Direct action creates the crisis needed to compel caste Hindus to change.

Evidence

103 ‘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. “Every person who ever had a plan to do anything, and went and did it, or who laid his plan before others, and won their cooperation to do it with him, without going to external authorities to please do the thing for them, was a direct actionist … Every person who ever in his life had a difference with anyone to settle, and went straight to the other persons involved to settle it, either by a peaceable plan or otherwise, was a direct actionist.” The term was also popularised by the Industrial Workers of the World founded in 1905 in Chicago; its mouthpiece was called Direct Action. 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

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Connects to Ambedkar’s central argument in Chapter 1 that persuasion without coercion fails; the Mahad satyagraha also connects to the broader reading purpose on how caste annihilation was implemented.
• DEFINE: Defines ‘direct action’ via de Cleyre and the IWW, distinguishing it from Gandhian voluntary reform.

Related

• Ambedkar rejected persuasion in favor of crisis-creating direct action against caste. (similarity 0.96)
• Direct action satyagrahas forced caste Hindus to think and change faster than preaching could (similarity 0.92)
• Ambedkar’s direct action doctrine derived from American anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre (similarity 0.83)