Malavika Prasanna - Week 1


RESPONSE PAPER
Reading Title: Annihilation of Caste by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar
Submission Number: 1/10

Ambedkar was of the opinion that social reform is the only and the necessary solution to annihilating the caste system and reforming the Hindu religion. This specific focus on social reform finds its roots in the Ambedkar’s classification of caste as a social division.  On the face of it, this call for social reform appears to be a rather simplistic proposition, but it gathers profound significance when looked at in the context of the following.
1.     Ambedkar’s understanding was that caste is a social division within the same race of people, and thus there is no purity of race that the caste system can claim to preserve. This was a rather powerful assertion that served as a counter-narrative to the common defense that caste division is characterized merely by racial differences.
2.     Ambedkar noted that caste has an anti-social spirit which creates hostility between castes and sub-castes and prevents the intermingling of castes. This anti-social spirit in itself has led to the creation of rules which create physical boundaries between upper castes and lower castes, promote ideals of untouchability, purity and pollution, etc. These rules of caste are what stand in the way of reform, and thus social reform would be the only opposition to an anti-social party.
The aforesaid analysis only goes to show that the responsibility for social reform lies not with the law or with the State, but with the society, and with the very people that are part of that society. Social reform must precede political reform, as he would put it.




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