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This piece, adapted from Chapter 2, “Annihilation of Caste,” in Caste – A Nation Within the Nation, has been abridged, edited, and selectively rephrased to highlight the conjoined conceptual rigor and moral conviction that animate V. T. Rajshekar’s writing. The purpose of this version is to reveal the enduring force of his argument and its continued relevance to the present moment of caste politics and thought. In this essay, Rajshekar dissects caste as the central ideological and structural principle of Indian society—an all-encompassing system that determines not only social hierarchy but also access to political power, knowledge, and morality. He argues that caste cannot be dismantled through moral persuasion or partial reform because it is the very grammar of Hindu social order. Drawing from Ambedkar yet extending beyond him, Rajshekar exposes how religion, law, and politics work in concert to preserve Brahminical dominance. For him, annihilation means confrontation: a total break with the social, spiritual, and epistemic order that legitimizes caste. The essay stands as both critique and declaration, demanding not reconciliation but the assertion of Dalit consciousness as the ground for any true democratic transformation.

However, Rajshekar’s forceful framing also opens up crucial points of tension worth registering. His deployment of the language of “nation” and “national minorities” for Bahujans—though strategically potent—risks reproducing the very nationalist grammar that has historically absorbed, redirected, or neutralized anti-caste energies. The presumption that “nationhood” is a stable or emancipatory horizon for Bahujans overlooks how nationalism in the subcontinent has routinely demanded caste-erasure at the symbolic level while sustaining caste power in practice. A critique aligned with Ambedkar’s own caution would remind us that the nation is not automatically a vehicle of justice; rather, it has often operated as the ideological shield for Brahminical majoritarianism. Any appeal to national belonging must therefore be critically examined so that it does not reinscribe the homogenizing impulses it seeks to break.

Similarly, the text suggests a sharp opposition between caste-bound villages and propaganda-driven cities, as though the former naturally preserve anti-Hindutva potential and the latter incubate Brahminical hegemony. This distinction, already unstable in Rajshekar’s time, is even less tenable today. Rural India has never been uniformly resistant to Hindutva, nor have urban centres been coherent sites of caste blindness. The circulation of media, the penetration of welfare networks, the transformation of local political economies, and the recomposition of rural–urban migration have all produced a far more entangled terrain. Village social order does not automatically protect Bahujan interests; it can reproduce the violence of caste more directly, even as it occasionally generates solidarities unavailable in urban anonymity. Any contemporary evaluation must abandon this binary and analyze how caste power now moves fluidly across both spaces.

Finally, Rajshekar’s argument that Hindutva remains a primarily Brahminical project does not fully anticipate the demographic restructuring of the Hindu Right. Today, its organizational strength and electoral reach depend heavily on OBC and non-Brahmin participation—not only as foot soldiers but as ideological and political actors within the movement. This does not invalidate Rajshekar’s critique of Brahminical dominance; rather, it complicates the picture by showing how caste power adapts, absorbs, and redeploys the aspirations of groups historically positioned outside the Brahminical core. Any contemporary reading must therefore account for how Hindutva now functions through a broadened social base, and why anti-caste politics must confront this expanded constituency rather than an imagined Brahmin minority alone.Taken together, these tensions do not diminish the power of Rajshekar’s intervention; they sharpen it by situating his insights within a transformed political landscape. The stakes of annihilation today demand both the fidelity to Ambedkarite confrontation and a critical rethinking of the categories—nation, village, caste bloc, majority/minority—through which the struggle has been historically articulated.

V. T. Rajshekar

Hindu Angle of ‘Caste Annihilation’

It is the Hindus who stand to gain most from the caste system, for caste is another name for Hinduism. If caste is destroyed, Hinduism collapses. Gandhi knew this and opposed any fight against caste, for his defense of “Varna Dharma” safeguarded Hindu order. No Hindu is prepared to give up caste; caste is the source of their power.

Why then have Hindus suddenly begun talking of “caste annihilation”? Are they ready to sacrifice their privileges? Some honest vaidiks, like the Puri Shankaracharya, openly declare that Bahujans are not Hindus and hence outcastes; we have no quarrel with such honesty. Our problem is with the deceitful “socialist” Brahmins who cloak themselves as Gandhians, Marxists, or nationalists while preserving caste.

Their “caste annihilation” means the abolition of caste-based reservations, not the destruction of caste itself. They want to preserve their superiority while preaching equality — taking Dalits into temples but never allowing them priesthood, welcoming them into Brahmin-owned hotels but never letting them own one. Their idea is to change form without changing content, to keep the power hierarchy intact. They advise the scavenger to take pride in cleaning toilets instead of demanding liberation. This Gandhian hypocrisy, perfected by institutions like Sulabh International, is what they call “caste annihilation.”

Bahujan Angle of ‘Caste Annihilation’
For Bahujans, annihilating caste means destroying the power structure itself. Ambedkarites understand caste as an ascending scale of reverence and a descending scale of contempt. Gandhi’s temple-entry and inter-dining gimmicks never touched this structure. As Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar showed, the root of untouchability is the caste system; the root of caste is religion; and the root of that religion is Brahminical authority sustained by power.

Ambedkar sought to transform the very body of caste, not its surface symptoms. He knew that deprivation and humiliation were political, not moral, conditions. Unless the powerless are empowered, the powerful will never treat them as equals. The Ambedkarite view holds that social equality follows political and economic power. Reservation, therefore, is not charity but an assertion of human rights — a corrective to centuries of exclusion. When rights are restored, the oppressed gain power; when power shifts, equality begins.

Hindus wish only to soften the feelings emanating from caste while leaving the structure untouched. Bahujans aim to destroy its foundation. Hindus cure the symptoms of the disease; Bahujans aim to cure the disease itself.

Hindu Opposition to the Bahujan Angle
Hindus object that caste-based empowerment will strengthen caste, harm national integration, and endanger Hindu unity. Their real fear is that an empowered Bahujan consciousness will destroy the Hindu social order. When they call for caste annihilation, they mean the abolition of resentment among the oppressed — not the privileges of the oppressor. They fear that Dalit assertion will polarize society and lead to a “caste war,” which indeed would end the caste system and minority Hindu rule.

The Brahmins, masters of contradiction, understand Ambedkarism better than most Bahujans. They exploit caste divisions to protect Hindu supremacy. Many Bahujans, seduced by Brahminical media and “secular” rhetoric, fail to see that what the Hindus hate, they should love — and what Hindus love, they should question.

Ambedkarite interpretation of caste annihilation strengthens castes

The Hindu claim that caste-based reservations strengthen caste is only half true. It is true that caste must first consolidate before it can be dismantled. Caste-based representation requires the collective strength of each deprived group; it is a necessary stage in annihilating hierarchy. The Constitution itself recognizes caste as the basis for remedy, granting reservations to Scheduled Castes and Backward Classes. This recognition has empowered Dalits politically and psychologically, enabling them to become a force in national life.

Those who oppose caste identity while benefiting from reservation are deluded. Without caste identification, there would be no eligibility for justice. The so-called “creamy layer” debate further exposes the Hindu anxiety: upper castes resent any rise in Dalit or OBC power. Reservation has created a new confidence — a ladder the privileged now want to kick away.

Ambedkar sought to employ caste-based reservation to consolidate the oppressed as a political community capable of challenging Brahminical domination. Every assertion of caste identity among the marginalized weakens the monopoly of the Hindu minority. Gujarat’s caste wars of the 1980s proved this; Dalit anger, when misdirected against Muslims, only helped consolidate Hindu rule. The lesson remains clear — caste consciousness, not religious nationalism, is the path to equality.

Struggle and Identity
Every struggle for power begins with the assertion of a distinct identity. The oppressor always denies the separate existence of the oppressed to sustain domination. As Dr. Y. N. Kly observed in International Law and the Dalits in India, the Dalits form a distinct people, historically denounced as “outcastes” outside Hinduism. Their forced inclusion as “Scheduled Castes within Hinduism” after independence was a political act — to consolidate India under Hindu dominance. Recognition of Dalits as a separate national minority was deliberately erased from the Constitution.

The 1950 Presidential Order, by denying minority status to Dalits, imposed a Hindu identity on them. Such an identity is an aggression on self-respect. True emancipation requires its rejection. As Ambedkar argued through the Mahad and Nasik agitations, liberation demands independent representation and political power — not inclusion under Hindu paternalism.

Other oppressed peoples, from Eelam Tamils to Chechens, have shown that asserting distinct identity is the first step toward self-determination. Similarly, when SCs, STs, and OBCs demand caste-wise representation, they signal that they are not Hindus but distinct nations within India’s social geography. Their demand for power-sharing amounts to a declaration of self-rule — not secession, but autonomy in shaping their destiny.

This is why the Hindu minority fears caste consolidation. Bahujan identity is their greatest threat. Every move — from Gandhism to Marxism to Hindutva — has sought to dissolve that identity in a false national unity. But each has failed in the face of resurgent caste consciousness.

Failure of ‘Hindu Unity’
The Aryan bid for “Hindu unity” has repeatedly collapsed against India’s resilient village social order, which, though oppressive, remains immune to urban Brahminical propaganda. The BJP’s Hindutva thrives in cities where media and money rule, but it cannot easily penetrate caste-based village structures. Villages preserve both the oppression and the consciousness of caste — a double-edged reality.

When Hindu leaders attempt to dissolve caste distinctions under the banner of unity, they face resistance from the very structure they exploit. Their project depends on manufacturing an external enemy — historically the Muslim — to divert the anger of Dalits and Bahujans. In Gujarat, Dalit participation in anti-Muslim violence marked the tragic success of this manipulation, where caste pride was replaced by Hindu pride.

Yet the same Gujarat also showed that when Dalits fought upper castes, it exposed the core contradiction of Hinduism. Caste identity remains the best defense against Hindutva, the surest means to frustrate Brahminical rule through a silent, bloodless revolution. The villages of India, however unequal, remain fortresses of this social truth — that Hindutva cannot erase caste, and caste, once politicized, can dismantle Hindutva.

Our confusion lies not in the villages but in the cities. Urban Dalits and OBCs, intoxicated by Brahminical media, fail to distinguish between Ambedkar’s programme of caste annihilation and the Hindu deceit of the same name. True annihilation begins with self-respect and ends with equality of power — not with assimilation under Hinduism.

Conclusion

Caste annihilation cannot mean the erasure of caste identity while caste power endures. It must mean the destruction of the hierarchy that sustains it. The Bahujan path, grounded in Ambedkar’s vision, demands empowerment before erasure, equality before unity, and power before reconciliation.

The struggle for identity, dignity, and representation is not contrary to annihilation; it is its necessary condition. Only when the oppressed define themselves can they redefine the nation. Until then, every slogan of “Hindu unity” or “caste annihilation” from above is another mask of domination.

The road to freedom lies in consolidating Bahujan identity, transforming caste into a weapon of liberation, and reclaiming power from those who have ruled in its name. Caste, once the chain, becomes the site of struggle — and in that struggle lies the true beginning of its annihilation.

This essay, “In Defense of Polemics” by V.T. Rajshekar, first published in Dalit Voice Vol. 25, Issue No. 10, (May 16–31, 2006), has been thoughtfully reworked, abridged, and paraphrased to speak to the present moment while preserving its original force and vision. The revision retains the text’s historical polemical idioms but removes contingent references and particularized citations to foreground its enduring relevance. It reasserts the conviction that polemics is not a stylistic excess but a principled mode of truth-telling—an ethical and political necessity in confronting the hierarchies that distort public life and silence dissent. In this reframed version, Rajshekar’s defense of argumentative writing becomes a wider meditation on the responsibilities of critical journalism and the politics of speech in unequal societies. It upholds Dalit Voice’s long-standing orientation toward fearless critique, its insistence on clarity over comfort, and its commitment to unsettling dominant truths. By revisiting this essay today, the aim is to reaffirm the centrality of dissenting thought and the continuing need for writing that is rigorous, disruptive, and accountable to those whose voices are systemically denied space in the public sphere.

V. T. Rajshekar

We are often accused of resorting to polemical writing. Some upper-caste critics say we take pleasure in controversies and rarely offer “constructive suggestions.” They call us abusive, hateful, and unworthy of serious journalism. To them we must respond.

A journal of the persecuted cannot exist without polemics. Its very birth is an act of resistance against forces that suppress truth and historical progress. Polemic is not abuse—it is the language of those who have been denied space, ownership, and voice. Without it, new ideas cannot take root.

Brahminical Media Control

Our critics ask if we cannot be “constructive” without being “excessive.” Can truth be told softly in a world where the means of speech itself are owned by our oppressors? India lives in a time of deep ideological struggle between castes and communities, yet the instruments of opinion—the mass media—are monopolized by the upper castes and big business.

This media does not merely conceal truth; it manufactures falsehood. It defends power, consolidates hierarchy, and disciplines dissent. A homegrown authoritarianism thrives here, disguised as democracy. In this landscape, polemic becomes not only legitimate but necessary—it cuts through the noise, draws attention to vital realities, and refuses the civility that sustains injustice.

Those Who Don’t Hate Can’t Love

Our critics accuse us of hatred, of inheriting the anger of Ambedkar, Periyar, and Lohia. They mistake passion for hatred, and confrontation for bitterness. But as Stokely Carmichael once said, to love deeply is to know the opposite of love. A people who have never known hatred cannot understand love, because love itself is born of struggle—of knowing what must be resisted in order to protect what must be cherished.

We are taught that it is noble not to hate. Yet those who hate us—those who burn our homes, violate our dignity, and destroy our futures—lecture us on peace and forgiveness. They want the oppressed to remain polite while being crushed. To reject this false morality is not to hate others, but to love our people more fiercely. If you are incapable of anger, you are incapable of love.

False Philosophy

This false philosophy of non-resistance preaches calmness to the condemned. It demands that we stay quiet while violence is done to us. Imagine watching someone set fire to your home and being told not to hate them. Imagine witnessing your sister’s assault and being told to be “above emotion.” Such moral advice serves only the comfort of the powerful.

We do not hate because hatred is noble—we resist because love compels us to. The refusal to accept humiliation, to expose hypocrisy, to fight lies—these acts come from a place of care and courage, not malice.

Nasty “National” Press

India’s corporate, upper-caste–owned “national press” is the most powerful weapon of domination today. It consolidates privilege, protects capital, and criminalizes the struggles of Dalits, Bahujans, Muslims, and women. It preaches ethics but practices servitude. Its only moral compass is profit.

Publishing in such a society requires enormous capital and caste privilege. Those who own the printing presses and those who write the editorials belong to the same social world. Together, they form a fortress of interests closed to the oppressed. Their media will never side with the poor—it exists to manage them.

Role of the Times of India

The media monopoly is sustained by the financial power of advertisers and corporate owners. The result is a journalism shaped entirely by money. The Times of India, for example, has become an ideological mouthpiece for the privileged. It consistently takes anti-Dalit and anti-minority positions while masquerading as “national.” It has long abandoned the idea of representing the public; it represents the market. What it sells as news is often gossip, prejudice, or intimidation.

Days of Dwarfs

The era of towering editors who understood the social weight of journalism is over. Dwarfs now rule the newsroom—men and women who bend before power and boast of their servility as pragmatism. They avoid pain, skirt real issues, and substitute trivia for analysis. Their papers are full of noise and hollow commentary, never substance.

The Indian press today creates pseudo-issues, buries the real ones, and defends the caste order beneath the façade of modernity. Even the relatively serious papers lose their liberal mask when questions of reservation or caste equality arise.

Caste Ideology

The press’s emptiness is disguised through phrase-mongering. Big words replace genuine thought. Its editorials speak of development and democracy while the writers themselves live comfortably within structures of inequality. Their vocabulary hides their caste ideology.

National icons are manufactured through manipulation—those who pacify the poor are called “Mahatma,” “Lok Nayak,” or “Lok Manya.” Elections are glorified as festivals of democracy when they are only rituals that divide the poor and strengthen the rich. The media celebrates technology and consumption while ignoring human development. It mistakes gadgets for progress and comfort for civilization.

Left Imperialism

Even the so-called progressive press reveals its bias when it confronts the question of caste or minority rights. Urban newspapers cater to the leisure class, not to the majority living in villages. Books, debates, and discussions that challenge hierarchy find no place. Reading itself has been replaced by entertainment, and entertainment is the new censorship.

This English-educated elite, claiming to be the guardians of “merit,” has degenerated into a caste of consumers. Untouchability thrives, yet the national press looks away. The villages that hold the heart of the country remain invisible. Journalists stay in cities, recycling press releases, producing illusions for an audience that prefers not to know.

Collective Lying

When the oppressed resist, the media unites against them. During the 1984 anti-Sikh violence or the backlash to the Mandal movement, the so-called national press became an instrument of collective lying. It manufactured consent for state brutality, smeared the victims, and silenced dissenting voices. Every time caste contradictions sharpen, the media turns into a chorus of slander.

Lies and fear are its twin tools. When truth threatens power, the press replaces it with panic—crying “terrorism,” “anarchy,” or “disorder.” It is not journalism but propaganda disguised as objectivity.

Freedom of Press

India’s corporate, upper-caste–owned “national press” is the most Much is made in India about the “freedom of the press,” but this freedom belongs only to those who can afford a press. When Dalit journalists exercise that same right, they are punished. This editor was arrested under the Terrorist Act, handcuffed, dragged across the country, and silenced for years. That is the real meaning of press freedom in a caste society.

How can there be freedom of expression when ownership itself is monopolized by a few castes and corporations? The press may be free for the rich, but it remains a prison for the poor. True freedom of the press will come only when its ownership and access are democratized—when it becomes a voice of the people, not of their masters.

Offence as Best Form of Defence

The oppressed cannot wait to be attacked—they must speak first, and speak sharply. To expose injustice is not rudeness; it is self defence. To offend the comfort of the powerful is often the first act of truth.

A newspaper of the marginalized must not merely react to events but seek out the buried facts and bring them to light. Delay means defeat. The Brahminical media manipulates truth with skill; we must learn to read it critically—between the lines, against the grain. Only then can we resist its poison.

Did D.V. Go Wrong on Facts?

Those who are praised by the powerful are rarely genuine; those who are attacked are often the ones who speak truth. Awards, honours, and reputations are tools to discipline and domesticate dissenters. We accept that polemics is not an end in itself—it is a method of struggle. Its goal is not hostility but clarity, not abuse but honesty. It is a way to fight lies with facts and expose hypocrisy through conviction.

Dalit Voice and the Dalit Sahitya Akademy exist not to please the ruling class but to awaken the oppressed. Our readers will correct us if we go wrong; our critics will attack us because we go right.

When the powerful preach freedom but punish dissent, when they praise civility but practice cruelty—then polemic is not a choice, it is a duty.

The editorial ‘A Dream Come True’ from Vol. 1, Issue No. 1, 01/06/1981, of the magazine marked the birth of Dalit Voice, a radical and independent publication founded to articulate the concerns of Dalits, Adivasis, OBCs, Muslims, Christians, and other oppressed groups. Emerging from the Karnataka Dalit Action Committee, it arose in a political climate marked by anti-reservation violence, rising Hindu-Muslim tensions, and systemic silencing of marginalized voices in the press, judiciary, and political institutions. What stands out in this piece is its refusal to beg for legitimacy. It challenges the economic, caste, and media structures that render Dalits invisible or misrepresented. It asserts a collective identity of the “persecuted minorities” and identifies a ruling class composed of upper-caste, economically powerful elites — a class-caste nexus still central to structural inequality in India. While rejecting alignment with any political party, Dalit Voice expresses conditional support for Marxist movements — not uncritically, but with the insistence that caste, as a uniquely Indian axis of oppression, must be central to any revolutionary politics. This critique remains relevant today, as both mainstream parties and sections of the Left continue to inadequately address caste beyond rhetoric or electoral arithmetic. Nonetheless, it is clear from the trajectory of anti-caste politics that such relation with the party Marxist Left has remained thin, at best. The editorial’s gender insight — “the woman is Dalit among Dalits” — is ahead of its time, prefiguring later Dalit feminist articulations. Its declaration of solidarity with working-class students, Muslim and Christian minorities, and the commitment to nurturing Dalit writers, still resonates in a landscape where dominant narratives continue to erase subaltern experiences. Reading this today, we find echoes of its warnings: the consolidation of Hindu majoritarianism, the shrinking space for dissent, and the corporate-caste capture of media and institutions. At the same time, its audacious hope — that even a modest first step matters — speaks directly to current generations of organisers, students, writers, and human rights defenders. It reminds us that independent, movement-rooted media is not a luxury but a necessity. Included here as one of the archival texts, this editorial serves as both a historical marker and a political provocation. It asks us not to commemorate, but to re-inherit its spirit — to sustain spaces where oppressed voices speak not through gatekeepers, but in their own radical, fearless, and collective voice.

V. T. Rajshekar

To bring out a journal of our own has been our long-cherished dream. Persecuted minorities all over India in general, and members of the Karnataka Dalit Action Committee in particular, have been urging us to start a publication.

No doubt we had all the talents and enthusiasm. But what we lacked was funds. Funds will pour if we swim with the current. But the Dalit cause means swimming against the current. There is a chance of getting drowned also. Who will give us funds?

So for quite some time, we were handicapped for want of funds. But funds alone should not stand in the way. When good wishes are there in plenty, funds will prove to be no problem. This has been our experience.

We could not withstand the mounting pressure of our Dalit comrades—representatives of the persecuted minorities: Untouchables, Tribals, Other Backward Classes (OBCs), Muslims, and Christians.

Oppression is increasing day by day. Caste riots have spread from Marathwada to Gujarat. Anti-reservation agitations are threatening to engulf the whole country. Hindu–Muslim clashes are becoming a daily feature. Muslims and Christians are feeling that they are second-rate citizens. Even the very guardians of law and order are joining the forces of oppression.

The persecuted minorities hardly have any friends in political parties, the government, judiciary, police, administration, or professions. Intellectuals are turning dishonest. When there is no friend in these, how can they get a friend in the press? And the press in India is owned by corrupt capitalists and manned by high-caste journalists, with some minor exceptions.

The milk of kindness is getting dried up. The rich are getting richer, the poor poorer. Perhaps these are signs of revolution. Therefore, we thought we better not delay.

About ten percent of the Indian population is ruling us. This “ruling class” is composed of those rich who mostly come from the high castes. It is a class–caste dictatorship. A naked dance of Hindu communalism.

We dedicate this journal to fight this “ruling class” as the Dalit Voice—the voice of all the persecuted minorities of India.

We have a long way to go. Even a million-mile march begins with a first step. And ours is a modest step. We fully know our limitations. But we will try to improve in days to come.

We suffer from no prejudice, no rancour, no ill will. To us, no single individual is our enemy. We are concerned more with issues— primarily social and cultural, and then economic.

We therefore attack the existing corrupt system. We assure that we will mercilessly attack the corrupt system.

Politics is not our playfield. While we may comment, we consider every political party as no friend of the Dalits—persecuted minorities. And the woman is Dalit among Dalits, a slave of the slave.

For all those reasons, therefore, ours will be a unique experiment. Bangalore City has a vast working-class and student population, and they can consider us their trusted friend—a friend of all the poor, struggling people. Dalit writers will be encouraged.

We will support the Left movement as we have the greatest respect for [it]. Our only suggestion is that while adopting Marxism to Indian conditions, it has to be Indianised by taking into consideration the havoc played by the caste system.

We will do our best to propagate the philosophy of Ambedkar, Periyar, and Lohia, and all other progressive thinkers. Genuine Marxists and Rationalists, and all those working for social change, shall count on our support in their struggles.

It is the Dalit Voice.

VTR was born in 1932 in a modest rural household in Vontibettu, along the lush coastal belt of Karnataka — in the twilight of pre independence India. His mother passed away when he was still a child, and being raised first by an extended family and later by a stepmother left an indelible mark on his inner world. Throughout his life, he kept his mother’s photograph close — a silent witness to his journey. Surrounded by green fields, forests, and a tapestry of Jain, Hindu, Christian, and Muslim traditions, his childhood was culturally rich but materially meagre. His father, an incorruptible government official with eight children to raise, held the large farming household together with quiet discipline, ensuring there was always enough, if little to spare. That VTR managed to earn a degree in such circumstances was nothing short of a miracle.

He was born into the Shudra Bunt community — a group that falsely claimed Kshatriya status — whose people spoke Tulu, a Dravidian language rooted in the soil of coastal Karnataka. Their world was one of ancestral worship and devotion to snakes and spirits, though Sanskritisation remained relentless, as evident in the blockbuster film Kantara, an RSS distortion of their lived truths. Life was simple and harsh. Fish was the staple diet, with poultry or wild boar reserved for those who could afford such luxuries. Walking miles to reach a school or a doctor was ordinary. The rhythm of the village revolved around agriculture, sustained by fisheries and forestry. From an early age, VTR saw, with troubled clarity, the cruel hierarchies that governed everyday life — the humiliation of the “Harijans,” and the quiet subjugation of women and minorities. These experiences became the moral ground on which his lifelong defiance would stand.

All of this shaped not only the man VTR became but also the convictions that defined him. Even as he found his way, almost by accident, into journalism, the pursuit of social justice remained his enduring compass. Throughout his life, he stood with rural India — with farmers, fisherfolk, and Adivasis — whose struggles he knew not as abstractions but as lived realities. Though his work took him through Bangalore, Delhi, and Bombay, the pull of the soil never left him. In his later years, he returned to Mangalore, and eventually to his ancestral village, where his long journey came full circle. He was cremated there on November 20, 2024 — among the people and land that had first taught him the meaning of dignity.

For many in the South Kanara district, the only route out of poverty was to board a “steamer” to Bombay and seek a livelihood in the city of dreams. VTR did the same, finding work for a time in a textile mill — a small foothold in an unforgiving metropolis. Like countless restless young men of his generation, he discovered in Marx and the language of workers’ rights a moral and intellectual awakening. Yet it did not take him long to see through the casteist rot within India’s communist leadership. Disillusioned but unbroken, he carried that insight into journalism. As a journalist, he threw himself into trade union work and later led a major strike against the Ramanath Goenka management of The Indian Express in Bangalore — an act of defiance that cost him his job but never his integrity.

VTR turned to Ambedkar and Periyar early in his journey and absorbed their thoughts with the seriousness of a seeker who had found his true teachers. Their writings confirmed what he already sensed — that caste was the spine of oppression in India, and liberation required nothing less than a moral and spiritual break from it. He renounced Hinduism and embraced Buddhism, not as a symbolic gesture but as a complete reorientation of life and politics. His convictions were radical, uncompromising, and far ahead of their time — the kind of politics that would scarcely survive in today’s repressive climate. Encouraged by Mulk Raj Anand, VTR launched Dalit Voice — a publication that was not merely a magazine but a movement in print, a start-up like no other.

Nothing was off-limits in his lifelong war against injustice. In a profession dominated — then as now — by upper castes, no senior journalist in mainstream India dared to be as openly anti Brahminical and anti-RSS in both speech and print as he was. His pursuit of equality and rationalism was fearless and absolute. He took on Hindu godmen and temples, the Muslim clergy, the Christian establishment, even Judaism, corporate capital, and the communist parties — sparing no institution that thrived on hierarchy or hypocrisy. His admiration for China’s success only deepened his ideological defiance. By founding the India–China Friendship Association and leading delegations there, he managed to antagonize every Indian regime — from the Congress to the BJP. Convinced that India’s hidden apartheid against Dalits had to be exposed to the world, he sought solidarity across borders — between the Dalit Panthers, the Black Panthers, and all oppressed peoples struggling for dignity. That internationalism was too much for the guardians of India’s caste order. When he returned from an international conference organized by Gaddafi in Tripoli, his passport was impounded in Delhi — silencing his travel for nearly two decades but never his voice.

As the Dalit movement fractured under electoral pressures and internal caste tensions, VTR watched with heartbreak as many of its leaders — men and women he had personally mentored — were seduced by financial rewards and government posts. His closest ideological ally of national stature was Kanshi Ram, yet their visions diverged on one crucial point. While Kanshi Ram believed Dalits were ready to seize political power, VTR held that true liberation had to begin with Ambedkar’s triad — Educate, Agitate, Organize — and that without these foundations, capturing the state would only reproduce its rot. He was unwavering in his conviction that until Dalits built and controlled their own media, they would remain voiceless before the upper-caste monopoly and the venom of the RSS. With remarkable foresight, he persuaded Kanshi Ram to co-found a media house in Haryana; they had even chosen a site and arranged resources for a printing press. But Kanshi Ram’s untimely death at seventy-four ended that dream before it could take shape. I often wonder what might have been — had he lived two more decades and that media house been born, it could have transformed India’s public discourse forever.

Both Kanshi Ram and VTR believed deeply in Bahujan unity — a broad alliance of Dalits, backward castes, and minorities standing shoulder to shoulder against caste tyranny. After Kanshi Ram’s passing, VTR carried this vision further, translating it into action with unflinching conviction. He stood firmly with Muslims, Christians, and Sikhs whenever they were attacked, insisting that the fight for justice could not be waged in isolation. The call to unite Dalits with Muslims and OBCs, naming the Savarnas as the common oppressor, unsettled many within the Dalit movement — but predictably, it never deterred him. Confrontation was second nature to VTR. Legal cases under TADA, POTA, and other draconian laws became a constant feature of his life; it was not unusual to find a police van stationed outside our home. Yet the price he paid for his principles was immense. His support for Sikh self-determination led to his arrest — handcuffed and taken incommunicado from Bangalore to Chandigarh — where he was locked in the high-security Burail Jail for a fortnight.

Every attack from the Savarnas only strengthened his resolve — and expanded his reach. With each controversy, Dalit Voice found new readers among the Avarnas, and reading groups began mushrooming across districts in the country. Subscriptions poured in. I still remember the huge registers that occupied one corner of our small rented home (which my mother had been allotted under rent control as a central government employee — something I doubt exists anymore!). Every subscriber’s name and address were carefully handwritten, one after another. VTR travelled tirelessly, announcing his visits to various cities; readers would organize meetings not just in state capitals but in small towns and district hubs as well. One of Dalit Voice’s most remarkable features was its “Letters to the Editor” section, where every opinion found space, creating lively debates among readers. Each letter was answered personally by VTR — most of them typed by yours truly, which is how I became a super-fast typist.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that no other publication shaped the discourse on Dalit liberation as profoundly as Dalit Voice did between 1982 and 2011. Few publications anywhere have survived that long without corporate or donor support. The movement’s voice resonated beyond English, finding life in Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam, Telugu, Punjabi, and many other languages. There were many occasions when there was simply no money to pay the printer or postage, yet VTR never missed a single edition — except during his imprisonment. He was offered countless inducements over the years — political positions, a Rajya Sabha seat, ministerial posts, even land deals — but he refused them all. He chose integrity over power, independence over comfort. It was a decision that came at enormous personal cost to my mother, who carried the burden of being the family’s sole breadwinner for decades.

VTR tried to keep Dalit Voice alive from Mangalore after moving back there, but the city’s deep RSS entrenchment made it nearly impossible. Printers were threatened and intimidated into silence, forcing the presses to halt. Yet even in that suffocating atmosphere, he refused to yield. VTR has often been described as fearless, but even that word doesn’t do him justice. His courage was not the absence of fear — it was the refusal to let fear dictate what could or could not be said. He faced the full force of a casteist state and society with nothing but conviction, intellect, and an unshakeable belief in equality. For him, the written word was not a profession but a weapon — one forged in truth and wielded in solidarity with the oppressed.

He died as he had lived: uncompromising, unbought, unbowed. In his fire and clarity, VTR left us a challenge — to keep speaking, writing, and fighting until the dream of liberty, equality, and dignity is no longer deferred but realized.

Salil Shetty is a human rights activist and former Secretary General of Amnesty International. He previously led the UN Millennium Campaign and was Chief Executive of ActionAid. He is also the son of V. T. Rajshekar.