Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition (44 page)

98
Such verses do not figure in the
Manusmriti
. Bühler’s edition, which Ambedkar may have possibly accessed, offers two verses that come close to the import. “A once-born man (a Shudra), who insults a twice-born man with gross invective, shall have his tongue cut out; for he is of low origin” (8.270; 1886/2004, 211). And: “If he arrogantly teaches Brahmins their duty, the king shall cause hot oil to be poured into his mouth and into his ears” (8.272; 2004, 211). For Ambedkar’s extended discussion of the
Manusmriti
, see the annotated edition of “Castes in India” in Rege (2013, 77–108). Ambedkar seems to be citing these punishments from chapter 12 of
Gautama Dharma Sutra
(600 BCE to 300 BCE, predating the
Manusmriti
) which he also cites in his posthumous work,
Philosophy of Hinduism
(BAWS 3). Bühler’s translation (1898, 239) of
Gautama Dharma Sutra
talks of similar punishments for the Shudra: “4. Now if a Shudra listens intentionally to (a recitation of) the Veda, his ears shall be filled with (molten) tin or lac. 5. If he recites (Vedic texts), his tongue shall be cut out. 6. If he remembers them, his body shall be split in twain. 7. If he assumes a position equal (to that of twice-born men) in sitting, in lying down, in conversation or on the road, he shall undergo (corporal) punishment.”

99
Paragraphs 16.8 and 16.9 were added in 1937. The sentence with which 16.9 ends—“Given these
difficulties
…chaturvarnya.”—figures in 1936 as the last sentence of AoC 1936; the word “conditions” is used in the place of “difficulties”.

100
In AoC 1936, after “serve”, it reads “—all this sounds very simple and appears to be perfect. But what does it all come to in practice? It means the pauperisation of the many for the sake of the few. It means the disarming of the many for the sake of the few. It means the deadening and darkening of the lives of the many in order that the few may have life and light. As has been observed, there is no country in the world which has suffered so much as a result of social evils of its own creation as India.” Ambedkar drops this passage in AoC 1937, and in its place offers an extended reflection—of 650 words—on the exploitative and illogical nature of the chaturvarnya system. This appears to be triggered by Gandhi’s response to this speech-essay in
Harijan
, where he upholds the fourfold varnashrama dharma but denounces the proliferation of castes. In this edition, this new material appears from this point in 17.1 till the close of 17.4.

101
Tryavarnikas: Sanskrit for ‘three varnas’; refers to the dwija, ‘twice-born’, varnas.

102
Highlighted words read in AoC 1936 as “similar” (for
social
), “occurred to” (
troubled
), “have been able to” (
can
), and “masses” (
lower classes
) respectively.

103
‘Direct action’ is a method Ambedkar (BASWS 5, 375) advocated for the assertion of the civil rights of Untouchables. When Ambedkar was at Columbia University (1913–16), he was likely exposed to the views of American feminist anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912), whom the anarchist Emma Goldman called the “most gifted and brilliant anarchist woman America ever produced”. In 1912, de Cleyre wrote a famous essay called “Direct Action”, which she defined as collective action against and mass resistance to state and capitalist oppression. “Every person who ever had a plan to do anything, and went and did it, or who laid his plan before others, and won their cooperation to do it with him, without going to external authorities to please do the thing for them, was a direct actionist … Every person who ever in his life had a difference with anyone to settle, and went straight to the other persons involved to settle it, either by a peaceable plan or otherwise, was a direct actionist.” The term was also popularised by the Industrial Workers of the World founded in 1905 in Chicago; its mouthpiece was called
Direct Action
. On his part, Ambedkar called for “open revolt in the form of direct action against the Hindu Established Order”. He lists the Chavadar Tank satyagraha in Mahad and the Kalaram temple satyagraha as instances of direct action which created a ‘crisis’ among Hindus. Ambedkar contrasts this method with that of Gandhi’s Harijan Sevak Sangh that believed caste Hindus must feel remorse and guilt (for practising untouchability) and thus voluntarily ask the Untouchables to participate in the general village life, that is, accessing waterbodies, roads or temples. Ambedkar here cites his letter to A.V. Thakkar, general secretary of the Harijan Sevak Sangh: “The salvation of the Depressed Classes will come only when the Caste Hindu is made to think and is forced to feel that he must alter his ways. For that you must create a crisis by direct action against his customary code of conduct. The crisis will compel him to think and once he begins to think he will be more ready to change than he is otherwise likely to be. The great defect in the policy of least resistance and silent infiltration of rational ideas lies in that they do not ‘compel’, for they do not produce a crisis. The direct action in respect of the Chavadar Tank in Mahad 1927, the Kalaram temple in Nasik 1930 and the Guruvayur temple in Malabar 1931–32 have done in a few days what million days of preaching by reformers would never have done.” In the 1920s, Ambedkar did invest a little faith in the Gandhian satyagraha method; as noted in Roy’s introduction (p. 107), Gandhi’s portrait was displayed during the December leg of the Mahad satyagraha in 1927. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, founder of the All-India Muslim League, also called for ‘direct action’ in 1946 if the Muslims were not granted Pakistan. For a discussion of Jinnah’s lack of clarity on what he meant by direct action, see Ayesha Jalal (1985, 211–3).

104
In AoC 1936, it is the “wretched system of chaturvarnya”. Ambedkar in the next few passages of Section 17 consistently replaces references to chaturvarnya with “caste system”—all these instances are highlighted with semibold text.

105
In AoC 1936, this sentence ends with “the fate of eternal servitude”.

106
This paragraph does not appear in AoC 1936.

107
The Mauryan empire lasted from 322 BCE to 185 BCE and reached its zenith under Ashoka, who, after securing the empire and extending its borders, embraced Buddhism and spread it through the territories under his control. He even sent ambassadors across Asia to spread the faith. Ambedkar (BAWS 3, 268) considered this Buddhist phase a ‘revolution’ in ancient India, and termed the re-emergence of Brahminism under the Brahmin king Pushyamitra Sunga (185–149 BCE) the ‘counter-revolution’: “The Brahmins had not only lost state patronage but they lost their occupation which mainly consisted of performing sacrifices for a fee which oftentimes was very substantial and which constituted their chief source of living. The Brahmins therefore lived as the suppressed and Depressed Classes for nearly 140 years during which the Maurya Empire lasted. A rebellion against the Buddhist state was the only way of escape left to the suffering Brahmins and there is special reason why Pushyamitra should raise the banner of revolt against the rule of the Mauryas.”

108
Ambedkar discusses the many conflicts between Brahmins and Kshatriyas at length elsewhere (BAWS 3, 392–415). Here, he is alluding to the mythical Brahmin warrior Parashurama’s twenty-one wars of extermination against the Kshatriyas after Parashurama’s father is killed by a Kshatriya and he sees his mother beating her chest twenty-one times. Mythical and legendary narratives asserting the authority of the Brahmins were in conflict with each other as Brahmin sub-castes tried to establish superiority over one another through competitive myth-making. See Figueira (2002). For a typical example of a legalistic inter-Brahmin conflict in modern India, see Notes 56–7 at 7.2. See Johnson (2005) for an account of how many of these factors played out in Bombay province in the formative years of Indian nationalism. The reference to “who should salute first, as to who should give way first” pertains to the Brahmin–Kayastha conflict (see Note 60 to 7.4).

109
The Bhagwat is the
Bhagvad Gita
. For a detailed discussion of the
Bhagvad Gita
by Ambedkar, see “Krishna and His Gita” (BAWS 3). On how, for Ambedkar, the
Bhagvad Gita
is neither a book of religion nor a treatise on philosophy, see Pandit (1992). See also Kumar (2010) on “Ambedkar’s attempt to retrieve a counterhistory of Indian antiquity”.

110
“To be copied” in AoC 1936.

111
This is a war and diplomacy term. “One speaks of an armed neutrality when a neutral State takes military measures for the purpose of defending its neutrality against possible or probable attempts of either belligerent [sic] to make use of the neutral territory” (Oppenheim 1905, 353).

112
Ambedkar, once again, is drawing on his mentor John Dewey whom he mentions and acknowledges later in the essay. Discussing the “need of a measure for the worth of any given mode of social life”, Dewey writes (1916, ch. 7): “How numerous and varied are the interests which are consciously shared? How full and free is the interplay with other forms of association? If we apply these considerations to, say, a criminal band, we find that the ties which consciously hold the members together are few in number, reducible almost to a common interest in plunder; and that they are of such a nature as to isolate the group from other groups with respect to give and take of the values of life.” See also Lenart Škof (2011) who maps the influence of Dewey’s pragmatism on Ambedkar’s political philosophy, tracks his debt to not just Dewey but also to British idealist and liberal T.H. Green (1836–82), and connects this to the work of contemporary Brazilian philosopher and social theorist Roberto Mangabeira Unger, who taught Barack Obama at Harvard.

113
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) was a pre-eminent figure in Victorian letters. In
History of the French Revolution
(1837), he sympathised with the revolutionaries to an extent but despised anarchy, and appeared to fear the rule of the people. The concept of ‘organic filaments’ here is borrowed from
Sartor Resartus
(1833–4), a well-disguised autobiography and a critique of utilitarianism and British society, presenting fragments of Carlyle’s philosophy in the form of a satire featuring a loose collection of papers written by a fictional German philosopher Diogenes Teufelsdröckh. In the seventh chapter of Book 3, Carlyle describes the world as a phoenix that begins to resurrect itself while dying. The ‘organic filaments’ are the processes of creation that hold together a world while it is destroying itself.

114
There has been a lot of recent research on caste among Muslims in India. Besides Imtiaz Ahmad (1978), see Ali Anwar’s
Masawat ki Jung
[Battle for equality] (2005) and Masood Alam Falahi’s
Hindustan mein zaat-paat aur Musalman
[Casteism in India and Muslims] (2007). For a quick overview, see Khalid Anis Ansari (2013) who chronicles the contemporary pasmanda movement: “ ‘Pasmanda’, a Persian term meaning ‘those who have fallen behind’, refers to Muslims belonging to the Shudra (backward) and Ati-Shudra (Dalit) castes. It was adopted as an oppositional identity to that of the dominant ashraf Muslims (forward castes) in 1998 by the Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz, a group which mainly worked in Bihar. Since then, however, the pasmanda discourse has found resonance elsewhere too.”

115
On the practice of caste in Sikhism, see Notes 33 and 168 at 2.22 and 26.3.

116
This word does not figure in prior editions, and has been introduced for clarity.

117
S. Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) was a prolific writer, an apologist of Hinduism, and the second president of independent India. Ambedkar is citing from the book
The Hindu Way of Life
(1927, 12–13), a compilation of the lectures delivered at Oxford in 1926. Later in the work, Radhakrishnan says: “In dealing with the problem of the conflict of the different racial groups, Hinduism adopted the only safe course of democracy, viz., that each racial group should be allowed to develop the best in it without impeding the progress of others. Every historical group is unique and specific and has an ultimate value, and the highest morality requires that we should respect its individuality. Caste, on its racial side, is the affirmation of the infinite diversity of human groups” (97). Furthermore, “Caste was the answer of Hinduism to the forces pressing on it from outside. It was the instrument by which Hinduism civilised the different tribes it took in. Any group of people appearing exclusive in any sense is a caste. Whenever a group represents a type a caste arises” (104). Tellingly, his birth anniversary, 5 September, is celebrated as Teacher’s Day in India.

118
AoC 1936: “impress the minds of many with the profundity of whatever he says.”

119
These questions are given in bold in AoC 1936.

120
“Transit” in AoC 1936 and subsequent editions.

121
“Dravid” in all previous editions.

122
This is in bold in AoC 1936.

123
There has been a conventionally regarded division of labour between the
laukika
Brahmin, the so-called secular Brahmin, and the
shrotriya
or
vaidika
Brahmin, the Brahmin well versed in the Vedas (the
shruti
tradition; from
sru
, to hear,
sro-triya
; the oral tradition). The anthropologist M.N. Srinivas (1972, 8) uses these terms in this sense. The laukika—literally those who concern themselves with this-worldly, temporal (
loka
) matters—is not secular in the Western Enlightenment sense of the term, as in those who disavow belief or are free from religious rules and teachings. The laukika Brahmin—the Brahmin as minister, bureaucrat, civil servant, writer—whom Ambedkar goes on to refer as the intellectual class of the Hindus, pursues a non-priestly career; priestly work is the preserve of the vaidika/shrotriya Brahmins (again, priests who perform only Vedic rites are to be distinguished from priests who officiate in temples, attending to post-Bhakti, post-Vedic gods). However, the laukika Brahmin does not undermine the significance or role of the shrotriya Brahmin. In fact, he deploys and legitimises the services of the shrotriya Brahmin. The laukika Brahmin wields power over this-worldly matters, the shrotriya’s domain is other-worldly. All the same, the laukika would even look down upon the shrotriya as lower in the pecking order; someone whose services can be easily bought, for a price. In effect, they are two flanks of Brahminism. For a discussion on the etymology of laukika and vaidika in Sanskrit grammarian Panini’s
Ashtadhyayi
(c. 400 BCE), see Patrick Olivelle (2008, 161–3).