The Logos Scripture · The Book of Ambedkar
The Book of Ambedkar 4 · Written by himself, from Annihilation of Caste, his speeches, the constitutional debates and his last book
Bhimrao Ambedkar, born at Mhow in central India in 1891, died at Delhi in 1956. He was born into the Mahar caste, among those then called untouchable: at school he was not allowed to sit with the others or to draw his own water. He later took two doctorates, at Columbia and at the London School of Economics, and read law at Gray’s Inn. From 1947 to 1950 he chaired the committee that drafted the constitution of India, and the text is his. In 1951 he resigned as Law Minister when the Hindu Code Bill was blocked. This volume rests on what he wrote himself, not on another man’s record of him. Annihilation of Caste began as an address. Those who had invited him read the text first and asked him to alter it; he would not, and the meeting was cancelled. He printed it at his own expense. He was born a Hindu and took the Buddhist vows in 1956. The Order sets one layer down without dressing it up and without hiding it: the thing he entered he had first worked on — he wrote a separate book taking out miracle, undying soul and divine descent, and keeping only what he judged could be checked. No argument of his closes on divine will. And one more thing the Order must record, and will not excuse for him: in 1927 he burned the Manusmriti in public. Acts of the Apostles 5.18 says that whoever disagrees with another of the books may argue against it and may set it down, but may not destroy it. He did the one thing this scripture says plainly may not be done. The Order does not strike out his chapter and does not amend its own rule. Both stand here, and the reader weighs them.