B.R. Ambedkar > Quotes

“Under the rule of the Peshwas in the Maratha country,11 the Untouchable was not allowed to use the public streets if a Hindu was coming along, lest he should pollute the Hindu by his shadow. The Untouchable was required to have a black thread either on his wrist or around his neck, as a sign or a mark to prevent the Hindus from getting themselves polluted by his touch by mistake. In Poona, the capital of the Peshwa, the Untouchable was required to carry, strung from his waist, a broom to sweep away from behind himself the dust he trod on, lest a Hindu walking on the same dust should be polluted. In Poona, the Untouchable was required to carry an earthen pot hung around his neck wherever he went—for holding his spit, lest his spit falling on the earth should pollute a Hindu who might unknowingly happen to tread on it.”
― B R Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition

“I am convinced that the real remedy is intermarriage. Fusion of blood can alone create the feeling of being kith and kin, and unless this feeling of kinship, of being kindred, becomes paramount, the separatist feeling—the feeling of being aliens—created by caste will not vanish.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition

“Plato had no perception of the uniqueness of every individual, of his incommensurability with others, of each individual as forming a class of his own. He had no recognition of the infinite diversity of active tendencies, and the combination of tendencies of which an individual is capable.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition

“Caste has however done one thing. It has completely disorganized and demoralized the Hindus.”
― B.R Ambedkar, Annihilation Of Caste

“You must abolish your slavery yourselves. Do not depend for its abolition upon god or a superman. Remember that it is not enough that a people are numerically in the majority. They must be always watchful, strong and self-respecting to attain and maintain success.We must shape our course ourselves and by ourselves.”
― B.R. Ambedkar

“Siddharth Gautama rose in his seat and said, "I oppose this resolution. War does not solve any question. Waging war will not serve our purpose. It will sow the seeds of another war. The slayer gets a slayer in his turn; the conqueror gets one who conquers him; a man who despoils is despoiled in his turn.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, The Buddha & His Dhamma

“Law and order are the medicine of the politic body and when the politic body gets sick, medicine must be administered.”
― Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar

“To the 'Untouchables', Hinduism is a veritable chamber of horrors.

Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar (Writings and Speeches, Volume: 9, pg: 296)”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Writings And Speeches: A Ready Reference Manual

“The saints have never according to my study carried on a campaign against. Caste and Untouchability. They were not concerned with the struggle between men. They were concerned with the relation between man and God. They did not preach that all men were equal. They preached that all men were equal, in the eyes of God a very different and a very innocuous proposition which nobody can find difficult to preach or dangerous to believe in.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste: With a Reply to Mahatma Gandhi

“Social war has been raging between the strong and the weak far more violently in Europe than it has ever been in India. Yet, the weak in Europe has had in his freedom of military service his physical weapon, in suffering his political weapon and in education his moral weapon. These three weapons for emancipation were never withheld by the strong from the weak in Europe. All these weapons were, however, denied to the masses in India by Chaturvarnya. There cannot be a more degrading system of social organization than the Chaturvarnya.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste: With a Reply to Mahatma Gandhi

“Nationality is a social feeling. It is a feeling of a corporate sentiment of oneness which makes those who are charged with it feel that they are kith and kin. This national feeling is a double edged feeling. It is at once a feeling of fellowship for one’s own kith and kin and an anti-fellowship feeling for those who are not one’s own kith and kin. It is a feeling of “consciousness of kind” which on the one hand binds together those who have it, so strongly that it over-rides all differences arising out of economic conflicts or social gradations and, on the other, severs them from those who are not of their kind. It is a longing not to belong to any other group. This is the essence of what is called a nationality and national feeling.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or Partition of India

“Asceticism he found to be useless. It was vain to attempt to escape from the world. There is no escape from the world even for an ascetic. He realised that what is necessary is not escape from the world. What is necessary is to change the world and to make it better.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, The Buddha & His Dhamma

“There is no doubt, in my opinion, that unless you change your social order you can achieve little by way of progress. You cannot mobilize the community either for defence or for offence. You cannot build anything on the foundations of caste. You cannot build up a nation, you cannot build up a morality. Anything that you will build on the foundations of caste will crack and will never be a whole.”
― B.R Ambedkar, Annihilation Of Caste

“The Musalman, remaining faithful to his religion, has not progressed; he has remained stationary in a world of swiftly moving modern forces. It is, indeed, one of the salient features of Islam that it immobilizes in their native barbarism, the races whom it enslaves. It is fixed in a crystallization, inert and impenetrable. It is unchangeable; and political, social or economic changes have no repercussion upon it. " Having been taught that outside Islam there can be no safety; outside its law no truth and outside its spiritual message there is no happiness, the Muslim has become incapable of conceiving any other condition than his own, any other mode of thought than the Islamic thought. He firmly believes that he has arrived at an unequalled pitch of perfection; that he is the sole possessor of true faith, of the true doctrine, the true wisdom ; that he alone is in possession of the truth—no relative truth subject to revision, but absolute truth. " The religious law of the Muslims has had the effect of imparting to the very diverse individuals of whom the world is composed, a unity of thought, of feeling, of ideas, of judgement.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or the Partition of India

“There can thus be no manner of doubt that the Muslim Society in India is afflicted by the same social evils as afflict the Hindu Society. Indeed, the Muslims have all the social evils of the Hindus and something more. That something more is the compulsory system of purdah for Muslim women. As a consequence of the purdah system a segregation of the Muslim women is brought about. The”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or the Partition of India

“no civilized society of today presents more survivals of primitive times than does the Indian society. Its religion is essentially primitive and its tribal code, in spite of the advance of time and civilization, operates in all its pristine vigour even today.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Castes in India

“योsवमन्येत ते मूले हेतुशास्त्राश्रयात् द्विजः ।
स साधुभिर्बहिष्कार्यो नास्तिको वेदनिन्दकः ।।
According to this rule, rationalism as a canon of interpreting the Vedas and Smritis, is absolutely condemned. It is regarded to be as wicked as atheism and the punishment provided for it is ex-communication.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste

“To leave inequality between class and class, between sex and sex, which is the soul of Hindu society, and to go on passing legislation relating to economic problems is to make a farce of our constitution and to build a palace on a dung heap”
― Dr B R Ambedkar

“The Hindus accuse the Muslims of contumacy. The Muslims accuse Hindus of meanness. Both, however, forget that the communal problem exists not because the Muslims are extravagant and insolent in their demands and the Hindus are mean and grudging in their concessions. It exists and will exist wherever a hostile majority is brought face to face against a hostile minority.”
― B.R. Ambedkar

“Any Government which denied this elementary right of freedom of speech and freedom of action did not deserve allegiance from the people.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or Partition of India

“But once a missionary religion, Hinduism perforce ceased to be a missionary religion after the time when the Hindu society developed its system of castes. For, caste is incompatible with conversion.”
― B.R. Ambedkar

“The saints have never, according to my study, carried on a campaign against caste and untouchability. They were not concerned with the struggle between men. They were concerned with the relation between man and god. They did not preach that all men were equal. They preached that all men were equal in the eyes of god - a very different and a very innocuous proposition, which nobody can find difficult to preach or dangerous to believe in.”
― Dr B R Ambedkar

“Without equality, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over the many. Equality without liberty, would kill individual initiative.”
― Ambedkar

“Everything, you see, is impermanent.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Buddha or Karl Marx

“Pakistan is merely another manifestation of a cultural unit demanding freedom for the growth of its own distinctive culture.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or the Partition of India

“These will suffice to show that the emancipation of the mind and the soul is a necessary preliminary for the political expansion of the people.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation Of Caste

“Hinduism is not interested in the common man. Hinduism is not interested in Society as a whole. The centre of its interest lies in a class and its philosophy is concerned in sustaining and supporting the rights of that class.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Philosophy of Hinduism

“In the fight for swaraj you fight with the whole nation on your side. In this, you have to fight against the whole nation—and that too, your own.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste

“For myself I shall find as much pleasure in a positive destruction of my own ideology, as in a rational disagreement on a topic, which, notwithstanding many learned disquisitions is likely to remain controversial forever.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Castes in India

“That, religion is the source of power is illustrated by the history of India where the priest holds a sway over the common man often greater than the magistrate and where everything, even such things as strikes and elections, so easily take a religious turn and can so easily be given a religious twist.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste