Rohit > Rohit's Quotes

“So India’s problem turns out to be the world’s problem. What happened in India has happened in God’s name.

The problem’s name is God.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

“The saints have never according to my study carried on a campaign against. Caste and Untouchability. They were not concerned with the struggle between men. They were concerned with the relation between man and God. They did not preach that all men were equal. They preached that all men were equal, in the eyes of God a very different and a very innocuous proposition which nobody can find difficult to preach or dangerous to believe in.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste: With a Reply to Mahatma Gandhi

“Caste has however done one thing. It has completely disorganized and demoralized the Hindus.”
― B.R Ambedkar, Annihilation Of Caste

“Every profession in India is regulated. Engineers must show proficiency, Doctor must show proficiency, Lawyers must show proficiency, before they are allowed to practise their professions. During the whole of their career, they must not only obey the law of the land, civil as well as criminal, but they must also obey the special code of morals prescribed by their respective professions. The priest's is the only profession where proficiency is not required. The profession of a Hindu priest is the only profession which is not subject to any code....All this becomes possible among the Hindus because for a priest it is enough to be born in a priestly caste. The whole thing is abominable and is due to the fact that the priestly class among Hindus is subject neither to law nor to morality. It recognizes no duties. It knows only of rights and privileges. It is a pest which divinity seems to have let loose on the masses for their mental and moral degradation.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste

“योsवमन्येत ते मूले हेतुशास्त्राश्रयात् द्विजः ।
स साधुभिर्बहिष्कार्यो नास्तिको वेदनिन्दकः ।।
According to this rule, rationalism as a canon of interpreting the Vedas and Smritis, is absolutely condemned. It is regarded to be as wicked as atheism and the punishment provided for it is ex-communication.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste

“Social war has been raging between the strong and the weak far more violently in Europe than it has ever been in India. Yet, the weak in Europe has had in his freedom of military service his physical weapon, in suffering his political weapon and in education his moral weapon. These three weapons for emancipation were never withheld by the strong from the weak in Europe. All these weapons were, however, denied to the masses in India by Chaturvarnya. There cannot be a more degrading system of social organization than the Chaturvarnya.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste: With a Reply to Mahatma Gandhi

“There is no doubt, in my opinion, that unless you change your social order you can achieve little by way of progress. You cannot mobilize the community either for defence or for offence. You cannot build anything on the foundations of caste. You cannot build up a nation, you cannot build up a morality. Anything that you will build on the foundations of caste will crack and will never be a whole.”
― B.R Ambedkar, Annihilation Of Caste

“Reading Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar bridges the gap between what most Indians are schooled to believe in and the reality we experience every day of our lives.”
― Arundhati Roy, Annihilation of Caste

“The connection between racism and casteism was made more than a century before the 2001 Durban conference. Empathy sometimes achieves what scholarship cannot.”
― Arundhati Roy, Annihilation of Caste

“The path of social reform like the path to heaven at any rate in India, is strewn with many difficulties. Social reform in India has few friends and many critics.”
― Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste

“Every Congressman who repeats the dogma of Mill that one country is not fit to rule another country must admit that one class is not fit to rule another class.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste

“In my opinion, it is only when Hindu society becomes a casteless society that it can hope to have strength enough to defend itself. Without such internal strength, swaraj for Hindus may turn out to be only a step towards slavery.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste

“I am convinced that the real remedy is intermarriage. Fusion of blood can alone create the feeling of being kith and kin, and unless this feeling of kinship, of being kindred, becomes paramount, the separatist feeling—the feeling of being aliens—created by caste will not vanish.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition

“I measure the progress of a community by the degree of progress which women have achieved.”
― Bhim Rao Ambedkar

“I do not know whether you draw a distinction between principles and rules. But I do... Rules are practical; they are habitual ways of doing things according to prescription. But principles are intellectual; they are useful methods of judging things... The principle may be wrong, but the act is conscious and responsible. The rule may be right, but the act is mechanical. A religious act may not be a correct act, but must at least be a responsible act. To permit this responsibility, religion must mainly be a matter of principles only. It cannot be a matter of rules. The moment it degenerates into rules it ceases to be religion, as it kills the responsibility which is the essence of a truly religious act.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste