Annihilation of Caste

Category Politics History Non-Fiction
Format Paperback
Imprint Rupa
Price 195

ISBN: 978-93-5304-077-2
Pages: 184 pages
Date: 20 July 2018

ABOUT THIS BOOK

A just society is that society in which ascending sense of reverence and descending sense of contempt is dissolved into the creation of a compassionate society.—B.R. Ambedkar

One of the most inflammatory writings of Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar, ‘Annihilation of Caste’ remains a strident indictment of the Indian society and its social stratification where the lowest segment was treated as untouchable.

A lecture that was never permitted to be given because of its incendiary nature, ‘Annihilation of Caste’ was self-published and immediately became the eye of a storm. Radically against the Brahmanical caste system and Hinduism, it argued for a society based on equal opportunities for all.

This volume posits Ambedkar’s views on caste vis-à-vis Mahatma Gandhi’s ‘Harijans’, and presents the debate that the two luminaries engaged in. Read in this context, the book provides an overview of the problem of caste in India.

AUTHOR OF THE BOOK

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was born in 1891 into an ‘Untouchable’ family of modest means. One of India’s most radical thinkers, he transformed the social and political landscape in the struggle against British colonialism. He was a prolific writer who oversaw the drafting of the Indian Constitution and served as India’s first law minister. In 1935, he publicly declared that though he was born a Hindu, he would not die as one. Ambedkar eventually embraced Buddhism, a few months before his death in 1956.