Annihilation of Caste The Annotated Critical Edition By: B.R. Ambedkar

Annihilation of Caste

The Annotated Critical Edition By: B.R. Ambedkar 9788189059637, Navayana Publishing, 2014, pp. 416 Review: About the authors: Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was born in 1891 into an ‘Untouchable’ family of modest means. One of India’s most radical thinkers, he transformed the social and political landscape in the struggle against British colonialism. He was a prolific writer who oversaw the drafting of the Indian Constitution and served as India’s first Law Minister. In 1935, he publicly declared that though he was born a Hindu, he would not die as one. Ambedkar eventually embraced Buddhism, a few months before his death in 1956. Arundhati Roy is the author of the novel The God of Small Things. Collections of her recent political writings have been published as Listening to Grasshoppers and Broken Republic. Praise for the book: ‘Annihilation of Caste has to be read only because it is open to serious objection. DrAmbedkar is a challenge to Hinduism… No Hindu who prizes his faith above life itself can afford to underrate the importance of this indictment’ M.K. Gandhi. ‘What Communist Manifesto is to the capitalist world, Annihilation of Caste is to caste India. Arundhati Roy’s introduction is expansive and excellent. S. Anand’s annotations have style and perfection’ Anand Teltumbde, author of The Persistence of Caste. ‘For the 1930s, Annihilation of Caste was a case of marvelous writing with conceptual clarity and political understanding—something the world should know about. The annotations illumine the whole book. Roy’s essay has the sharp political thrust one has come to expect from her’ Uma Chakravarti, author of Everyday Lives, Everyday Histories: Beyond the Kings and Brahmanas of ‘Ancient’ India and Pandita Ramabai: A Life and a Time. ‘Arundhati Roy’s The Doctor and the Saint works both at an emotive and an argumentative level. She manages to convey an intimate and deeply felt sensitivity to the history that produced Annihilation of Caste. Her essay is both well-documented and closely argued. The annotations do an excellent job of providing supplementary information, corroboration and relevant citations… A robust edition of an under-appreciated classic’ Satish Deshpande, Professor of Sociology, Delhi University. ‘This annotated edition of Annihilation of Caste was long overdue. It makes available to all a major text of Dr Ambedkar’s, where his intellectual engagement with caste is best articulated … the copious footnotes give the reader a sense of direction and all the additional information needed for making sense of the text—including the translation of the Sanskrit shlokasAmbedkar used to document his analysis. This edition is truly a remarkable achievement’ Christophe Jaffrelot, author of DrAmbedkar and Untouchability: Analysing and Fighting Caste. ‘This edition, with Ambedkar’s words in Nietzschean aphoristic format, is extremely useful. It helps us discover new dimensions of Ambedkar’s subversive power. The annotations—many times orthogonal and tangential—enhance the value of this book. Those who have read Annihilation of Caste many times before will still read this work for the sake of the annotations and reference-based clarifications of Ambedkar’s thoughts. This edition will foster a more critical engagement among readers’ Ayyathurai Gajendran, anthropologist.