No Independence with Caste
Navayana is a project that demands its own annihilation. It has been built on a singular idea—the annihilation of caste—beyond which there is nothing it can hope to do. This idea is given its most powerful expression by a singular book. This Independence Day, Navayana is re-issuing its classic Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition as a limited-edition hardback, with a brand-spanking new cover. The hardback edition of AoC was first published in 2014. We are reviving it for a limited time only in a moment when dreams of democracy are once again in the air.
With the political turmoil that is brewing across the country, patriotic signifiers have once more come into vogue. They inevitably lead us back to the freedom struggle. What can ‘freedom’ mean to us today? At its most fundamental, positive level, Independence was a means for people from wildly different locations to come together as a society. But as Ambedkar warned us, democracy was entering a life of contradiction after Independence. How can a people be formed when they are so intransigently divided by caste. How can there be a nation without fellow feeling?
Annihilation of Caste remains the most concise expression of the backwards nature of Indian social life. It assesses the everyday tragedy where one remains locked in the confines of one’s given identity, unable to become a free, independent human being. Even now, seventy-nine years since Independence, the dream of becoming human remains unrealised. We have stopped wondering where humanity can go, beyond its self-confinement. Until then Annihilation of Caste will continue to be read. This annotated edition immerses you in the history that went into the making of this text. Get your copy before stocks run out—available for only Rs 599 (against cover price of Rs 899) till 16 August 2026.