On the Caste Question : Towards A Marxist Understanding

The question of caste and program for its annihilation remains one of the most complex questions for communist revolutionaries in India. It also remains one of the most fiercely debated questions between Marxists-Leninists and different shades of Ambedkarites including Left-Ambedkarites. At the same time the question of the relationship between caste and class has long remained an issue of controversy among the activists and the academics alike. The present volume contains Abhinav Sinhas writings on the issue from 2012 onwards and includes five essays written between July 2012 and April 2018. Needless to say the selection does not and cannot claim to exhaust the ideological and political horizon of the debate on the caste question and program for the annihilation of caste. It merely aims to set the basic coordinates of the revolutionary program for the resolution of the caste question. We hope that the selection will succeed in this objective. It must be noted that even in the period after the writing of present essays our thinking has continued to develop and evolve continuously. However this development and evolution can be traced in the video lectures on the caste question Ambedkar and a revolutionary communist program for doing away with caste which are available online (www.redpolemique.wordpress.com). We would request the readers to see these videos too in order to comprehend our position in toto and in movement.