Ambedkar rejected persuasion in favor of crisis-creating direct action against caste.

Evidence

‘Direct action’ is a method Ambedkar (BASWS 5, 375) advocated for the assertion of the civil rights of Untouchables. When Ambedkar was at Columbia University (1913–16), he was likely exposed to the views of American feminist anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912), whom the anarchist Emma Goldman called the “most gifted and brilliant anarchist woman America ever produced”. In 1912, de Cleyre wrote a famous essay called “Direct Action”, which she defined as collective action against and mass resistance to state and capitalist oppression. … On his part, Ambedkar called for “open revolt in the form of direct action against the Hindu Established Order”. He lists the Chavadar Tank satyagraha in Mahad and the Kalaram temple satyagraha as instances of direct action which created a ‘crisis’ among Hindus. Ambedkar contrasts this method with that of Gandhi’s Harijan Sevak Sangh that believed caste Hindus must feel remorse and guilt (for practising untouchability) and thus voluntarily ask the Untouchables to participate in the general village life, that is, accessing waterbodies, roads or temples. Ambedkar here cites his letter to A.V. Thakkar, general secretary of the Harijan Sevak Sangh: “The salvation of the Depressed Classes will come only when the Caste Hindu is made to think and is forced to feel that he must alter his ways. For that you must create a crisis by direct action against his customary code of conduct. The crisis will compel him to think and once he begins to think he will be more ready to change than he is otherwise likely to be. The great defect in the policy of least resistance and silent infiltration of rational ideas lies in that they do not ‘compel’, for they do not produce a crisis. The direct action in respect of the Chavadar Tank in Mahad 1927, the Kalaram temple in Nasik 1930 and the Guruvayur temple in Malabar 1931–32 have done in a few days what million days of preaching by reformers would never have done.” — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 1125

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the precise meaning of ‘direct action’ as Ambedkar used it, tracing it to de Cleyre’s anarchist essay.
• XREF: Connects to Annihilation of Caste’s core argument about why persuasion of caste Hindus fails, and links to de Cleyre’s anarchist influence on Ambedkar.
• SEED: Angle: direct action vs persuasion as a general theory of social change — when do crises compel change that preaching cannot?