Upper castes protested Mandal quotas by mocking the polluting labor they despised

Evidence

When it was implemented, the privileged castes took to the streets. They symbolically swept the streets, pretended to shine shoes and performed other ‘polluting’ tasks to suggest that instead of becoming doctors, engineers, lawyers or economists, the policy of reservation was now going to reduce privileged castes to doing menial tasks. A few people attempted to publicly immolate themselves, the most well-known being a Delhi University student, Rajiv Goswami, in 1990. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 566

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to reader’s grooming article: protest as political theater about hygiene and pollution categories.
• SEED: Angle: the performative mockery of cleaning labor as a caste-politics weapon across cultures.