Annihilation of Caste
“What the Communist Manifesto is to the capitalist world, Annihilation of Caste is to India.” —Anand Teltumbde, author of The Persistence of Caste The classic work of Indian Dalit politics, reframed with an extensive introduction by Arundathi Roy B.R. Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste is one of the most important, yet neglected, works of political writing from India. Written in 1936, it is an audacious denunciation of Hinduism and its caste system. Ambedkar – a figure like W.E.B. Du Bois – offers a scholarly critique of Hindu scriptures, scriptures that sanction a rigidly hierarchical and iniquitous social system. The world’s best-known Hindu, Mahatma Gandhi, responded publicly to the provocation. The hatchet was never buried. Arundhati Roy introduces this extensively annotated edition of Annihilation of Caste in “The Doctor and the Saint,” examining the persistence of caste in modern India, and how the conflict between Ambedkar and Gandhi continues to resonate. Roy takes us to the beginning of Gandhi’s political career in South Africa, where his views on race, caste and imperialism were shaped. She tracks Ambedkar’s emergence as a major political figure in the national movement, and shows how his scholarship and intelligence illuminated a political struggle beset by sectarianism and obscurantism. Roy breathes new life into Ambedkar’s anti-caste utopia, and says that without a Dalit revolution, India will continue to be hobbled by systemic inequality.
The Doctor and the Saint
The little-known story of Gandhi’s reluctance to challenge the caste system, and the man who fought fiercely for India’s downtrodden. Democracy hasn’t eradicated caste, argues bestselling author and Booker Prize–winner Arundhati Roy—it has entrenched and modernized it. To understand caste today in India, Roy insists we must examine the influence of Gandhi in shaping what India ultimately became: independent of British rule, globally powerful, and marked to this day by the caste system. Roy states that for more than a half century, Gandhi’s pronouncements on the inherent qualities of black Africans, Dalit “untouchables,” and the laboring classes remained consistently insulting, and he also refused to allow lower castes to create their own political organizations and elect their own representatives. But there was someone else who had a larger vision of justice—a founding father of the republic and the chief architect of its constitution. In The Doctor and the Saint, Roy introduces us to this contemporary of Gandhi, B.R. Ambedkar, who challenged the thinking of the time and fought to promote not merely formal democracy, but liberation from the oppression, shame, and poverty imposed on millions of Indians by an archaic caste system. This is a fascinating and surprising look at two men—one of whom has become a worldwide symbol and the other of whom remains unfamiliar to most outside his native country. Praise for Arundhati Roy “Arundhati Roy is incandescent in her brilliance and her fearlessness.” —Junot Díaz “The fierceness with which Arundhati Roy loves humanity moves my heart.” —Alice Walker
Anhilation of Caste
Annihilation of Caste & Waiting for a Visa
Bringing the Best of B. R. Ambedkar together. Annihilation of Caste & Waiting for a Visa. "Annihilation of Caste" is an undelivered speech written in 1936 by B. R. Ambedkar who fought against the country's practice of untouchability.In a letter dated 12 December 1935, the secretary of the Jat-Pat Todak Mandal (Society for the Abolition of Caste system), an anti-caste Hindu reformist group organization based in Lahore, invited B. R. Ambedkar to deliver a speech on the caste system in India at their annual conference in 1936. Ambedkar wrote the speech as an essay under the title ""Annihilation of Caste"" and sent in advance to the organizers in Lahore for printing and distribution. The organizers found some of the content to be objectionable towards the orthodox Hindu religion and They wrote to Ambedkar seeking the removal of sections which they found, in their words, ""unbearable. Ambedker declared in response that he ""would not change a comma"" of his text. After much deliberation, the committee of organizers decided to cancel their annual conference in its entirety, because they feared violence by orthodox Hindus at the venue if they held the event after withdrawing the invitation to him. Ambedkar subsequently published copies of the speech as a book on 15 May 1936 at his own expense. "Waiting for a Visa" is Autobiographical life story of B. R. Ambedkar written in the period of 1935-36. It consists of reminiscences drawn by Ambedkar, related to his experiences with untouchability."
Annihilation of Caste
Annihilation of Caste is an undelivered speech written in 1936 by B. R. Ambedkar, an Indian academic turned politician. He wrote Annihilation of Caste for the 1936 meeting of a group of liberal Hindu caste-reformers in Lahore. After reviewing the speech’s controversiality, conference organizers revoked Ambedkar’s invitation. He then self-published the work. The work is considered a classic and is being re-evaluated time and again.
