Week 1 - Aishwarya Ramkumar



Annihilation of Caste is a speech released in the version of an essay, wherein B.R. Ambedkar eloquently and categorically expresses his distaste towards the casteist nature of Hinduism and critiques the socialist and Gandhian paradigm, stating that they view power equations only through a narrow economic lens. The essay unfolds into how the defenders of the caste system do so on the basis of it allegedly being a division of labour, wherein in actually this is not so. While it is true that the varna system propagated that individuals belonging to different varnas, undertook a fixed set of professions so as to allegedly ensure order in society, transgression and consequent penalties ensured that no other profession could be practiced by those belonging to a particular caste, expect for that allowed to them by the system. To depict the extent of caste divisions within Hinduism, Ambedkar says that a Sikh or Muslim will not think twice before helping another belonging to that religion, but a Hindu owing to their religious beliefs would never help a fellow Hindu who is an avarna. What is also interesting is that, owing to his staunch beliefs of Hinduism being an inherently oppressive and casteist religion, Ambedkar converted to Buddhism in his last few years.

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