Olivia: Most people think of revolution as overthrowing a government. But what if the most radical revolution is overthrowing a god? What if the only way to achieve equality is to declare your sacred texts, your entire religion, morally bankrupt? That's the explosive argument we're tackling today. Jackson: Wow. That's not just radical, that's a level of intellectual warfare. You’re not just fighting the king, you're fighting the king's divine right to rule, and the very idea of kingship itself. Olivia: That's the perfect way to put it. And it's the explosive argument at the heart of The Annihilation of Caste by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. Jackson: Ambedkar. I know the name, of course—principal architect of India's Constitution. A towering figure. But I didn't realize his writing was this... incendiary. Olivia: Exactly. And what's wild is that this book, which is now considered a foundational text of social justice in India, wasn't even a book initially. It was a speech he was invited to give in 1936 to a group of upper-caste Hindu reformers. Jackson: Okay, so the intended audience was on board with change, at least in theory. Olivia: In theory. But then they read the speech in advance, panicked, and cancelled the entire event. Ambedkar, who was born into the 'untouchable' Mahar caste and had earned PhDs from Columbia and the London School of Economics, had to publish it himself. Jackson: Hold on. The very people who wanted to 'reform' caste couldn't handle the real medicine. That tells you everything you need to know about the problem, doesn't it? Olivia: It tells you the entire story. And it leads right to the first core idea.

Jackson: So what was so unbearable in that speech? What is it about caste that we, on the outside, are completely missing? Olivia: I think for many of us, we picture caste as a simple ladder. Brahmins at the top, Dalits—the so-called 'Untouchables'—at the bottom. But Ambedkar argues that's a misunderstanding. He calls it a system of "graded inequality." Jackson: Graded inequality. What does that mean? Olivia: He says, "there is no such class as a completely unprivileged class except the one which is at the base of the social pyramid. The privileges of the rest are graded. Even the low is privileged as compared with lower." Jackson: Ah, I see. So it’s a system where almost everyone has just enough privilege over someone else that they have a personal stake in keeping the pyramid intact. You don't want to burn it all down if you get to feel superior to at least one other group. Olivia: Precisely. It’s a genius system of social control. But the enforcement of that control is anything but theoretical. The book's introduction, by author Arundhati Roy, details some modern examples that are just gut-wrenching. She tells the story of the Khairlanji massacre. Jackson: Okay, when was this? 1800s? Olivia: September 29, 2006. Jackson: Wait, 2006? That's yesterday. What happened? Olivia: In a village in Maharashtra, a Dalit woman named Surekha Bhotmange lived with her family. They were educated, they'd bought a small plot of land, and they weren't conforming to the submissive role expected of them. They were asserting their rights. Jackson: And that was the crime. Olivia: That was the crime. The privileged-caste villagers denied them electricity, blocked them from using the public well, and let cattle destroy their crops. Surekha filed police complaints. As a warning, a mob attacked her relative and left him for dead. She filed another complaint, and some men were arrested. Jackson: Okay, so the system worked, for a second. Olivia: For a second. They were released on bail almost immediately. That same evening, a mob of seventy villagers surrounded the Bhotmange house. They dragged out Surekha, her 17-year-old daughter Priyanka, and her two college-educated sons. Jackson: Oh no. Olivia: What followed was an act of ritualistic punishment designed to terrorize. The sons were ordered to rape their mother and sister. When they refused, their genitals were mutilated and they were lynched. Surekha and Priyanka were then gang-raped and beaten to death. All four bodies were dumped in a canal. Jackson: That's... I have no words. That's not just a crime, that's a public execution to enforce an idea. And in 2006. Olivia: And here's the part that speaks directly to Ambedkar's point. The initial press reports called it a 'morality' murder. The judge in the case refused to invoke the Prevention of Atrocities Act, ruling it was a crime of 'revenge,' not caste. He effectively "airbrushed caste out of the picture." Jackson: So the system protects itself. It refuses to even name the problem. That's what Roy calls the 'Project of Unseeing,' isn't it? If you don't see it, it doesn't exist. Olivia: Exactly. It's a collective denial. And it's why Ambedkar argued that this isn't just a social problem. It's a moral and religious one. The system is so brutal because it has the sanction of something people consider sacred.

Jackson: Okay, so if the problem is that deeply rooted, that violent, and that protected by denial... what on earth is the solution? How do you even begin to fix that? Olivia: Well, this is where the two giants of modern India, Dr. Ambedkar and Mahatma Gandhi, clashed spectacularly. It was a battle for the very soul of the nation. Jackson: I always pictured them on the same side, fighting for India's freedom. Olivia: For political freedom, yes. But for social freedom, they had two completely different blueprints. For Ambedkar, the problem was the blueprint itself. He argued that caste has its roots in the Hindu religious texts—the Shastras, the Vedas, the Manusmriti. These texts give caste its divine authority. Jackson: So people follow it because they believe it's God's will. Olivia: Correct. And therefore, Ambedkar's solution was breathtakingly radical. He said, "If you wish to bring about a breach in the system, then you have got to apply the dynamite to the Vedas and the shastras." He argued you must destroy the belief in their sanctity. Jackson: He wanted to blow up the religion. Olivia: He said, "what is wrong with them is their religion." He believed you had to have the courage to tell Hindus that their faith was the source of the problem. Now, compare that to Gandhi. Jackson: The Saint. His approach must have been different. Olivia: Completely. Gandhi made a very careful distinction. He said 'caste' as it's practiced—the hierarchy, the untouchability—is a hideous, harmful custom. He agreed it had to go. But, he argued, that's a corruption of the true, beautiful ideal of 'Varna'. Jackson: Varna... caste... what's the actual difference in practice? Is that just a rebranding? Olivia: That was exactly Ambedkar's question! Gandhi's ideal Varna was a system of four social orders based on hereditary duty or ancestral calling. A Brahmin's son should be a priest, a merchant's son a merchant, and so on. But, Gandhi insisted, all these callings are equal in status. There's no hierarchy. Jackson: Okay, but hold on. Isn't 'hereditary duty' just a much nicer-sounding way of saying you're stuck in the job you were born into? That sounds like a denial of basic freedom. Olivia: You've just channeled Dr. Ambedkar. He famously said, "The caste system is not merely a division of labour. It is also a division of labourers." It doesn't just divide tasks; it divides people into watertight compartments from birth. He saw Gandhi's Varna as just caste in a more palatable package. He accused Gandhi of "preaching caste under the name of varna." Jackson: So Gandhi was trying to save Hinduism by reforming it, by saying 'let's find the pure, original version'. And Ambedkar was saying, 'the original version is the poison'. Olivia: Precisely. Gandhi would point to the saints of Hinduism as proof that the religion was about love and equality. But Ambedkar had a brilliant rebuttal. He said the saints were "lamentably ineffective." They preached that all men are equal in the eyes of God, which is a safe, spiritual idea. They never attacked the caste system itself, the social inequality between men. He pointed out that even a famous saint like Eknath, who dined with Untouchables, did so believing he could wash away the 'pollution' with a bath in the holy river. He wasn't rejecting the idea of pollution; he was just using a ritual workaround. Jackson: Wow. So he was still playing by the rules of the system, even while appearing to break them. Olivia: Yes. And for Ambedkar, that was the whole problem. You can't fix a system by finding loopholes. You have to discredit the rulebook itself.

Jackson: It's fascinating. You have these two monumental figures, both wanting a better India, but with completely irreconcilable paths. Gandhi's path is to look inward, to purify, to find the 'true' meaning of a flawed religion. Olivia: And Ambedkar's path is to have the courage to look at that religion and say its 'true' meaning is the flaw. That the ideals themselves are wrong, and you must be willing to discard them entirely for the sake of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Jackson: It's a much more terrifying path, in a way. It's easier to believe you can fix something than to accept you have to tear it down and build from scratch. Olivia: And that's Ambedkar's final, haunting point. He said the fight for social reform is so much harder than the fight for political independence. In the fight for independence, you fight an external enemy with your whole nation on your side. Jackson: But in this fight... Olivia: In this, he says, "you have to fight against the whole nation—and that too, your own." You're fighting against your family, your neighbors, your traditions, your gods. Jackson: And that's a battle that is clearly still being fought today, as the story of Khairlanji shows. The book is almost a century old, but it feels like it could have been written this morning. Olivia: It really does. And it forces us to ask a really uncomfortable question: What do we do when our most cherished traditions, the things that give us our identity, are also the source of our deepest injustices? Jackson: That is a heavy question, and one that obviously extends far beyond India. It's a challenge to any society with a dark part of its history it hasn't fully reckoned with. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Find us on our socials and let's continue the conversation. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.