Caste System – Ambedkar and Annihilation of Caste
Caste System – Ambedkar and Annihilation of Caste
Over the last couple of days I have been looking to see if there are/were any social movements to abolish the caste system. I started surfing the net and came accross a very interesting document and that is Ambedkar’s Annihilation Of Caste (AOC). This was a speech that Ambedkar had prepared when asked to preside over the Jat Pat Todak Mandal conference. Even though the conference was cancelled, for reasons he has mentioned in the preface, Ambedkar published the speech.
Any person willing to learn about the evils of caste system in India should read the AOC. After reading it I was amazed at how profound Ambedkar’s understanding of the subject was. I don’t think anybody understood the subject better than him. One has to really read it carefully to understand his views. My observations after reading the AOC are
Ambedkar has the deepest and in my view the most correct understanding of the subject and he has presented the evils of the caste system very well.
He has correctly diagnosed the problem that the hindu society faces because of the caste system.
His solution to the problem i.e. Annhilation of the Caste can not be more correct. He understands that no matter how many programmes you run for the upliftment of the backward caste, true equality will not be achieved as long as the caste system lives. A contention that I cannot agree more with.
However I tend to agree less with the manner in which he has presented the solution. Even though he has explained in detail what he means by the different terms e.g. “destruction of religion”, these are so powerful words that can cause most logical men to close their eyes to reasoning. Choosing a language as strong as this he gave an easy tool to the detractors to put his entire speech in bad light and that is exactly what Mahatma Gandhi did when he reviewed the speech in his periodical, “Harijan”. Because of this it was easy for the Mahatma to overlook the entire content of
Over the last couple of days I have been looking to see if there are/were any social movements to abolish the caste system. I started surfing the net and came accross a very interesting document and that is Ambedkar’s Annihilation Of Caste (AOC). This was a speech that Ambedkar had prepared when asked to preside over the Jat Pat Todak Mandal conference. Even though the conference was cancelled, for reasons he has mentioned in the preface, Ambedkar published the speech.
Any person willing to learn about the evils of caste system in India should read the AOC. After reading it I was amazed at how profound Ambedkar’s understanding of the subject was. I don’t think anybody understood the subject better than him. One has to really read it carefully to understand his views. My observations after reading the AOC are
Ambedkar has the deepest and in my view the most correct understanding of the subject and he has presented the evils of the caste system very well.
He has correctly diagnosed the problem that the hindu society faces because of the caste system.
His solution to the problem i.e. Annhilation of the Caste can not be more correct. He understands that no matter how many programmes you run for the upliftment of the backward caste, true equality will not be achieved as long as the caste system lives. A contention that I cannot agree more with.
However I tend to agree less with the manner in which he has presented the solution. Even though he has explained in detail what he means by the different terms e.g. “destruction of religion”, these are so powerful words that can cause most logical men to close their eyes to reasoning. Choosing a language as strong as this he gave an easy tool to the detractors to put his entire speech in bad light and that is exactly what Mahatma Gandhi did when he reviewed the speech in his periodical, “Harijan”. Because of this it was easy for the Mahatma to overlook the entire content of