Annihilation of Caste

220 Pages·2014·4.723 MB·English

by  B.R. Ambedkar, S. Anand (editor), Arundhati Roy (introduction)

Praise for the book
‘Annihilation of Caste has to be read only because it is open to
serious objection. Dr Ambedkar is a challenge to
Hinduism … No Hindu who prizes his faith above life itself
can afford to underrate the importance of this indictment’
M.K. Gandhi
‘What Communist Manifesto is to the capitalist world,
Annihilation of Caste is to caste India. Arundhati Roy’s
introduction is expansive and excellent. S. Anand’s annotations
have style and perfection’ Anand Teltumbde, author of The
Persistence of Caste: The Khairlanji Murders & India’s Hidden
Apartheid
‘For the 1930s, Annihilation of Caste was a case of marvellous
writing with conceptual clarity and political understanding—
something the world should know about. The annotations
illumine the whole book. Roy’s essay has the sharp political
thrust one has come to expect from her’ Uma Chakravarti,
author of Everyday Lives, Everyday Histories: Beyond the Kings and
Brahmanas of ‘Ancient’ India and Pandita Ramabai: A Life and a
Time
‘Arundhati Roy’s The Doctor and the Saint works both at an
emotive and an argumentative level. She manages to convey an
intimate and deeply felt sensitivity to the history that produced
Annihilation of Caste. Her essay is both well documented and
closely argued. The annotations do an excellent job of
providing supplementary information, corroboration and
relevant citations … A robust edition of an under-appreciated
classic’ Satish Deshpande, Professor of Sociology, Delhi
University
‘S. Anand’s annotations are very thorough and on the whole
based on first-rate and current scholarship on South Asia and
elsewhere. Their tone and style will appeal to a scholarly as well
as lay audience  …  an important accomplishment. Arundhati
Roy’s essay is punchy, eye-opening and provocative … There is
very little left of the saintly stature of the Mahatma once Roy is
done with him, while Ambedkar, quite rightly, is left standing
as the man in full control of his senses and his very considerable
intellect’ Thomas Blom Hansen, Director, Stanford’s Center
for South Asia
‘This annotated edition of Annihilation of Caste was long
overdue. It makes available to all a major text of Dr
Ambedkar’s, where his intellectual engagement with caste is
best articulated … the copious footnotes give the reader a sense
of direction and all the additional information needed for
making sense of the text—including the translation of the
Sanskrit shlokas Ambedkar used to document his analysis. This
edition is truly a remarkable achievement’ Christophe
Jaffrelot, author of Dr Ambedkar and Untouchability: Analysing
and Fighting Caste
‘This edition, with Ambedkar’s words in Nietzschean aphoristic
format, is extremely useful. It helps us discover new dimensions
of Ambedkar’s subversive power. The annotations—many times
orthogonal and tangential—enhance the value of this book.
Those who have read Annihilation of Caste many times before
will still read this work for the sake of the annotations and
reference-based clarifications of Ambedkar’s thoughts. This
edition will foster a more critical engagement among readers’
Ayyathurai Gajendran, anthropologist

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.
Arundhati Roy is the author of the novel The God of Small Things.
Collections of her recent political writings have been published as Listening
to Grasshoppers and Broken Republic.
S. Anand is the founder-publisher of Navayana. He is the co-author of
Bhimayana, a graphic biography of Ambedkar.

This edition first published in the UK, US and Canada by Verso 2014

This edition first published in India

Edition © Navayana Publishing Pvt Ltd 2014

Introduction © Arundhati Roy 2014

Annotations © S. Anand 2014

Research assistance: Julia Perczel
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
Verso

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US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201

www.versobooks.com
Verso is the imprint of new left books
eBook ISBN: 978-1-78168-832-8 (US)

eBook ISBN: 978-1-78168-830-4 (UK)

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-78168-831-1
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the library of congress
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
About the Author
Editor’s Note
The Doctor and the Saint
Arundhati Roy
Notes
Bibliography
Annihilation of Caste
1. Preface to Second Edition, 1937
2. Preface to Third Edition, 1944
3. Prologue
4. Annihilation of Caste: An Undelivered Speech, 1936
The Ambedkar–Gandhi debate
5. A Vindication of Caste by Mahatma Gandhi
6. Sant Ram responds to Gandhi
7. A Reply to the Mahatma by B.R. Ambedkar
A Note on the Poona Pact
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Index
Editor’s Note
Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste is a text in search of
the audience it was written for. It survived an early assassination
attempt to become what it is today—a legend. When the
Hindu reformist group, the Jat-Pat Todak Mandal (Forum for
Break-up of Caste) of Lahore, which had invited Ambedkar to
deliver its annual lecture in 1936, asked for and received the
text of the speech in advance, it found the contents
“unbearable”. The Mandal realised that Ambedkar intended to
use its platform not merely to criticise the practice of caste, but
to denounce Hinduism itself, and withdrew its invitation. In
May 1936, Ambedkar printed 1,500 copies of the text of his
speech at his own expense. It was soon translated into six
languages. While the majority of the privileged castes are
blissfully ignorant of its existence, Annihilation of Caste has been
printed and reprinted—like most of Ambedkar’s large oeuvre—
by small, mostly Dalit-owned presses, and read by mostly Dalit
readers over seven decades. It now has the curious distinction
of being one of the most obscure as well as one of the most
widely read books in India. This in itself illuminates the iron
grid of the caste system.
However, Annihilation of Caste was a speech that Ambedkar
wrote for a primarily privileged-caste audience. This audience
has eluded it. This annotated, critical edition is an attempt to
give his work the critical and scholarly attention it deserves.
As I read and reread the text, I realised how rich it was, and
how much present-day readers would enjoy and learn from it if
they could place it in a historical context: Who had founded
the Jat-Pat Todak Mandal? Who was Sant Ram, the man who
valiantly swam against the tide of the dominant Arya Samaj
opinion? What was the incident in Kavitha that Ambedkar
mentions but does not elaborate upon? From where was he
drawing the ideas of “social efficiency”, “associated mode of
living” or “social endosmosis”? What is the connection he
suggests between the Roman Comitia Centuriata and the
Communal Award of 1932? What is the connection between
the American feminist anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre and
Ambedkar’s advocacy of direct action? To try and answer these
questions, I began the task of annotating the text. In the
process, I realised that by the time he published a second
edition in 1937, Ambedkar had made a range of subtle and deft
changes to the first edition. The second edition included his
exchange with M.K. Gandhi. Ambedkar made further changes
in the 1944 edition. All these are highlighted where necessary.
Ambedkar’s original edition tended to use long paragraphs that
sometimes ran to pages. These have been divided with
appropriate breaks. While the section numbers that Ambedkar
provides have been retained, the new paragraphs have been
numbered. Spellings and capitalisation have been standardised.
Annihilation of Caste is peppered with Sanskrit couplets.
Ambedkar cites them with authority, never bothering to
unpack them for his privileged audience. To translate these, I
turned to the scholar Bibek Debroy, who responded with rare
enthusiasm. He treated every verse as a puzzle.
Arundhati Roy’s introduction “The Doctor and the Saint”,
is a book-length essay that familiarises the reader with caste as it
plays out in contemporary India, and with the historical
context of the public debate between Ambedkar and Gandhi
that followed the publication of Annihilation of Caste. In her
introduction Roy describes a little-known side of Gandhi. She
shows how his disturbing views on race during his years in
South Africa presaged his public pronouncements on caste. As
she puts it: “Ambedkar was Gandhi’s most formidable
adversary. He challenged him not just politically or
intellectually, but also morally. To have excised Ambedkar from
Gandhi’s story, which is the story we all grew up on, is a
travesty. Equally, to ignore Gandhi while writing about