Annihilate caste before it annihilates us
Today, on the eighty-ninth anniversary of the publication of Annihilation of Caste, we are proud to announce the paperback edition of Ashok Gopal’s award-winning biography of Babasaheb, A Part Apart: The Life and Thought of B.R. Ambedkar. The book has quickly become a bestseller for Navayana and is recognised as the authoritative account of Ambedkar’s life. It charts his story and how he created the political and theoretical edifice for an egalitarian society in India.
Gopal tells us how Ambedkar’s thought evolved, from an earlier reformist position in the 1920s to the radical annihilationist ideas of the 1930s. Gopal narrates to us the events that led to this revolutionary tract, which laid out the fault lines of the Indian social system and the immense effort that would be required to overcome it. The ideas in Annihilation of Caste lead us eventually to The Buddha and His Dhamma in 1956, where he says:
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Annihilation has therefore a two-fold aspect. In one of its aspects it means cession of production of energy. In another aspect it means a new addition to the stock of general floating mass of energy.
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It is probably because of this two-fold aspect of annihilation that the Buddha said that he was not an absolute annihilationist. He was an annihilationist so far as soul was concerned. He was not an annihilationist so far as matter was concerned.
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So interpreted it is easy to understand why the Buddha said that he was not an annihilationist. He believed in the regeneration of matter and not in the rebirth of the soul (BAWS Vol. 11: 332).
By the end of 2025, we aim to publish Gopal’s annotated selections from The Buddha and His Dhamma. With that, three dots of a triangle will be lined.
Annihilation of Caste was published on 15 May 1936 at Ambedkar’s own expense, despite originally being a speech he had prepared to present at the annual conference of the Jat-Pat Todak Mandal. To the largely Savarna organizers of the event, Ambedkar’s message was a breach of peace. They expected a message about peaceful co-existence between castes, about bringing minor changes to the system to assuage their guilt. Babasaheb’s ministration of consigning the entire caste system to the rubbish bin of history was an unbearable proposition. He was advocating for them to dynamite Shastras and Vedas which sanctioned the immorality of caste. His appearance was promptly cancelled.
As we lurch into a time of crisis, we must attend to the inevitability of annihilation. The past few weeks spent in the midst of a terrible game of brinksmanship have made us face up to this reality. We live in the midst of a people who will shout and cheer the world on to its death. The choice now is between two types of annihilation. A murderous one which cares little for existence. Or an annihilation which cancels a society which remains at the mercy of gun-toting ‘big men’. It is a liberation from the tyrannies of tradition.
As dubious policies of ‘better’ man force us from one failure to the next, texts like Annihilation of Caste remind us that these ossified realities were never eternal but only products of history. Ambedkar doesn’t promise us that we will become whole. He shows us the mirror. He forces us to face up to reality, to recognize that we are condemned to irrationally repeat the mistakes of dead generations. And finally, if we must end this cycle of suffering, we must begin with annihilation. We must reject all that we held sacred and build a world in community with other.
Navayana has published two editions of Annihilation of Caste. The annotated critical edition comes with a comprehensive introduction by Arundhati Roy. The reader-friendly lite edition has a striking cover—a painting by the artist Vikrant Bhise. If it is annihilation our society thirsts for, we must turn to Ambedkar. His annihilation leads us to Begumpura.