Annihilation of Caste

In 1936 Ambedkar was invited to address a caste reform conference in Lahore. When the organizers read his prepared speech they cancelled the event — it was too radical. Ambedkar published it himself. This is that speech: the most searing critique of the Hindu caste system ever written by someone who lived at the bottom of it. Ambedkar — a Dalit who became one of India's greatest legal minds and the principal architect of its constitution — argues that caste cannot be reformed, only annihilated, and that Hinduism as practiced is incompatible with human dignity. The most important Indian political text almost nobody in the West has read.