that cannot be easily shed.

The city depends on this arrangement while pretending it does not exist. Sewers run underground, out of sight. Cleaning happens at odd hours, away from public attention. The labour is necessary, but it must remain invisible. This invisibility allows the illusion of a clean, modern city to persist.

But invisibility is not neutrality. It is a form of erasure.

To live in such a system is to inhabit a paradox. One is essential to the functioning of the city, yet excluded from its recognition. One ensures cleanliness, yet is denied dignity. One is present everywhere, yet seen nowhere.

This condition produces not only physical strain but also a profound sense of social distance. It shapes interactions, opportunities, and aspirations. It limits movement—not always through explicit prohibition, but through subtle forms of exclusion that signal where one belongs and where one does not.

At the same time, this life is not reducible to suffering alone. It is also marked by resilience, by the ability to navigate hostile conditions, by forms of community and solidarity that emerge within shared experience. These dimensions are often overlooked, overshadowed by the dominant narrative of degradation.

But to acknowledge resilience is not to justify the condition. It is to recognize that life persists even under constraint.

The problem is not that some people work with waste. The problem is that this work is tied to caste, that it is inherited, stigmatized, and unequally distributed. It is that the burden of maintaining the city’s cleanliness falls disproportionately on those who are denied the benefits of that very cleanliness.

To describe this as “living in sewage” is not to reduce a life to filth, but to expose the conditions under which that life is forced to exist. It is to confront the uncomfortable truth that the modern city, for all its claims of progress, continues to reproduce deeply unequal relationships to space, labour, and dignity.

What is required is not sympathy, but transformation. A rethinking of how waste is managed, how labour is valued, and how dignity is distributed. A recognition that no one should be structurally bound to the most hazardous and stigmatized forms of work.

Until such a transformation occurs, the sewer will remain not just an infrastructure, but a social boundary—one that separates those who can forget about waste from those who must live with it.

And in that separation lies the enduring reality of caste.

Across the Nala: Caste, Queerness, and the Cartography of Exclusion in the City

The city is often imagined as a space of anonymity—a place where identities dissolve into crowds, where caste becomes invisible, and where modern life promises escape from the rigidities of the village. Yet Across the Nala: A Queer Dalit Bahujan Zine of Stories from Delhi dismantles this illusion with quiet force, revealing that the city is not free of caste but is instead deeply mapped by it—inscribed in neighbourhoods, infrastructures, relationships, and even desire itself. Emerging from a storytelling workshop among Dalit queer individuals, the zine assembles lived experiences into what can be understood as a counter-cartography of Delhi: not a map of roads and landmarks, but of exclusion, shame, longing, and fragile belonging. At the center of this cartography lies the metaphor of the “nala”—a drain—an image that draws attention to what the city expels, both materially and socially. Unlike rivers, which carry cultural significance, the nala signifies waste, abjection, and that which must remain unseen; in this sense, it becomes an apt metaphor for how Dalit queer lives are positioned within urban space—present yet disavowed.

Through its narratives, the zine makes visible how caste geography operates within the city. Delhi is not merely divided administratively but affectively; neighbourhoods carry meanings, reputations, and hierarchies that shape social interaction. To disclose one’s location is never neutral—it can determine desirability, acceptance, or rejection. Accounts of being excluded on dating apps due to one’s locality reveal how caste operates subtly yet pervasively, embedding itself in the language of preference and taste. The city, therefore, is not a neutral backdrop but an active participant in the production of inequality. For Dalit queer individuals, this produces a layered marginality: queer spaces, often imagined as inclusive, remain structured by caste-coded norms. One may achieve visibility as queer but remain excluded as Dalit; one may enter the city but never fully inhabit it. The promise of urban anonymity collapses under the persistence of caste recognition, revealing that visibility does not necessarily translate into belonging.

Yet the zine does not merely document exclusion; it also traces fragile and alternative forms of belonging that emerge within and against these structures. Instead of ownership-based belonging—rooted in property, capital, or dominance—it gestures toward a relational form of inhabiting the city, grounded in fleeting connections, friendships, shared moments, and memory. This mode of belonging is ephemeral and precarious, but it allows for presence without full incorporation. At the same time, this presence is marked by anxiety. Contributors describe an ongoing negotiation with space, appearance, and identity—an awareness of being constantly read, evaluated, and potentially excluded. Clothing, speech, and self-presentation become sites of adjustment, revealing how the body itself is shaped by the need to navigate hostile environments. Withholding emerges as a strategy—concealing aspects of identity to gain access—but this strategy comes at the cost of fragmentation, producing a distance between self and representation.

What the zine ultimately foregrounds is caste as lived affect rather than abstract structure. It shows how caste shapes not only access to resources but also the emotional texture of everyday life—feelings of shame, desire, fear, and longing. In doing so, it challenges mainstream queer discourse, which often assumes a universal subject defined primarily by sexuality or gender. By centering caste, the zine exposes the limits of such frameworks, asking who gets to feel safe, who is desired, and whose bodies remain marginal even within spaces of supposed inclusion. It complicates the idea of urban progress, demonstrating that while the city may offer certain freedoms, these freedoms are unevenly distributed. The urban does not erase caste; it reorganizes it.

The form of the zine itself reinforces this intervention. As a collaborative, self-published work, it resists the authority and sanitisation of institutional knowledge production. Its fragmented, intimate, and multi-voiced structure mirrors the complexity of the experiences it documents, refusing singular narratives or neat conclusions. In this sense, it is not only a representation of Dalit queer life but a method of thinking—one that foregrounds what is usually ignored, maps what is usually hidden, and insists on the validity of lived experience as a site of knowledge. Ultimately, Across the Nala forces a rethinking of the city—not as a neutral space of opportunity, but as a terrain of power where caste, class, and sexuality intersect in deeply unequal ways. It reminds us that belonging is never given but constantly negotiated, and that any account of urban life that ignores caste remains fundamentally incomplete.

The Architecture of Inequality: Gated Knowledge and the Making of Elite Space at Ashoka University

Universities are often imagined as spaces of openness—sites where knowledge circulates freely, where hierarchies are questioned, and where intellectual life transcends social boundaries. Yet this imagination obscures a more material reality: universities are also built environments, structured through land, money, design, and access. To understand inequality within higher education, one must therefore move beyond curriculum and ideology to examine architecture itself as a political form.

The rise of private liberal arts institutions in India, exemplified by Ashoka University, marks a significant shift in this landscape. These institutions present themselves as progressive, global, and intellectually rigorous. They emphasize critical thinking, interdisciplinary learning, and exposure to diverse ideas. However, beneath this discourse lies a spatial and economic structure that produces a very different effect: the consolidation of elite space under the guise of openness.

Ashoka is not simply a university; it is a gated ecosystem. Located away from the dense, chaotic textures of urban life, its campus is designed as a self-contained environment. Entry is controlled, movement is regulated, and the boundaries between inside and outside are sharply drawn. This is not incidental—it is architectural. Gates, security systems, landscaped pathways, and curated interiors all contribute to a sense of enclosure.

This enclosure produces a particular kind of subject.

The student who inhabits this space is not only educated but insulated. The campus shields them from the immediate realities of inequality that shape life beyond its walls. The everyday encounters that might disrupt comfort—crowded public transport, informal settlements, visible poverty—are absent or distant. What remains is a controlled environment where inequality can be discussed as an abstract concept rather than experienced as a material condition.

This is what might be called the gentrification of knowledge.

Within Ashoka, discussions of caste, gender, and marginality are present, often encouraged. Courses are offered, seminars are held, and critical frameworks are taught. Yet these engagements occur within a space that is itself structured by exclusion. The cost of education, the processes of admission, and the social composition of the student body all contribute to a demographic that is disproportionately privileged.

Financial aid programs exist, but they function within a broader system that remains inaccessible to many. The presence of a few students from marginalized backgrounds does not dismantle the structure; it often serves to legitimize it. Inclusion becomes symbolic, while the overall architecture of inequality remains intact.

The spatial design of the campus reinforces this dynamic. Residences, dining halls, classrooms, and recreational spaces are integrated into a seamless environment. The need to leave the campus is minimized. Life becomes internal, self-sufficient. This produces a form of institutional intimacy that is detached from the wider social world.

In contrast, public universities—despite their own limitations—often exist within more porous environments. They are embedded in cities, connected to public infrastructures, and accessible to a broader range of students. Their spaces are less controlled, more chaotic, and often more reflective of social diversity. The absence of strict gating allows for a different kind of interaction—one that is less insulated, more unpredictable.

Ashoka’s model represents a departure from this. It embodies a vision of higher education that is aligned with global elite institutions—private, well-funded, and carefully curated. This alignment is not only academic but architectural. The campus mirrors the aesthetics of global privilege: clean lines, open lawns, modern buildings, and controlled access.

This aesthetic is not neutral. It communicates a certain idea of what education should look like—orderly, refined, and removed from disorder. It produces a sense of belonging for those who are already familiar with such environments, while subtly marking others as out of place.

Caste operates within this structure in complex ways. It is not always explicitly visible, but it shapes access, comfort, and participation. Students from marginalized backgrounds may enter the space, but they often do so as exceptions within a dominant norm. The architecture does not adapt to them; they must adapt to it.

This adaptation can be both material and affective. It involves navigating unfamiliar social codes, adjusting to new forms of interaction, and managing the distance between one’s background and the environment one inhabits. The campus, in this sense, becomes a site of both opportunity and alienation.

The language of liberal education can sometimes obscure this tension. By focusing on ideas, debate, and intellectual growth, it risks overlooking the material conditions that make such engagement possible. It assumes a level of comfort and stability that is not universally available.

The result is a paradox: a university that teaches critical thinking while being embedded in a structure that limits the scope of that critique. Inequality is analyzed, but the space in which it is analyzed remains largely unquestioned.

To call this the architecture of inequality is to emphasize that exclusion is not only economic or social—it is spatial. It is built into walls, gates, pathways, and layouts. It shapes how people move, interact, and experience the world.

Ashoka, in this sense, is not an anomaly but a sign of a broader trend. As higher education becomes increasingly privatized, the production of knowledge is tied more closely to the production of elite space. Universities become less like public institutions and more like enclaves—sites of controlled access and curated experience.

The challenge, then, is not simply to critique such institutions, but to rethink what education should be. Can a university truly be inclusive if it is physically and economically gated? Can critical thought flourish in spaces that are insulated from the realities they seek to analyze?

These questions do not have easy answers. But they point to a necessary shift in perspective: from viewing universities as neutral sites of learning to recognizing them as active participants in the reproduction of inequality.

In the end, the architecture of a university is not just about buildings. It is about the kind of world it creates—and the kinds of worlds it excludes.

Finding Trans in Ambedkar: Fluidity, Refusal, and the Politics of Becoming

To speak of “finding trans in B. R. Ambedkar” is not to make a historical claim about identity, nor to anachronistically assign contemporary categories to a figure rooted in a different time. It is, rather, a conceptual and political exercise—an attempt to read Ambedkar against the grain of fixed identities, to locate within his thought a radical grammar of transformation, refusal, and becoming that resonates with trans experience.

Ambedkar’s project was, at its core, a project of unmaking. He did not seek to reform caste from within; he sought its annihilation. This annihilation was not merely structural but deeply embodied. Caste, for Ambedkar, was not an abstract system—it was inscribed on the body, regulating touch, movement, marriage, and existence itself. To escape caste was therefore not simply to change one’s social position; it was to refuse an assigned identity at the most fundamental level.

This is where a trans reading becomes possible.

Trans experience, in its most radical articulation, involves a refusal of the identities imposed at birth. It challenges the idea that the body must align with predetermined categories, that one’s place in the world is fixed and immutable. It is a politics of self-making, of asserting the right to become otherwise.

Ambedkar’s life and thought resonate with this politics of becoming. His conversion to Buddhism, for instance, can be read as a profound act of identity transformation. It was not merely a religious shift, but a rejection of the entire framework that defined him as untouchable. In choosing a new identity, Ambedkar asserted a fundamental principle: that one need not remain what one has been made to be.

This principle aligns closely with trans politics. Both involve a refusal of naturalized categories, an insistence that identity is not destiny. Both challenge the structures that seek to fix individuals within rigid hierarchies.

At the same time, Ambedkar’s critique of caste exposes the violence inherent in such fixation. Caste operates by assigning individuals a place at birth and enforcing that placement through social, economic, and cultural mechanisms. Gender, similarly, is often treated as a fixed category, assigned and enforced in ways that limit possibility.

To find trans in Ambedkar, then, is to recognize a shared struggle against the naturalization of hierarchy.

This does not mean collapsing caste and gender into a single framework. The histories, experiences, and structures are distinct. But there is a conceptual affinity in the refusal of imposed identity and the assertion of self-definition.

Ambedkar’s emphasis on dignity is also crucial here. For him, the struggle against caste was fundamentally a struggle for human dignity—the right to be recognized as fully human, not as a category defined by others. Trans politics similarly centers dignity, challenging the dehumanization that arises from rigid gender norms.

Both struggles confront the question of recognition: who gets to define who you are? And what happens when that definition is imposed rather than chosen?

Ambedkar’s answer was radical. He did not seek recognition within the existing framework; he sought to transform the framework itself. This is evident in his rejection of Hinduism and his embrace of Buddhism as a new ethical and social order. It was a move from within to without—from negotiation to rupture.

This movement resonates with trans experiences of transition. Transition is not merely a change in appearance or identity; it is often a reconfiguration of one’s relationship to the world. It involves navigating structures that may resist or deny recognition, and finding ways to exist despite that resistance.

There is also an affective dimension to this connection. Ambedkar’s writing carries a sense of urgency, of refusal, of a deep dissatisfaction with the given. This dissatisfaction is not passive; it is generative. It drives the search for alternatives, for new ways of being.

Trans experience similarly involves a dissatisfaction with imposed identity—not as a personal failing, but as a response to structures that do not accommodate one’s existence. It is a dissatisfaction that leads to action, to transformation.

Yet, finding trans in Ambedkar also requires caution. It is important not to appropriate or flatten distinct struggles. The goal is not to subsume Ambedkar into trans discourse, but to create a dialogue between them—to see how his thought can illuminate questions of identity, transformation, and resistance in new ways.

This dialogue can be particularly productive in contemporary contexts, where questions of caste and gender increasingly intersect. Dalit queer and trans individuals, for instance, navigate multiple layers of marginalization, drawing on both Ambedkarite and queer/trans frameworks to articulate their experiences.

In such contexts, Ambedkar’s emphasis on self-respect, dignity, and the right to redefine one’s identity becomes deeply relevant. It provides a foundation upon which more expansive understandings of identity can be built.

Ultimately, to find trans in Ambedkar is to recognize that his thought contains a radical openness to becoming. It challenges the idea that identities are fixed, that hierarchies are natural, that the given must be accepted.

It invites us to imagine a world where individuals are not bound by the categories imposed upon them, but are free to define themselves. A world where dignity is not conditional, but universal.

In this sense, the connection between Ambedkar and trans politics is not about identity, but about possibility. It is about the shared commitment to a future where the structures that constrain human life are dismantled, and new forms of existence can emerge.

And in that commitment, the question is not only what we find in Ambedkar, but what we can become through him.

Dhurandhar and the Dalit Hero: From Managed Victimhood to Uncontainable Rebellion

The imagined world of Dhurandhar marks a decisive break from the dominant grammar through which Dalit lives have been represented in Indian cultural and political discourse. For decades, particularly within left-liberal frameworks, the Dalit figure has been rendered legible primarily as a victim—wounded, violated, structurally oppressed, and often tragically extinguished. This figure evokes sympathy, outrage, and moral reflection, but rarely power. He suffers, he speaks, he documents—but he does not decisively alter the terms of the world that produces his suffering.

Dhurandhar disrupts this script at its very foundation.

The narrative begins within a familiar terrain of caste violence: a Dalit family shattered, a father killed, sisters subjected to brutal sexual violence. This is not unfamiliar; it echoes countless real and fictional accounts where Dalit bodies become sites upon which caste power is inscribed. But where the narrative departs radically is in what follows. The protagonist does not remain within the frame of mourning or legal redress. He does not become the exemplary victim who seeks justice through institutions that have historically failed him. Instead, he transforms—his subjectivity shifts from one of injury to one of uncontainable assertion.

This transformation is what makes the figure of the Dhurandhar Dalit hero so unsettling within liberal discourse.

Left-liberal narratives are deeply invested in the Dalit as a figure of moral appeal. The suffering Dalit becomes the ground upon which the liberal subject performs empathy. His pain is necessary—it sustains the ethical self-image of the observer. But this structure depends on a crucial condition: the Dalit must remain within the bounds of victimhood. He can critique, he can narrate, he can even accuse—but he cannot fundamentally disrupt the order that produces him.

In Dhurandhar, this condition collapses.

The protagonist does not remain a victim long enough to be absorbed into the liberal economy of sympathy. His grief does not translate into documentation or petition; it becomes something else—an unmediated break with the structure itself. He does not wait for recognition; he produces his own terms of justice, however unsettling those terms may be for the frameworks that seek to contain him.

What emerges here is not merely a character, but a counter-figure to the liberal Dalit subject.

In the liberal schema, the Dalit often dies—if not physically, then symbolically. His story ends in tragedy, in exposure of injustice, in a call for reform. The narrative closure reaffirms the moral urgency of the issue but leaves the structure intact. The Dalit’s death becomes meaningful, but it is also contained. It does not destabilize the system; it becomes part of its critique.

In Dhurandhar, there is no such closure.

The protagonist does not die an ignominious death. He survives. More importantly, he acts. His survival is not quiet; it is disruptive. He does not seek to be recognized as a victim; he becomes a figure that cannot be easily categorized within existing moral frameworks. He is neither the passive sufferer nor the assimilated subject. He is something else—a figure of excess.

This excess is what transforms him into a kind of anonymous national hero. Not hero in the conventional sense of state recognition or public celebration, but in a more unsettling sense: a figure who embodies a form of justice that the nation cannot officially acknowledge, yet cannot entirely dismiss. He exists in the margins of recognition, where his actions resonate but are not formally sanctioned.

The anonymity is crucial. It prevents his absorption into institutional narratives. Unlike figures who are celebrated, commemorated, and ultimately neutralized, the Dhurandhar hero remains unfixed. He is not easily turned into a symbol that can be managed. His story circulates, but it does not settle.

This stands in stark contrast to the left-liberal insistence on visibility as the primary mode of politics. Visibility, in this framework, is assumed to lead to recognition, and recognition to justice. But Dhurandhar suggests something different: that visibility can also be a trap, a way of fixing the Dalit subject within a narrative of suffering.

By remaining partially outside this economy of visibility, the Dhurandhar figure escapes its limits.

The discomfort this produces is significant. For liberal audiences, the figure is difficult to process. He cannot be easily empathized with, because he does not remain within the bounds of suffering. He cannot be easily celebrated, because his actions do not align with the norms of acceptable resistance. He disrupts the moral clarity upon which liberal politics depends.

This disruption reveals something deeper about the politics of representation.

The preference for the helpless Dalit is not merely aesthetic; it is structural. It ensures that the Dalit remains within a position that can be engaged with but not feared. The strong, assertive Dalit—particularly one who refuses institutional mediation—introduces a different affect: not sympathy, but unease. He cannot be easily spoken for, and therefore cannot be easily controlled.

Dhurandhar brings this unease to the forefront.

It forces a confrontation with the limits of existing frameworks. It asks what happens when the Dalit subject refuses to remain within the narrative of victimhood. It exposes the extent to which even progressive politics relies on a certain stability of roles—where the oppressed remain oppressed in recognizable ways.

At the same time, the figure is not without ambiguity. His assertion does not necessarily offer a clear alternative framework. It operates in a space of rupture rather than resolution. This is precisely what makes it powerful—and difficult. It does not provide answers; it destabilizes questions.

In this sense, Dhurandhar is less a story of revenge than a story of refusal. A refusal to remain within the terms set by both oppressive structures and their liberal critiques. A refusal to be reduced to suffering. A refusal to wait.

The Dalit hero here is not asking for inclusion. He is not seeking validation. He is not performing respectability. He is asserting a presence that exceeds the frameworks available to interpret it.

And it is in this excess that the narrative derives its force.

Ultimately, Dhurandhar challenges the viewer to reconsider what counts as political agency. It moves beyond the familiar terrain of rights, recognition, and reform, and enters a more unsettling space where the terms themselves are in question. It suggests that as long as the Dalit remains confined to the role of the victim—however sympathetically portrayed—the structure remains intact.

The transformation of victimhood into rebellion, then, is not just a narrative shift. It is a theoretical intervention. It exposes the limits of a politics that is comfortable with suffering but uneasy with power.

And in doing so, it leaves us with an uncomfortable but necessary question:

what would it mean to take Dalit assertion seriously—not as something to be managed or interpreted, but as something that fundamentally alters the terms of the social?

The Sanitised Dalit and the Fear of Anger: Upper-Caste Imagination, Comfort, and the Politics of Acceptable Subalternity

The upper-caste imagination, particularly in its liberal and academic forms, has long been invested in producing a certain kind of Dalit subject—one that is intelligible, respectable, and above all, non-threatening. This subject is articulate but not abrasive, critical but not confrontational, wounded but never enraged. It is a figure that can be accommodated within existing frameworks of empathy and reform. What this imagination cannot easily process, however, is the figure of the angry Dalit—the one who refuses civility, who speaks in tones that disrupt comfort, and whose presence is not merely a reminder of injustice but a challenge to the very structure that sustains it.

This distinction between the “acceptable” and the “unacceptable” Dalit is not incidental. It is foundational to how caste power reproduces itself in contemporary settings. The upper-caste subject, even when progressive, often seeks engagement with Dalit life on terms that do not fundamentally unsettle their own position. The result is a sanitised Dalit—a curated version of marginality that can be consumed without discomfort.

This sanitisation operates at multiple levels. In literature, Dalit writing is often celebrated when it is reflective, poignant, and narratively contained. In academia, Dalit thought is welcomed when it can be translated into theoretical language. In public discourse, Dalit figures are appreciated when they embody resilience and dignity without expressing rage. What is systematically excluded is anger as a legitimate mode of being.

Anger, in this context, is not merely an emotion. It is a form of political presence. It disrupts the expectation that the oppressed must remain composed, that critique must be polite, and that suffering must be expressed in ways that do not disturb the listener. The angry Dalit does not seek acceptance; he demands recognition. And it is precisely this demand that produces discomfort.

To understand this discomfort, one must recognize that upper-caste liberalism is structured around the politics of comfort. It allows for engagement with injustice, but within limits. These limits are not always explicit, but they are deeply felt. They determine what can be said, how it can be said, and who can say it. When Dalit expression exceeds these limits, it is often read as excessive, inappropriate, or even dangerous.

The work of Namdeo Dhasal offers a powerful counterpoint to this sanitised imagination. Dhasal’s poetry is raw, abrasive, and unapologetically confrontational. It refuses the aesthetic norms of refinement and instead embraces a language that is deeply embedded in the lived realities of Dalit life—its violence, its sexuality, its contradictions. His work does not seek to make the reader comfortable; it seeks to force an encounter with what is usually hidden.

Dhasal’s anger is not incidental to his poetry; it is its driving force. It emerges from a position that refuses to separate aesthetics from politics, language from life. For upper-caste readers accustomed to sanitized representations, this form of expression can be deeply unsettling. It disrupts the expectation that Dalit writing should be accessible, interpretable, and above all, non-threatening.

Similarly, B. R. Ambedkar, often domesticated within academic and political discourse as a constitutionalist and reformer, was also a figure of profound anger. His critique of caste was not mild; it was devastating. He described Hindu society in terms that left little room for reconciliation. Yet, in contemporary representations, this anger is often softened, reframed, or overshadowed by his role as the architect of the Constitution.

This selective memory is telling. It reveals a preference for the Ambedkar who can be integrated into the narrative of the nation, rather than the Ambedkar who fundamentally challenges its foundations. The radical edge of his thought is blunted in order to make it more palatable.

The distinction between the “strong” and the “soft” Dalit emerges from this dynamic. The strong Dalit—angry, assertive, and unwilling to conform—represents a threat. He cannot be easily incorporated into existing frameworks. He does not seek validation; he demands transformation. The soft Dalit, by contrast, is more easily accepted. He is articulate, composed, and willing to engage within established norms. He critiques, but does not disrupt.

This is not to suggest that softness is inherently problematic, but to highlight how it is preferentially rewarded within upper-caste structures. The soft Dalit is seen as reasonable, approachable, and deserving of support. The strong Dalit is seen as aggressive, excessive, and difficult to engage with.

This differential reception reveals the underlying logic of caste power. It is not only about exclusion but about regulation—about determining the forms through which marginality can be expressed. By privileging certain modes of expression over others, the system maintains control over the terms of engagement.

The fear of the Dalit strongman is particularly significant. It is not merely a fear of physical power, but of symbolic disruption. The strong Dalit challenges the image of the subaltern as passive and dependent. He reclaims agency in a way that cannot be easily mediated. This reclamation destabilizes the moral economy within which upper-caste liberalism operates.

In contrast, the acceptance of the soft Dalit reflects a desire for stability. It allows for the appearance of inclusion without requiring fundamental change. The soft Dalit can be celebrated, supported, and even elevated, but always within limits. His presence does not threaten the structure; it affirms it.

This dynamic is evident in academic spaces, cultural institutions, and public discourse. Dalit voices are included, but often on terms that align with dominant expectations. When those voices exceed these expectations—when they become too angry, too confrontational, too unfiltered—they are marginalized or dismissed.

The problem, then, is not simply one of representation, but of recognition. To recognize Dalit anger is to accept that the existing order is not merely flawed but deeply unjust. It requires confronting the discomfort that such recognition produces.

Upper-caste imagination resists this confrontation. It prefers a version of Dalit life that can be engaged with at a safe distance—one that evokes empathy without demanding transformation. The sanitised Dalit serves this purpose. He allows the upper-caste subject to feel progressive without being challenged.

But this comfort comes at a cost. It limits the scope of understanding, reduces the complexity of lived experience, and perpetuates the very hierarchies it claims to oppose. By excluding anger, it excludes a crucial dimension of political life.

To move beyond this requires a willingness to engage with discomfort. It requires accepting that Dalit expression will not always align with dominant norms, that it may be abrasive, unsettling, and difficult to process. It requires recognizing that anger is not a failure of articulation, but a form of truth.

In this sense, the question is not why upper castes fear Dalit anger, but what that fear reveals. It reveals a deep investment in maintaining control over the terms of engagement. It reveals an unwillingness to confront the full implications of caste. And it reveals the limits of a politics that prioritizes comfort over transformation.

Ultimately, the figure of the angry Dalit challenges the very foundations of this politics. He refuses to be sanitised, to be made palatable, to be reduced to a symbol. He insists on being recognized in his entirety—anger, contradiction, and all.

And it is in this insistence that the possibility of a different politics emerges—one that does not seek to manage discomfort, but to confront it, and in doing so, to move beyond the limits of the present.

Khairlanji and the Violence of Constitutional Containment: Dalit Rage Beyond the Limits of Legality

The Khairlanji massacre is often narrated as a moment of extreme caste brutality followed by the eventual delivery of justice through legal means. This narrative is not false—but it is profoundly incomplete. What it obscures is the deeper structure within which such violence becomes intelligible: a structure where caste violence is spectacular and immediate, but justice is procedural, delayed, and mediated through the slow machinery of the state. In this gap between violence and justice, something crucial is produced—not resolution, but containment.

The language of constitutional morality, associated with B. R. Ambedkar, is repeatedly invoked as the ultimate horizon of response. But what has emerged in practice is not the radical transformation Ambedkar envisioned, but a disciplinary regime that governs how Dalits are allowed to react to their own oppression. Constitutionalism, instead of functioning as an instrument of annihilation of caste, often operates as a mechanism that absorbs outrage, translates it into procedure, and neutralizes its disruptive potential.

Khairlanji exposes this mechanism with brutal clarity. The violence inflicted on Dalit bodies was not restrained, not procedural, not civil. It was intimate, excessive, and designed to terrorize. Yet the response demanded from Dalit communities was the opposite: patience, faith in institutions, and adherence to legal channels. This produces a structural asymmetry so stark that it can only be understood as ideological: violence is allowed to exceed limits, but resistance must remain within them.

This is not merely a contradiction—it is a strategy.

The insistence on constitutional routes as the only legitimate form of response functions to govern Dalit anger. It transforms rage into representation, grief into documentation, and political urgency into bureaucratic timelines. In doing so, it ensures that the system remains intact even as it appears to address its own failures. Justice becomes something that is always forthcoming, never immediate; promised, but perpetually deferred.

The protests that followed Khairlanji briefly ruptured this logic. They were not polite, not easily legible within liberal frameworks. They exceeded the expected script of mourning and entered the terrain of disruption. Roads were blocked, public spaces were occupied, and anger refused to be translated into the language of petitions. These moments were significant precisely because they refused containment.

And it is here that the discomfort of liberal politics becomes most visible.

For left-liberal frameworks, the problem is not violence itself—after all, they readily acknowledge the brutality of caste. The problem is uncontained response. Dalit rage, when it exceeds the boundaries of civility and legality, becomes unintelligible, even threatening. It disrupts the moral economy within which the liberal subject operates—a space where injustice can be recognized, but only if the response remains manageable.

What this reveals is that liberalism is not a space of unrestricted freedom, but a regime of controlled dissent. It allows critique, but only in forms that do not destabilize its own foundations. It celebrates resistance, but only when that resistance can be absorbed, theorized, and ultimately neutralized.

To insist that the response to Khairlanji must remain within constitutional limits is therefore not a neutral position. It is a political act—one that prioritizes the stability of the system over the intensity of injustice. It demands that Dalits trust a framework that has repeatedly failed to prevent such violence, and that they express their anger in ways that do not disrupt the very order that produces their suffering.

Against this, the assertion that responses must exceed constitutionalism is not a rejection of law, but a refusal to let law define the limits of justice. It is to recognize that legality is not equivalent to justice, and that adherence to procedure can become a form of complicity when it suppresses the urgency of lived experience.

Dalit rage, in this context, must be understood not as excess, but as political clarity. It recognizes what constitutional discourse often obscures: that the system is not neutral, that delay is not accidental, and that recognition often comes only after irreparable harm. Rage refuses to wait. It refuses to be translated into acceptable forms. It insists on the immediacy of injustice and the inadequacy of available responses.

This does not mean that every form of response is justified, but it does mean that the legitimacy of response cannot be determined solely by the state or by liberal norms of civility. To do so would be to reproduce the very hierarchy that renders Dalit lives vulnerable in the first place.

Khairlanji, then, must be read not only as an event of violence, but as a limit case for political thought. It forces a confrontation with an uncomfortable truth: that a politics confined to constitutionalism may be incapable of addressing the depth of caste violence. It demands a rethinking of what counts as legitimate action, legitimate emotion, and legitimate politics.

To remain within the comfort of legality is to accept a world where justice is always delayed and always incomplete. To move beyond it is to enter a space of uncertainty—one where responses cannot be fully predicted or controlled. It is precisely this uncertainty that liberal frameworks seek to avoid.

But for those who live within the constant certainty of caste violence, uncertainty may be the only space where transformation becomes possible.

In this sense, Khairlanji is not only a tragedy—it is a challenge. It asks whether we are willing to confront the limits of our own political frameworks, or whether we will continue to manage injustice through the language of procedure. It asks whether we can recognize rage not as a threat to order, but as a demand for a different one.

And until that question is answered, the gap between violence and justice will remain—not as an accident, but as a structure.

Abuse, Subaltern Speech, and Liberal Hypocrisy: The JNU–Anshul Kumar Controversy Revisited

The controversy around Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Anshul Kumar at JNU is not simply an incident of academic disagreement or personal misconduct; it is a revealing fracture in the moral and political claims of left-liberal academia itself. At its core lies a fundamental question that extends Spivak’s own provocation—Can the subaltern speak?—into a more uncomfortable terrain: what happens when the subaltern speaks in a language that refuses civility, polish, and institutional acceptability? The moment Anshul Kumar was interrupted over pronunciation and denied the ability to complete his question, what unfolded was not just a breakdown of academic decorum but a reenactment of the very epistemic exclusion that subaltern theory claims to critique. His subsequent turn to abuse, widely condemned as excessive and inappropriate, must be read not merely as an individual failure but as a structural symptom—the eruption of a voice that has no sanctioned channel of expression within elite academic discourse.

In platforms like notsomeritorios.com, Anshul Kumar’s position is not framed as a defense of abuse for its own sake, but as a recognition of its function: abuse becomes the last available language of the structurally unheard. When speech is interrupted, corrected, and disciplined into acceptable forms, what remains is rupture. Abuse here is not simply insult; it is a refusal to conform to the linguistic and affective norms that govern elite spaces. It is, in this sense, a form of epistemic disobedience—a breaking of the rules that determine what counts as legitimate knowledge and who gets to produce it. Yet this is precisely where left-liberal academia reveals its contradiction. While it claims to champion marginalized voices, it simultaneously polices the conditions under which those voices can appear. The subaltern is allowed to speak, but only if they speak in a way that is articulate, composed, theoretically legible, and aesthetically pleasing.

This selective acceptance produces what can only be described as the sanitisation and gentrification of Dalit expression. Universities celebrate Dalit literature, cite B. R. Ambedkar, and organize discussions on caste, but what they embrace is a curated version of Dalit life—one stripped of its rawness, its anger, its contradictions. The messy realities of lived experience—abusive language, fractured families, emotional volatility, and the everyday textures of marginalisation—are rendered inappropriate, excessive, or lacking in refinement. What emerges instead is a “good” Dalit subject: critical but not confrontational, expressive but not disruptive, visible but not unsettling. Anshul Kumar’s intervention shattered this template. He did not perform the expected role of the polished subaltern intellectual; he appeared instead as the inconvenient, unfiltered subject whose presence cannot be easily absorbed into liberal discourse.

The reaction from JNU’s left-liberal circles must therefore be understood not as a principled stand against incivility, but as a defense of the politics of comfort. Liberalism, in this context, does not reject dissent outright; it filters it. It demands that critique be delivered in a language that does not destabilize the listener, that anger be moderated into argument, that lived experience be translated into theory. This is why the same spaces that defend slogans, protests, and radical speech turn hostile when confronted with unmediated rage. The contradiction is stark: freedom of speech is celebrated in principle but constrained in practice through the policing of tone. For the subaltern, however, tone is not a stylistic choice; it is shaped by conditions of exclusion, humiliation, and interruption. To demand civility is to demand translation into the language of power, and in doing so, to neutralize the very force of subaltern expression.

The emphasis on pronunciation in the initial exchange is particularly telling. It reveals how academic authority is maintained through seemingly minor acts of correction that reinforce hierarchies of knowledge and legitimacy. The interruption over “proper” articulation becomes a way of asserting control, of signaling that access to discourse is conditional upon adherence to its norms. Anshul Kumar’s critique of academic spaces as circles of sycophancy reflects this experience—where established figures are insulated from challenge, and dissent is tolerated only within predefined limits. When those limits are crossed, the response is swift: condemnation, delegitimization, and, in contemporary terms, cancellation.

This pattern is not unique to JNU or India. Across global contexts, marginalized speech that exceeds the bounds of acceptability is routinely dismissed as anger, hysteria, or irrationality. Black radical voices in the United States, feminist expressions of rage, and working-class forms of articulation have all been subjected to similar forms of regulation. In each case, the underlying logic remains the same: the marginalized are heard only when they conform to dominant expectations of expression. Anything else is rendered unintelligible or unacceptable.

What the Anshul Kumar episode ultimately exposes is the failure of liberal allyship. It reveals a mode of engagement that is comfortable with representing marginality but uncomfortable with encountering it in its unfiltered form. Dalit thought is welcomed as text, as theory, as an object of study—but Dalit anger, especially when it disrupts the decorum of academic space, is treated as a problem to be managed. This is not solidarity; it is a controlled inclusion that maintains the authority of the dominant while appearing progressive.

The deeper theoretical question, then, is no longer whether the subaltern can speak. Anshul Kumar did speak—loudly, disruptively, and in a manner that refused the norms of academic civility. The question is whether the subaltern can be heard when they do not speak in the language that power recognizes as legitimate. The answer, in this case, appears to be negative. They are interrupted, corrected, and ultimately disciplined for the very form of their expression. And in that process, liberalism reveals its limits—not as a space of unrestricted freedom, but as a regime that governs the conditions of acceptable speech.

To insist that the subaltern must be polite in order to be heard is to perpetuate the very structures that silence them. It is to demand that they adapt to the language of those who exclude them, rather than transforming the terms of discourse itself. Anshul Kumar’s intervention, regardless of how one evaluates its form, forces a confrontation with this uncomfortable reality: if only the sanitized subaltern is acceptable, then the subaltern remains unfree.