ABSTRACT
The conventional historical wisdom considers anti-caste movements emerged during the late colonial period as attempts to dilute the nationalist spirit as those movements focused more on the ‘internal’ dimensions of the Indian society rather than facilitating mass mobilization in favour of ousting the British colonizers. This paper aims to dispute this proposition by claiming that caste in contemporary sense is indeed the construction of colonialism itself. The paper argues anti-caste agitations have to be part of inevitable de-colonizing process; vivisecting or juxtaposing the two would lead to deep conceptual flaw. Therefore, an attempt to fight against the caste ideology is not antithetical to the fight against colonialism. By mapping the contributions of Dr. Ambedkar’s crusade against caste, this paper argues that his attempts could well be deemed as inventing a nation where there was none. The anti-caste crusade was truly nationalist in content and nature than the so called ‘nationalist’ movement which were quite elitist and merely identified the termination of colonial rule as the only method with which all of us would effortlessly become national.
