Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition

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Authors: B.R. Ambedkar
cost of printing has been incurred which, I am sure, with a little more firmness on the part of your committee, could have been saved.
    I feel sure that the views expressed in my address have little to do with the decision of your committee. I have reason to believe that my presence at the Sikh Prachar Conference held at Amritsar has had a good deal to do with the decision of the committee. Nothing else can satisfactorily explain the sudden volte-face shown by the committee between the 14th and the 22nd April. I must not, however, prolong this controversy, and must request you to announce immediately that the session of the conference which was to meet under my presidentship is cancelled. All the grace has by now run out, and I shall not consent to preside, even if your committee agreed to accept my address as it is, in toto . I thank you for your appreciation of the pains I have taken in the preparation of the address. I certainly have profited by the labour, if no one else does. My only regret is that I was put to such hard labour at a time when my health was not equal to the strain it has caused.
    Yours sincerely,
    B.R. Ambedkar

    This correspondence will disclose the reasons which have led to the cancellation by the Mandal of my appointment as president, and the reader will be in a position to lay the blame where it ought properly to belong. This is I believe the first time when the appointment of a presidentis cancelled by the reception committee because it does not approve of the views of the president. But whether that is so or not, this is certainly the first time in my life to have been invited to preside over a conference of caste Hindus. I am sorry that it has ended in a tragedy. But what can anyone expect from a relationship so tragic as the relationship between the reforming sect of caste Hindus and the self-respecting sect of Untouchables, where the former have no desire to alienate their orthodox fellows, and the latter have no alternative but to insist upon reform being carried out?
    B.R. A MBEDKAR
    Rajgriha, Dadar
    Bombay–14
    15 May 1936

Annihilation of Caste
An Undelivered Speech, 1936

The Ambedkar—Gandhi debate

A Vindication of Caste by Mahatma Gandhi
Dr Ambedkar’s Indictment—1
    1
    1.1 1
    The readers will recall the fact that Dr Ambedkar was to have presided last May at the annual conference of theJat-Pat Todak Mandal of Lahore. But the conference itself was cancelled because Dr Ambedkar’s address was found by the reception committee to be unacceptable. How far a reception committee is justified in rejecting a president of its choice because of his address that may be objectionable to it is open to question. The committee knew Dr Ambedkar’s views on caste and the Hindu scriptures. They knew also that he had in unequivocal terms decided to give up Hinduism. Nothing less than the address that Dr Ambedkar had prepared was to be expected from him. The committee appears to have deprived the public of an opportunity of listening to the original views of a man who has carved out for himself a unique position insociety. Whatever label he wears in future, Dr Ambedkar is not the man to allow himself to be forgotten.
    1.2
    Dr Ambedkar was not going to be beaten by the reception committee. He has answered their rejection of him by publishing the address at his own expense. He has priced it at 8 annas, I would suggest a reduction to 2 annas or at least 4 annas. 2
    1.3
    No reformer can ignore the address. The orthodox will gain by reading it. This is not to say that the address is not open to objection. It has to be read only because it is open to serious objection. Dr Ambedkar is a challenge to Hinduism. Brought up as a Hindu, 3 educated by a Hindu potentate, 4 he has become so disgusted with the so-calledsavarna Hindus or the treatment that he and his people have received at their hands that he proposes to leave not only them but the very religion that is his and their common heritage. He has transferred

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