What was started by BR Ambedkar in Who were the Shudras is now being taken forward by prominent OBC scholars like Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd. On this note, I will briefly examine dominant castes of Karnataka to show how these communities have been trying to eliminate their Shudra identities with their upward economic mobility, without any significant upward intellectual or spiritual mobility. All they desire is a full harvest of material- the bigger the better.” Strangely enough, this statement holds true even to this day. They do not care how artistically the theme is handled. Dr BR Ambedkar has rightly pointed out in his book Who were the Shudras (1946), “…the book is written for the ignorant and the uninformed Shudras, who do not know how they came to be what they are. On the other hand, we have a vast majority of OBCs who detest being even called Shudras while unwisely clinging onto the imaginary Neo-Kshatriya and Neo-Brahmana identities. We have a Prime Minister who has very strategically claimed the “Other Backward Class” (OBC) identity for political gains 1, when in reality he has suffered no ignominy of being a Shudra individual. Caste has very interesting dimensions and realities in this country.
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