What democracy means today – watch theatre director Abhishek Majumdar’s Kavan, a political cabaret

The first time Bengaluru-based playwright-theatre director Abhishek Majumdar wrote about his new collaborative project with Yalgaar Sanskrutik Manch, an anti-caste street performance group from Mumbai, he subtitled it “A Dalit Opera”. Dhammrakshit Randive, coordinator and an artiste of Yalgaar, sent him a text saying, “Can you not call it a Dalit opera and call it an Ambedkarite opera?” “That was the first instance I realised how most of us get simple things wrong,” says Majumdar.

Many of today’s generation of Ambedkarite workers, such as Yalgaar, do not call themselves Dalit groups as they have members from other castes. “The word ‘Ambedkarite’ encapsulates an entire legacy of Babasaheb Ambedkar. As has been said in the social organisation Dalit Panthers, ‘Har koi shoshit, har koi vanchit’. The oppressed include women, labourers and religious and gender minorities. The Ambedkarite vision makes everybody a part, irrespective of class, caste, religion, gender and location,” says Randive....

Read the full article at the link.