B. R. Ambedkar Quotes

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

A Moslem must not act as masseur to a Jew or Christian; he must not clear their rubbish nor clean their latrines. In fact, the Jew and the Christian are more suited for such work, which are degrading tasks. A Moslem must not act as a guide or stableman for an animal owned by a Jew or Christian; he must not act as their donkey-driver or hold the stirrups for them.

Caste in India is the first and last reality.

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 may be bad. Caste may lead to conduct so gross as to be called man's inhumanity to man. All the same, it must be recognized that the Hindus observe Caste not because they are inhuman or wrong-headed. They observe Caste because they are deeply religious.

'Article 15' prohibits any kind of discrimination on the basis of caste, creed, or religion. My film is about the discrimination we practice on various levels.

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.

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.

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.

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

America owes most of its social prejudices to the exaggerated religious opinions of the different sects which were so instrumental in establishing the colonies.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Loyalism, or Unionism, or Protestantism, or whatever you want to call it, in Northern Ireland - it operates not as a class system, but a caste system.

I think the presence of caste in India, how the villages are geographically structured on caste lines, is very different from China. The presence of an egalitarian culture is striking in a Chinese village.

I think there's really strong social stratification in South Asia.

I cannot believe there is caste system in society; I cannot believe people are judged on the basis of their prosperity.

There will always be those people who are just backward and ignorant. There will always be those people. They need somebody to feel superior to.

Brahmins do not have the right to call themselves Indians … If India has to become a modern nation, … It has to establish an egalitarian relationship between Brahmins and the lower castes.

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?

A once-born man (a Sudra), who insults a twice-born man with gross invective, shall have his tongue cut out; for he is of low origin. If he arrogantly teaches Brahmanas their duty, the king shall cause hot oil to be poured into his mouth and into his ears

We are undemocratic, then, in our religion, as is proved by our efforts to “raise” the poor.

It is no longer permitted them to put themselves, with respect to their houses, on an equal footing with the dwellings of their Muslim neighbors, and still less to build their buildings higher. If they are of the same height, or higher, it is incumbent upon us to pull them down to a size a little less than the houses of the true believers. This conforms to the word of the Prophet: 'Islam rules, and nothing shall raise itself above it.' This is also in order to hinder them from knowing where our weak spots are and in order to make a distinction between their dwellings and ours

Sex and race, because they are easy, visible differences, have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups, and into the cheap labor on which this system still depends.