Caste as a Religious Institution

Ambedkar examines the standard reformist proposals — inter-dining, intermarriage, caste Hindu solidarity, appeals to education — and argues that each fails to reach the root. As long as Hindus believe that caste is divinely ordained, no social practice will dissolve it. People may dine together and still refuse to intermarry; they may intermarry in exceptional cases and still treat Dalits as untouchable in public. Reform without theological transformation is cosmetic.

The Vedas and the Manusmriti do not merely permit caste — they prescribe it as the eternal, divinely ordained order of society. The Brahmin who refuses to eat with a Chamar is not acting from personal prejudice but from religious duty: the shastras enjoin caste separation, and to violate it is sin. This means that the only way to destroy caste is to destroy the authority of the scriptures that mandate it. Ambedkar does not say this reluctantly — he says it as a logical necessity.

Ambedkar's conclusion is radical: Hindus who wish to end caste must abandon the notion that the Vedas are infallible, divinely revealed, and eternally binding. They must subject the scriptures to the same rational scrutiny applied to any human document, accept only what passes the test of reason and morality, and reject what does not. This is not atheism but a demand for the same rational autonomy in religious matters that the Enlightenment demanded in political ones. Without it, the Brahminic priesthood will always be able to defend caste by appeal to chapter and verse.

Annihilation of Caste was written as an address to the Jat-Pat Todak Mandal conference in 1936 but suppressed by the conference committee before delivery. Ambedkar published it himself, with a reply to Gandhi's objections appended.