'End Caste Discrimination First': Critics Call Out 'Reservation Hatao Andolan'

The 'Reservation Hatao Andolan' has become viral but it has sparked a discourse on merit, privileges and casteism.

Reservation Hatao Andolan: Rise of the Anti-Reservation Movement

(Kamran Akhter/ The Quint)

“Why does no one ever talk about reservation? Neither does any news channel talk about it, nor does the opposition talk about it, nor does the ruling party talk about it,” shouted NEET aspirant Harsh Dubey as he stood up and confronted a news anchor during an NDTV broadcast.

The televised clip, featured prominently on the Instagram handle @reservationhataomovement, forms the foundation of the Reservation Hatao Andolan (RHA), a digital campaign demanding the “total abolition of caste-based affirmative action” in India.

Claiming that they are not affiliated to any political party, RHA presents itself as an “unorganised, youth-led coalition calling for an immediate end to caste quotas” in higher education admissions and public sector employment.

However, the campaign has drawn sharp criticism from sociologists, educators, and anti-caste activists, who for weaponising competitive exam anxiety, misrepresenting the constitutional mandate of representation which comes as an affirmative action after centuries of caste-based atrocities in history.

The emergence of RHA comes in the direct backdrop of the Cockroach Janta Party-led agitation, which mobilised nationwide protests over paper leak controversies and alleged administrative irregularities in examinations like NEET. It reached a dramatic climax on 25 July when Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned.

In the background, the anti-reservation movement was gaining ground. As of 5 PM on 29 July, their Instagram account has amassed 5.8 million followers.

Inside RHA's Social Media Playbook

Capitalising on the digital discourse surrounding education reforms, the RHA Instagram page which was created on 22 July, posted several reels directly calling out CJP, tagging them and asking them to address the “student concerns regarding reservations”.

In one reel, one of their creators said, “When the CJP folks claim they are fighting for students who committed suicide due to paper leaks, why don't they speak up for those who took their own lives because candidates with lower scores secured admission instead of them? Think of the students who work hard and achieve good marks, only to see someone with a score of minus 40 get admitted".

The page experienced an explosive growth trajectory, amassing over 1 million followers within 24 hours before rapidly scaling to 5.8 million followers, as of 5 pm 29 July, in the subsequent week.

In an early viral reel directly linking the campaign to the Education Minister’s departure, the account's spokesperson declared, “To celebrate Dharmendra Pradhan's resignation, we are launching our first protest today."

Instructing followers to flood social media instead of holding physical demonstrations, the admin added, "You need to flood the comment sections of Modi ji and the CJP with demands to abolish reservation. The algorithm should reflect nothing but the issue of reservation. Since this is a Gen-Z protest, we will conduct it in the Gen-Z way."

In a post laying down their policy, accumulating over 269,000 likes, RHA outlined a vision to erase caste identity from official record-keeping, declaring that if the objective is to eliminate caste-based discrimination, the government should stop requiring or recognising caste identity in everyday public life.

“One Nation. One Identity. Indian," they write to make the case that no one should be required to write their case in government forms, educational applications and admissions.

In another video, their main creator also argued that replacing caste quotas with economic criteria would benefit underprivileged groups, asserting that this would “benefit underprivileged Muslims who are excluded from Scheduled Caste classifications under current law."

There are two prominent personalities driving the content on their page among others. Ajeet Bharti and Anuradha Tiwari.

Anti-caste creator Tiwari has recently joined the movement. In 2024, she had posted her photo with the caption 'Brahmin genes' and sparked a conversation on caste pride.

Meanwhile Bharti is a self-proclaimed right-wing political commentator and intellectual who has been called out in the past for his Hindutva-leaning views.

In collaborative videos posted on the RHA feed, Bharti dismisses public sector representation as unnecessary, arguing that “caste-based quotas create a creamy layer trap” and demanding that state resources be redirected toward primary public education.

He also dismissed historical caste atrocities as “propaganda pushed by leftist historians to induce guilt."

The sudden emergence of RHA has deeply polarised public discourse online, drawing intense reactions from critical voices.

'Co-Opting Ambedkar's Philosophy': The Backlash

Conversely, anti-caste scholars, student organisers, educators, and prominent digital creators have issued comprehensive rebuttals.

Critics argue that the movement fundamentally misunderstands the constitutional mandate of affirmative action, conflating structural representation and social justice with financial poverty alleviation.

Scholars emphasise that reservation was designed to remedy centuries of institutionalised discrimination and the rural realities of untouchability, restricted water access, and caste humiliation which continue to persist.

Furthermore, commentators have condemned the campaign's co-optation of the Ambedkarite slogan of “Educate, Agitate, Organise”, calling it a cynical attempt to weaponise anti-caste vocabulary against the very constitutional safeguards Dr. B.R. Ambedkar established.

Moreover, the fact remains that many SC and ST students still do not get the benefits of reservation and even after many of them do, they still face caste-based discrimination.

In 2023, data showed that more than 13,500 students from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes have dropped out of courses they were taking at Central Universities, Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs).

One digital creator called out the campaign in a viral post garnering over 52,000 likes, labelling the anti-quota demand as “politically, historically, and statistically illiterate”, adding that asking to remove reservation to end the caste system ignores historical causality, as what came first must go first.

A social commentary platform highlighted the selective framing of anti-quota rhetoric, noting that while everybody hates reservation, no one cares about ongoing caste discrimination.

An anti-caste creator published a reel featuring a tweet asking Abhijeet Dipke to “go back to US and clean toilets” perhaps due to Dipke’s Dalit identity, with text on the screen reading, “Proof that no matter how much class mobility you achieve, you will still be discriminated against based on caste. And this is why caste-based reservation is necessary”.

Yet another digital artist shared an illustration against manual scavenging with 75,000 likes, captioned with a “call to end reservation so upper castes will also start doing manual scavenging”, highlighting how caste dictates labor and social privilege long before academic entry.

As a response to this, on X (formerly Twitter), a clip of Saif Ali Khan's monologue from the film Aarakshan is going viral. Users claim that while many posts demand the end of reservation, not a single one demands the end of caste or casteism, reflecting a refusal among upper castes to acknowledge that casteism still thrives.

(The Quint has reached out to Reservation Hatao Andolan, @reservationhataomovement, regarding the movement and the people behind this account. The article will be updated as and when a response is received).