Annihilation of Caste: An Annotated Critical Edition for Deeper Understanding

aswin rajasimman: Experiences of the author will help you understand the caste system prevailing in our country and the evils of it.

India on Oct 18, 2023

THANOES: High end analysis of caste, Nothing can stand in the way of arguments put forwarded by Babb sahab .

India on Aug 27, 2023

Vistasp Hodiwala: Almost 20 pages were missing and another 20 were repeated in this all-time classic. This was utterly scandalous. Ideally, I should be eligible for another copy, for Free. This is just a terrible lapse on the part of the publisher.

India on Apr 23, 2023

Ishani: Mr. Ambedkar is one of the greatest scholar, not only in India, but in the whole world. And the way he reasons, questions, answers the different aspects regarding the problems of Hinduism and of casteism, is unique. Every Indian must study this text. It is India’s and it’s people’s bad luck that we are still struggling with these social problems despite we had a thinker like Mr. Ambedkar to guide.

India on Apr 19, 2023

Anupam Acharya: A very well articulated essay. Dr. Ambedkar has taken a very strong stance and tried to make things such as Caste, Religion and Human Behaviour very objective which in my opinion hardly follows objectivity. Some of the ideas and facts mentioned are also quite dated for today's day and age. Nonetheless, it is written with immense conviction. I personally enjoyed the indictments in the end a lot which provides his responses to Mahatma Gandhi who raised questions on his essay. A good read if you want to have some good debates on such a relevant topic.

India on Nov 29, 2022

IAK: I've been on a bit of a jag reading about India lately . To a westerner like me, there certainly is a lot to take in. Ambekar's book, a polemic, written pre-partition, was very helpful in trying to grasp the complexities of the caste system.

United States on Mar 18, 2021

Verified Amazon Customer: For Indians that have been preached the Gandhi story, this is an eye opener. Not only is he racist, he is the primary reason for most problems that Indians face today.
It also helps understand history and get a deeper understanding of the institutionalized and systemic casteism in India.

United States on Oct 31, 2020

ZenBowman: Reading Ambedkar is an absolute pleasure. His fearlessness and dedication to social justice are combined with a clarity of thought that is exceptional.

This edition by Verso Books is divided into three portions — the first of which is an essay by Arundhati Roy, “The Doctor and the Saint”, which provides some background for the fundamental dispute between Ambedkar and Gandhi. In order to understand this, its useful to understand the caste system as it operated when this book was written in the 1930s — the best analog for the way caste operated in India then is the way race operated in the United States during that same period, especially in the Jim Crow South. “Superior” castes (akin to whites in the Jim Crow South) were able to enforce an economic and social hierarchy through both oppressive social conventions and the threat of mob violence (when conventions were broken).

Gandhi wanted to do away with “untouchability”, that is, the strict barrier between the people of the lowest caste (Dalits, or अवर्ण) and the remaining castes (सवर्ण). However, he did not want to mandate the abolition of caste entirely, as he himself was an...

United States on Oct 10, 2019

Shibashish: Not easy to absorb if you do not have an open mind. Will break your smug comfort zone of ignorance :)

United States on Sep 17, 2016

sebi: Just finished reading it. Came as a surprise to me that the man who is really most famous in India as the "guy who wrote the constitution" (which is not exactly true but that's how most Indian remember him) was a radical thinker and had such a long running feud with the "father of the nation".

The Political and philosophical differences are stark but its so amazing that having lived almost all my life in India and after going through all my education in India was never exposed to these fundamental difference between these two most famous men.

Maybe its my failing or maybe its the failing of the educational system in India.
Maybe Dr.Ambedkar's ideas are too dangerous for the existing social order to be disseminated among the lowly masses.
Whatever the case maybe, it is a scandal that this really important debate is conspicuously missing from Indian psyche.

It's interesting how a man like Gandhi who turned himself into a saint and a symbol for non-violence across the world practically threatened the entire community of "Untouchables" to grave violence in the hands of Caste Hindus in India and forced Dr. Ambedkar to sign the Poona Pact.
Here's what Dr....

United States on May 03, 2015