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To compound the problem, caste, unlike say apartheid, is not colour-coded, and therefore not easy to see.
insisting that caste was an “internal matter”.
Both are forms of discrimination that target people because of their
“ascending scale of reverence and a descending scale of
Jim Crow laws.
The most famous Indian in the world, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, disagreed. He believed that caste represented the genius of Indian society.
The villagers managed their internal affairs through the caste system, and through it they dealt with any oppression from the ruling power or powers. It is not possible to deny the organising capability of a nation that was capable of producing the caste system its wonderful power of organisation.
I believe that if Hindu Society has been able to stand, it is because it is founded on the caste system … To destroy the caste system and adopt the Western European social system means that Hindus must give up the principle of hereditary occupation which is the soul of the caste system. Hereditary principle is an eternal principle. To change it is to create disorder. I have no use for a Brahmin if I cannot call him a Brahmin for my life. It will be chaos if every day a Brahmin is changed into a Shudra and a Shudra is to be changed into a Brahmin.
Ambedkar’s response to this was that “the outcaste is a bye-product of the caste system.
In a nation of 1.2 billion, more than 800 million people live on less than Rs 20 a day.
To be eligible for the reservation policy, a Dalit needs to have completed high school. According to government data, 71.3 per cent of Scheduled Caste students drop out before they matriculate, which means that even for low-end government jobs, the reservation policy only applies to one in every four
According to the 2001 Census, only 2.24 per cent of the Dalit population are graduates.
‘Merit’ is the weapon of choice for an Indian elite that has dominated a system by allegedly divine authorisation, and denied knowledge—of certain kinds—to the subordinated castes for thousands of years.
“Some castes are genetically malnourished and so very little can be achieved in raising them up; and if they are, it would be undoing excellence and
there are (officially) 1.3 million people,46 mostly women, who continue to earn their living by carrying baskets of human shit on their heads as they clean out traditional-style toilets that use no water.
it helps to give the impression that as long as you work hard, capitalism is intrinsically egalitarian.
Democracy hasn’t eradicated caste. It has entrenched and modernised it. This is why it’s time to read Ambedkar.
in the ninety-eight volumes of his writing, Gandhi never decisively and categorically renounced his belief in chaturvarna, the system of four varnas.
“Gandhiji, I have no Homeland,” was Ambedkar’s famous reply. “No Untouchable worth the name will be proud of this land.
Gandhi distanced himself more and more from the business of nation building. For him, the Congress party’s work was done. He wanted the party dissolved. He believed (quite rightly) that the state represented violence in a concentrated and organised form, that because it was not a human entity, because it was soulless, it owed its very existence to violence.
He believed that the caste system advanced itself by controlling women, and one of his major concerns was to make Hindu personal law more equitable for
“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
How can such institutionalised injustice, even if it is divinely ordained, be acceptable to anyone?
You must have the courage to tell the Hindus that what is wrong with them is their religion—the religion which has produced in them this notion of the sacredness of caste. Will you show that
It means there is a quotient of Brahminism in everybody, regardless of which caste they belong to.
first and foremost thing that must be recognised is that Hindu society is a myth. The name Hindu is itself a foreign name,”
When reformers began to use the word ‘Hindu’ to describe themselves and their organisations, it had less to do with religion than with trying to forge a unified political constitution out of a divided people.
It had caused famines in which millions had died while the British government exported food to
Ambedkar wasn’t enamoured of the Bhagvad Gita. His view was that the Gita contained “an unheard of defence of murder”.
Ambedkar, on the other hand, born unmoneyed, Untouchable, and denied the right to wear clothes that privileged-caste people wore, would show his defiance by wearing a three-piece suit.)
he described Hindu society in a chilling metaphor—as a multi-storeyed tower with no staircase and no entrance. Everybody had to die in the storey they were born in.
Mahatmaji does not want you to dine with Thiyas or Pulayas. What he wants is that we must be prepared to touch or go near other human beings as you go near a cow or a horse … Mahatmaji wants you to look upon so-called untouchables as you do at the cow and the dog and other harmless
Their reason for preventing the Untouchables from drinking it is that they do not wish to acknowledge by such permission that castes declared inferior by sacred tradition are in fact their equals.
While workers could not strike for fair wages, it was perfectly correct for Gandhi to be generously sponsored by big industrialists.
Communists were people of The Book, and The Book was written by a German Jew who had heard of, but had not actually encountered, Brahminism.
The most unique aspect of Ambedkar’s memorandum was his proposal for a system of positive discrimination within the electoral system. Ambedkar did not believe that universal adult franchise alone could secure equal rights for Untouchables.
I may even sit at my meals with a Bhangi by my side, but I do not ask you to align yourselves with them by inter-caste dinners and marriages.”
Speaking at a Depressed Classes Conference in 1925, Ambedkar said: “When one is spurned by everyone, even the sympathy shown by Mahatma Gandhi is of no little importance.”
The last portion which deals with the complete annihilation of the Hindu religion and doubts the morality of the sacred books of the Hindus as well as a hint about your intention to leave the Hindu fold does not seem to me to be relevant.
the real method of breaking up the caste system was not to bring about inter-caste dinners and inter-caste marriages but to destroy the religious notions on which caste was founded,
I did not expect that your Mandal would be so upset because I have spoken of the destruction of the Hindu religion. I thought it was only fools who were afraid of words.
who will not reason, is a bigot; he, who cannot, is a fool; he, who dares not, is a slave.”
(It is the trait of our clan never to use force towards a god, a Brahmin, a Harijan or a cow)”
“I had the misfortune of being born with the stigma of an Untouchable. However, it is not my fault; but I will not die a Hindu, for this is in my power”
“Are you fit for political power even though you do not allow a large class of your own countrymen like the Untouchables to use public schools? Are you fit for political power even though you do not allow them the use of public wells? Are you fit for political power even though you do not allow them the use of public streets? Are you fit for political power even though you do not allow them to wear what apparel or ornaments they like? Are you fit for political power even though you do not allow them to eat any food they like?”
the emancipation of the mind and the soul is a necessary preliminary for the political expansion of the people.
The fallacy of the socialists37 lies in supposing that because in the present stage of European society property as a source of power is predominant, the same is true of India,
caste system is not merely a division of labour. It is also a division of
The assertion by the individual of his own opinions and beliefs, his own independence and interest—over and against group standards, group authority, and group interests—is the beginning of all reform.
