Annhilation of Caste

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B. R. Ambedkar's Annihilation of Caste is one of the most important works of political writing from India. Written in 1936, it is an audacious denunciation of Hinduism and its caste system. The edition includes "A Vindication of Caste by Mahatma Gandhi", Sant Ram's response to Gandhi and also "Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development", which are important to gather the totality of Ambedkar's views and the discourse around the caste system in India.

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the chief architect of the Indian Constitution, was an intellectual par excellence, a philosopher, a visionary, an emancipator and a true nationalist. He led several social movements to secure human rights for the oppressed and depressed sections of society. Today his name is synonymous with the struggle for social justice. His thoughts as reflected in his writings and speeches have significant importance in tracing the history and growth of social thought in India.

The speech prepared by me for the Jat-Pat Todak Mandal of Lahore has had an astonishingly warm reception from the Hindu public for whom it was primarily intended. The English edition of one thousand five hundred copies was exhausted within two months of its publication. It has been translated into Gujarati and Tamil. It is being translated into Marathi, Hindi, Punjabi and Malayalam. The demand for the English text still continues unabated. To satisfy this demand it has become necessary to issue a second edition. Considerations of history and effectiveness of appeal have led me to retain the original form of the essay-namely, the speech form-although I was asked to recast it in the form of a direct narrative.

On 12 December 1935, I received the following letter from Mr Sant Ram, the secretary of the Jat-Pat Todak Mandal:

My dear Doctor Saheb,

Many thanks for your kind letter of the 5th December. I have released it for press without your permission for which I beg your pardon, as I saw no harm in giving it publicity. You are a great thinker, and it is my well-considered opinion that none else has studied the problem of caste so deeply as you have. I have always benefited myself and our Mandal from your ideas. I have explained and preached it in the Kranti many times and I have even lectured on it in many conferences. I am now very anxious to read the exposition of your new formula-"It is not possible to break caste without annihilating the religious notions on which it, the caste system, is founded." Please do explain it at length at your earliest convenience, so that we may take up the idea and emphasise it from press and platform. At present, it is not fully clear to me.