Professor Y. S. Alone’s keynote lecture is part of Disrupting Protected Ignorance, a co-curated anti-caste resistive gathering, held within the context of Bwa Kayiman—Tout Moun se Moun. In his critical presentation Alone challenges hegemonic forms of representation as well as post-colonial and decolonial discourse in South Asia, highlighting the works of artists who practise what he calls ‘Ambedkarian Aesthetics’ after the teachings of anti-caste leader B. R. Ambedkar.

India witnessed distinct ways of understanding from colonial times associated with its historical past and the legitimization of cultural practices of the present. Indian society is primarily a hierarchical caste society that operates undemocratically, and thereby calls into question the very concept of modernity and its inherent contradictions existing at social, political, economic, and cultural levels. Alone posits that these contradictions are never adequately addressed through pictorial modes, thus, reducing art practices to transcendental realms. He elucidates how the idea of decolonization itself is a highly problematic concept and has only strengthened the voice of the privileged. Art practices as part of modern democratic nations become important to critically analyse normative structures and their objective formulations so as to expose the phenomenon of status-quoist attitudes found in the mechanisms of power. Alone expands on his critical framework of ‘protected ignorance’ as pivotal to understanding this phenomenon. 

Simultaneously, there is also a vibrant political sensitization towards democratic aesthetic practices that are non-transcendental in nature. These artworks, produced in the lineage of what Alone terms as ‘Ambedkarian Aesthetics’, point to the inherent contradictions of modernity. Within them, the very practice of what is made normative is interrogated and dismantled, cultivating an ecosystem that is more humane, progressive, and closely linked to the frameworks of constitutional democracy. Alone shows that the artists working in this lineage enliven the possibility of not only ‘being’ but also ‘becoming’, utilizing Ambedkarian thinking to disrupt historical narratives of unilinear nationalism. 

Gajendran Ayyathurai, initiator of the academic subfield Critical Caste Studies, later responds to Alone’s lecture and leads a discussion with the audience. 

This keynote lecture is part of Disrupting Protected Ignorance, a constellation of anti-caste activations, co-curated by Sajan Vazhakaparambil Kolavan Kalyanikutty Mani with Shaunak Mahbubani.