B.A. FIRST YEAR THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY CHAPTER- 6 WHO WERE THE SUDRAS ? BY B R AMBEDKAR NOTES

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar

B. R. Ambedkar is the intellectual and ideological fountain of the dalit movement in india. He was inspired by the work of jyoti rao phule he wrote a book which title is who were the shudras in 1946 and dedicate to jyoti rao phule after completing his graduation in 1912 Dr B. R. Ambedkar went to columbia university with the help of scholarship and completed his phd at columbia university.

He was thinking about the caste system in india and its dangerous and disastrous for dalit. In 1916 he wrote an article 'caste in india their mechanism growth and development’ when he was finally finished his study and come back to india in 1923 he was one of the mostly highly educated man of his time. Ambedkar was following in jotirao footsteps in his fight against the caste system

 

Who were the shudras ?

This book was published in 1946 and this particular extract is taken from the  preface to the book . The reason for writing this book according to the dr.ambedkar was to challenge the orthodox conception fore castes and to prove that prevailing condition and social status of the shudras was the result of a cunning manipulation of the original varna system by the brahmins

The shudras did not from a separate varna and shudras was the part of aryanes. there was a fight between shudras and brahmins.according to B.R Ambedkar, there were only three varnas in the varna system, the fourth varna was cleverly created by the brahmins for the shudras.In the preface B. R. Ambedkar identifies five kinds of hindu and their characteristics 

The orthodox hindu who believes that there is nothing  wrong with the hindu society and the caste system  the aryan samajists who believe in the primacy of the vedas and the permanent and eternal nature of the vedas  a class of hindus who agree that the caste system is wrong but see no reason to attack it they believe that since the low does not recognise the caste system it is a dying if not a dead system.

The political hindu who believes that swaraj is more important than social reforms the rationalist hindu who considers social reforms more important than swaraj in the third and fourth paragraph he provides justification for taking the  scared books of the hindus and not displaying enough respect that the scared books demand he offers to argument in his defence historical research has only one objective and that is pursuit of truth. It does not make any distinction between the scared and profane. Scared book can be good for someone or it can be wrong for anyone, every society and individual has their own different viewpoint.

B. R. Ambedkar believes that the shudras by tolerating this in human system and because of their ignorance have been  instrumental in in sustaining the caste system. Hence it is only the shudras who can overthrow this system but before they need to educate and aware themselves about the truth of caste system.