What’s Your Ism? Ep 5 feat. RS Praveen Kumar on anti-caste movement, switch to BRS

What's your ism? is a podcast about ideas and ideologies that claim to liberate the world and somehow always fall short. TNM's Sudipto Mondal and his guests grapple with impressive sounding isms -- Marxism, Feminism, Ambedkarism, religious systems -- and their inherent contradictions. An attempt to understand academics, activists, politicians, artists, rebels and wannabe revolutionaries who are in search of grand unified theories to solve the problems of the world.

Season 1, Episode 5

RS Praveen Kumar, a former IPS officer, who had quit the civil services to join the Bahujan Samaj Party, has once again taken a u-turn. Last month, the popular Ambedkarite jumped to the BRS – a party he had earlier described as “casteist” and “feudal”. So what triggered this shift? What are his views on the anti-caste movement?      

In this episode of What’s Your Ism, Kumar spoke to The News Minute’s Sudipto Mondal about the relevance of BSP and Mayawati, how he reconciles his anti-caste ideology with the BRS, and the dynamics of Ambedkarite politics. 

“Bahujan Samaj Party is becoming less and less relevant,” says the former IPS officer, adding that things “have changed dramatically”. He also challenges the notion that the BRS is a party of Velama caste landlords.

The bureaucrat-turned-politician talks about BR Ambedkar’s ideas, initiatives under his non-profit educational organisation SWAERO, and the RSS’s “smear campaign”.