“Caste is a notion”: Ambedkar's Annihilation of Caste, the speech Lahore would not hear

In the spring of 1936, the Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal, a group of Hindu reformers in Lahore working to end caste, asked B. R. Ambedkar to preside over its annual conference. He wrote a long speech and had 1,000 copies printed in Bombay. Then the Mandal asked him to cut the parts that attacked “the morality and reasonableness of the Vedas” and that said this would be his last address as a Hindu (Prologue [8]).

Ambedkar refused. He had told them, he wrote, “that I would not alter a comma, that I would not allow any censorship over my address” (Prologue [9]). The conference was cancelled. He put the printed speech on sale himself. Within two months the 1,500 copies of the English edition had sold out, and it was being translated into Gujarati, Tamil and other languages (Preface to the second edition [1]).

The speech that was never given became Annihilation of Caste, one of the most read works against caste.

What Ambedkar argued

No reform gets round caste. Ambedkar began with the reformers who put politics first. “Are you fit for political power,” he asked them, “even though you do not allow a large class of your own countrymen like the untouchables to use public schools?” (§2). He turned next to the Socialists, who put economics first, and told them that “turn in any direction you like, Caste is the monster that crosses your path. You cannot have political reform, you cannot have economic reform, unless you kill this monster” (§3[13]).

Caste divides workers, not just work. To those who defended caste as a division of labour, he answered that it “is not merely a division of labour. It is also a division of labourers”, and “a hierarchy in which the divisions of labourers are graded one above the other” (§4[1]). Work was handed out by birth, not by aptitude (§4[2]). He also rejected the idea that caste kept races pure: caste is “a social division of people of the same race” (§5).

There is no Hindu society, only castes. “Hindu Society as such does not exist. It is only a collection of castes” (§6[2]). Each caste looks after itself. “Caste has killed public spirit. Caste has destroyed the sense of public charity. Caste has made public opinion impossible. A Hindu’s public is his caste” (§13[1]).

Four varnas would be no better. Some reformers, such as the Arya Samaj, proposed to replace thousands of castes with the four varnas, ranked by worth, not birth. Ambedkar argued that the old labels would carry the old ranks with them (§15[3–4]). People cannot be sorted into four fixed classes, and the scheme could not last without punishment: “It must be enforced by law” (§16[5–6]). He read the story of Rama killing Shambuka, a Shudra who “wanted to be a Brahmin”, as proof of that (§16[7]). And it kept the Shudra from wealth, learning and arms. “In practice the relation was that of master and servants” (§17[4]).

The remedy is inter-marriage, but only if people stop believing in the scriptures. Abolishing sub-castes might only make castes stronger, and dining together had not killed “the spirit of Caste” (§20[4–5]). “The real remedy for breaking Caste is inter-marriage. Nothing else will serve as the solvent of Caste” (§20[5]). But most Hindus would not marry across caste because it went against what they held sacred. “Caste is not a physical object like a wall of bricks or a line of barbed wire… Caste is a notion, it is a state of the mind” (§20[8]). People keep caste “because they are deeply religious”, he argued, so “the real remedy is to destroy the belief in the sanctity of the Shastras” (§20[9]).

The graded system blocks a common front. The Brahmins, the intellectual class, would not lead a movement against their own power (§21[5–15]). And because the castes are graded, a caste that seeks equality with those above it is “frozen” when told it must give the same to those below. “All are slaves of the Caste System. But all the slaves are not equal in status” (§21[17]). Marx’s call that workers had “nothing to lose except your chains” could not work against caste (§21[18]).

Scripture forbids the reasoning that could change it. Ambedkar argued that the scriptures leave no room for a Hindu to judge caste by reason or morality, and that this wall must be broken: “you have got to apply the dynamite to the Vedas and the Shastras, which deny any part to reason” (§22[25–26]).

A religion of rules is law, and law can change. He drew a line between rules, which tell people what to do, and principles, which help them judge. What Hindus call religion, he argued, is “really Law, or at best legalized class-ethics”, and once people see it as law, “they will be ready for a change, for people know and accept that law can be changed” (§23[4], [7]). He proposed one standard book for the religion and a priesthood open to all by state examination, not by birth (§24[1]).

His ideal was democracy as a way of living. “My ideal would be a society based on Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” (§14[1]). Taking up the ideas of John Dewey, his teacher at Columbia, he wrote: “Democracy is not merely a form of government. It is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience” (§14[2]).

He ended by telling the Mandal the struggle was theirs: “I am sorry, I will not be with you. I have decided to change” (§26[3]).

The argument with Gandhi

In July 1936, M. K. Gandhi reviewed the speech in his paper Harijan. He wrote that “caste has nothing to do with religion”, that the texts Ambedkar quoted were of doubtful authority, and that a religion should be judged by its saints, not its worst followers. He defended varna as each person following “the ancestral calling”, equal in status (Gandhi, Harijan, 11 and 18 July 1936, Appendix I [10–15]).

Ambedkar’s reply, added to the 1937 edition, said Gandhi had missed the point. The masses, he wrote, do not separate genuine texts from later additions. “They have believed what they have been told” (Reply §3[7]). The saints preached that all were equal before God, “a very different and a very innocuous proposition” (Reply §3[9]). And varna by ancestral calling was caste under another name: “Varna is based on the principle of each according to his worth, while Caste is based on the principle of each according to his birth” (Reply §9[33]). No good character could make a caste relationship right: “A good man cannot be a master, and a master cannot be a good man” (Reply §5[17]).

Why it matters

Annihilation of Caste moved the argument from how caste treats people to why it lasts. Ambedkar’s answer was that caste lives in belief, made sacred by scripture, and that its grades turn the oppressed against each other. That is why he held that kindness from the upper castes, or reform within the old frame, could not end it.

The text is also a record of what happened to it. The reformers who invited Ambedkar wanted his view of caste, but not his attack on its religious basis. In his 1944 preface he said he had meant to merge it with his 1916 paper “Castes in India”, but never found the time (Preface to the third edition [1]).

What the text does not show

• Evidence. It is a speech, not a study. Its history, such as the Mauryan period as a time without caste (§17[7]), is his own reading, given without sources.
• The scriptures he quotes. Ambedkar says he is “no authority” on them and took his texts from the writings of B. G. Tilak (Reply §3[6]). The Sanskrit verses are missing from the online text this brief uses.
• Caste below the line. It speaks to caste Hindu reformers. It says little about caste among Dalit and Shudra communities themselves.
• Women. Women appear mainly in the Chaturvarnya argument. His fuller account of caste and women is in the 1916 paper.
• The first edition. We have not yet confirmed its printer and publisher from a copy of the 1936 edition.

Talking points

• Ambedkar said caste is “a state of the mind” held up by belief. Where does caste live today: in belief, in property, in law, or in all of them?
• He argued that graded inequality stops the oppressed uniting. Where can you see that working now?
• A counter-view: Gandhi held that caste could be reformed from inside Hinduism by its best followers. What would Ambedkar say to that today, and what would Gandhi’s defenders say?

The work

B. R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste: speech prepared for the 1936 annual conference of the Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal, Lahore, published by the author in 1936; second edition with Gandhi’s reviews and Ambedkar’s reply, 1937; third edition, 1944. Read in the online annotated edition by Frances W. Pritchett, Columbia University. Read the annotated edition