“Under the system of Chaturvarnya, the Shudra is not only placed at the bottom of the gradation but he is subjected to innumerable ignominies and disabilities so as to prevent him from rising above the condition fixed for him by law. He explained the seriousness of the problem at hand to justify a penetrating study into the historical background of the problem: Yet, in the overall spirit of seeking justice from the Hindu social order, in tribute to the groundwork laid by Jotiba Phule in the anti caste struggle, and to address the “problem of the Shudras,” as he calls it, he undertook the remarkable project of researching and writing Who Were the Shudras. As the title of the former book makes it clear, it was regarding the Shudras, who were, in the caste hierarchy, a rung above the Untouchables, Ambedkar’s own people. Who Were the Shudras? was written before Dr Ambedkar embarked upon the successor volume, Who Were the Untouchables?, which appeared in 1948. It was in the spirit of searching for ways to get to the bottom of social deformities and emerging with clues towards social reform that he had undertaken the project of investigating the history of the Shudras. His book, Who Were the Shudras? How they came to be the Fourth Varna in the Indo-Aryan Society, published in 1946, was dedicated to Mahatma Phule (or Fule): “Inscribed to the Memory of MAHATMA JOTIBA FULE,” runs the dedicatory line in the book.įor Dr Ambedkar, Phule was the “Greatest Shudra of Modern India,” of course, “because he made the lower classes of Hindus conscious of their slavery to the higher classes” but more specifically because he “preached the gospel that for India social democracy was more vital than independence from foreign rule.”īabasaheb had already set forth this argument in his book from the 1930s, Annihilation of Caste, where he had stressed the need for social reform to precede political reform. Babasaheb Ambedkar’s prefaces to his works were often as penetrating and incisive as the main body of the work that followed.

Who were the shudras by ambedkar