6 min readNov 7, 2026 12:00 PM IST First published on: Nov 7, 2026 at 12:00 PM ISTThe article by Aditi Narayani Paswan (‘RSS and the long road to Samajik Samrasta’, IE, October 26) presents the RSS’s engagement with caste as an evolving journey. However, there is a fundamental problem with this notion: It confuses the removal or rejection of certain caste-based prejudices with the annihilation of the caste system itself. The distinction is not just semantic; it is the difference between asking dominant castes to behave more kindly towards Dalits and questioning the social, religious, economic and political structures that enable caste domination in the first place.An open secret is noteworthy in her article’s very first line, where she writes “… the RSS is reaching out, with greater zeal, to a broader spectrum of castes and communities”. It explicitly shows that the RSS was not an organisation of all the castes and communities, and now it is reaching out to them. It also explicitly ignores the rising assertion among Dalits, due to which they are rejecting the subordination of dominant and “upper” caste groups. This is one of the main causes of the RSS’s “outreach”.AdvertisementThe idea of Samajik Samrasta (social harmony) raises an important question: Harmony between whom, on whose terms, and under what distribution of power? Caste is not simply a problem of social distance, interpersonal prejudice or a lack of interaction between communities. It is a system of graded inequality in which different caste groups occupy unequal positions in the distribution of resources, dignity, authority and power. B R Ambedkar’s critique was directed at this structural arrangement. He did not merely demand that upper-caste Hindus develop benevolence for Dalits, and invite them into their homes or share meals with them. He questioned the religious and social foundations that legitimised caste hierarchy.In the Annihilation of Caste (1936), Ambedkar made it clear that caste could not be destroyed through superficial reforms while the authority of the social and religious doctrines sustaining it remained intact. A Dalit child playing in a shakha or being invited to dine in an upper-caste household is not the same as a Dalit having an equal share in agricultural land, control over village institutions, access to economic resources, employment, appointments of VCs, and the power to challenge dominant caste authority.Paswan’s piece celebrates the RSS’s emphasis on one temple, one well, and one cremation ground. These are significant sites of everyday caste exclusion, particularly in rural spaces. However, why should the discussion end there? First of all, we need to find who are the people who opposed such ideas? Next, who owns agricultural land? Who controls the village economy? Who determines wages? Who occupies positions of authority in the Gram Panchayat? Who controls religious institutions? Who has the power to impose social and economic boycotts? Who is expected to perform caste-assigned occupations? For that matter, who are in the decision-making bodies of the RSS?AdvertisementAlso Read | RSS, caste and the long road to ‘samajik samrasta’Right from a village, caste operates in all the corridors of urban spaces and “modern” institutions. These are not peripheral questions; they are central to understanding how caste operates.One of the most problematic aspects of her article is its attempt to bring Ambedkar into the ideological narrative of the RSS. The author presents the engagement of RSS-associated figures with Ambedkar’s writings as evidence of ideological convergence. But reading Ambedkar and agreeing with selected passages of his work does not necessarily mean accepting his political project. Ambedkar was not merely a social reformer who wanted Hindus to overcome untouchability. He was a radical critic of the caste order, its religious foundations and the power structures that reproduced it. His political interventions included the Mahad Satyagraha of 1927, asserting Dalits’ right to access public water; the burning of the Manusmriti as a rejection of scriptural authority legitimising caste hierarchy; the demand for political representation and independent political safeguards for oppressed communities; and his sustained critique of Hindu social organisation. His conversion to Buddhism in 1956 was a decisive rejection of the religious order that had historically sanctioned his community’s oppression. Ambedkar’s legacy cannot be separated from his struggle against the very structures that the politics of Hindu consolidation seeks to accommodate. The distinction between appreciating Ambedkar and appropriating Ambedkar deserves serious attention.There is another problem with the language of Samrasta. As Paswan mentions, in M D Deora’s speech, untouchability was a “bhayankar bhool”. It must be understood that it was not a bhool; rather, it is a paap. In deeply unequal societies, appeals for harmony can become a mechanism for discouraging conflict and suppressing legitimate political demands.you may likePerhaps the most fundamental ideological contradiction lies in the RSS’s project of Hindu consolidation, which seeks to bring different caste communities together under a common Hindu identity. But what happens when the assertion of Dalit identity, independent political organisation, or conversion challenges that larger identity? What happens when Dalits refuse to accept the social terms on which they are being invited into Hindu unity? What happens when they demand land, political representation, their seats in universities and lateral entry in UPSC, a share in institutional power and freedom from Brahmanical authority rather than simply inclusion? These questions cannot be answered through the language of Samrasta. For Ambedkar, fraternity was not a demand that oppressed communities surrender their independent political identities for the sake of a larger religious or national community. Fraternity had to rest upon liberty and equality.A society that demands harmony without redistribution, equality, and emancipation is not overcoming caste. It is merely asking the oppressed to make peace with it.The writer is a PhD scholar at JNU and research associate at Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH Delhi)