B. R. Ambedkar Quotes

The more I study Hindu scriptures, and the more I discuss them with Brahmins, the more I feel convinced that untouchability is the greatest blot upon Hinduism.

Nothing can be more repugnant to the individualism and love of freedom of the British race than the Hindu caste system, under which every man is born into a particular water-tight compartment from which he cannot emerge except through death and rebirth …

Caste in India is the first and last reality.

People are not wrong in observing Caste. In my view, what is wrong is their religion, which has inculcated this notion of Caste. If this is correct, then obviously the enemy, you must grapple with is not the people who observe Caste, but the Shastras which teach them this religion of Caste.

Caste is a state of mind. It is a disease of mind. The teachings of the Hindu religion are the root cause of this disease. We practice casteism and we observe Untouchability because we are enjoined to do so by the Hindu religion. A bitter thing cannot be made sweet. The taste of anything can be changed. But poison cannot be changed into nectar.

Simple peck-order bullying is only the beginning of the kind of hierarchical behavior that can lead to racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, classism, and all the other 'isms' that cause so much suffering in the world.

You have to be taught to be second class; you're not born that way.

In the South they don't mind how close I get, so long as I don't get too big. In the North they don't mind how big I get, so long as I don't get too close.

A Sudra [lowest caste untouchable], though emancipated by his master, is not released from servitude; since that is innate in him, who can set him free from it?

Untouchables are treated as if less than beasts …. Untouchability for me is more insufferable than British rule. If Hinduism hugs Untouchability, then Hinduism is dead and gone.

The idea of the nation [India] itself is incompatible with the institution of caste.

Today, we seem to be striving towards injustice, applauding it as though it's a worthy dream, made sacred by the caste system.

Caste is about dividing people up in ways that preclude every form of solidarity, because even in the lowest castes, there are divisions and sub-castes, and everyone's co-opted into the business of this hierarchical, silo-ised society.

The caste system may be more highly developed in countries like India or England, but every tier of society in almost every culture tries to dominate a group it perceives as beneath it.

Even after Independence, we have had to face the poison of casteism and communalism. How long these evils will continue? Whom does it benefit?

In practice, intersectionality functions as kind of caste system, in which people are judged according to how much their particular caste has suffered throughout history.

Hinduism has sinned in giving sanction to untouchability.

The untouchability of Hinduism is probably worse than that of the modern imperialists.

Caste is not just a division of labour, it is a division of labourers.

If untouchability is an integral part of Hinduism, the latter is a spent bullet.

Creeds and castes, and all forms of intellectual and emotional grouping, belong to the past.

Everybody feels like an outcast because the world is so large and every fingerprint is so vastly different from one another, and yet we have these standards and beliefs, and dogmatic systems of judgment and ranking, in almost all the societies of the world.

For a long time I was convinced that the conflict between Jewish people and black people in this country was a media event.

In some countries, women aren't allowed to wear a swimsuit.

It seems to be part of the human condition to need someone you can look down on. I still don't get that one.