Review: Annihilation of Caste

Cover Image: The Annihilation of Caste by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar

Crossposted from Feminist Quill, written May 6, 2019

I do not care for the credit which every progressive society must give to its rebels. I shall be satisfied if I make the Hindus realize that they are the sick men of India and that their sickness is causing danger to the health and happiness of other Indians.

It is with these words that Dr. Ambedkar begins the second edition of his famous Annihilation of Caste, a book that began life as a speech. For entirely unsurprising reasons that are detailed in this edition of the book, Dr. Ambedkar’s speech never actually came to be given. He was uninvited by the organization that had originally called him to speak, and he printed the speech at his own expense in the end.

I say unsurprising because Dr. Ambedkar was a man far ahead of his time, and one who has made significant and extensive contributions to resolving the problem of the Indian caste system. He was also the chairman of the Drafting Committee of Indian Constitution – no mean feat, considering the mammoth nature of the Indian Constitution, and the mammoth task it undertakes to this day.

The caste system – or chaturvarna, as Dr. Ambedkar terms it in his book – is a discriminatory feature of Indian society that persists in an insidious fashion to this day. Broadly speaking, it categorizes society into four sections – Brahmins, deemed the intellectual and priestly class, Kshatriyas, deemed the warrior and ruling class, Vaishyas, deemed the trading class, and Shudras, termed the lower or even untouchable class. This is an oversimplification, but nonetheless one that has managed to preserve its integrity across centuries.

Countless unspeakable acts of discrimination and brutality have been committed in the name of preserving the caste system. Even today, even in those cosmopolitan and sanitized spaces that pretend that they have nothing to do with the “uneducated backwardness” of caste, people do everything in their power to preserve the existing hierarchies of power, and to prevent people who have seen centuries of oppression from moving even a step forward.

It is for this reason that Dr. Ambedkar’s work continues to be relevant even today. The discourse surrounding caste is in fact right at home among other ongoing movements that seek to wipe out marginalization. Indian feminists and social activists in particular must take care to ensure that their activism accounts for caste bias and privilege. That voices smothered in centuries past are given their due space, and that they are amplified to the best of our ability.

It is not possible to break Caste without annihilating the religious notions on which it, the Caste system, is founded.

Even in Dr. Ambedkar’s time, there were privileged people within the Hindu community who felt keenly the injustice inherent in the caste system. They sought to abolish it – indeed, untouchability itself was abolished by the Indian Constitution that Dr. Ambedkar so conscientiously helped prepare. However, the majority of these disagreed with Dr. Ambedkar on one key point – and it is this point that caused this speech to go undelivered, leading to its eventual publication as a book. That privileged Hindu faction of reformers sought to change the religion itself from within, whereas Dr. Ambedkar was immovable in his belief that caste formed the foundation of the Hindu religion, and that there would be no eradication of caste without eradication of the religion.

While I wholeheartedly agreed with literally almost everything in this book, there were a few parts that made me pause and think.

Dr. Ambedkar draws a distinction between Hindus – propagators of the caste system – and other religions such as Islam, Christianity and Sikhism. He argues that caste has divided Hindu society, neutralizing its ability to continue as a “missionary religion.” As a product of one of the world’s foremost missionary religions, I’m compelled to argue that a relative lack of proselytization is perhaps one of Hinduism’s better points.

I believe too, that he is mistaken when he implies that other religions do not practice the caste system. While it is true that these hierarchies stem from Hinduism, caste discrimination is truly a universally Indian phenomenon. One reason for this is the fact that many communities that today belong to a different religion were at one point converts from Hinduism. Christian communities in my home state, for example, have incorporated into their culture emblems and language that have their roots in Hinduism. Many churches now install lamps that are essentially a nilavilakku topped with a cross. The nilavilakku is more traditionally used in Hindu worship, and is a central religious emblem to Keralite Hindus.

A TRADITIONAL NILAVILAKKU

CHRISTIAN NILAVILAKKU

Another reason why caste continues to rear its ugly head among non-Hindu communities is its normalization, and the way in which it is closely tied to social status. By converting to a different religion, many communities managed to distance themselves from the vagaries of such discrimination. But they then took that completely unsurprising route of stabilizing their new social positions by reinforcing the existing structure while emphasizing that they were no longer to be counted among the so-called “lower” castes.

It is therefore completely unsurprising that very devout Christian families will speak disparagingly of lower caste communities (who practice Christianity themselves.) They make public religious spaces unwelcoming to the extent that dalit (a word with etymological roots in the Hindu word dalan, meaning oppressed) Christians prefer to worship separately. And just like that, these so-called God fearing followers of Jesus Christ have managed to recreate the chaturvarna and the exclusion of people they deem “untouchable” from their own spaces.

Not to mince words, but it is truly horrifying to watch. (And please bear in mind that I have hitherto only touched upon the less severe forms in which the caste system is observed in the here and now. Hundreds of people belonging to dalit communities are killed every year in caste violence, and only some of it is even reported as “news.”)

It is a system so entrenched in our collective consciousness that your very Average Joe would see no hypocrisy in proclaiming their lack of caste bias in the same breath as they condemn reservation quotas for scheduled castes, tribes and other depressed communities. It is a system that every generation attempts to reinforce in its own unique way.

And it is the reason why this book is a must-read for every Indian.

Sidenote: For anyone with even the slightest connection to the legal sphere, Dr. Ambedkar’s keen legal mind stands out like a beacon. It is truly a privilege to read this man’s words, and to catch a glimpse of the towering intellect behind them.