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One of twentieth-century India's great polymaths, statesmen, and
militant philosophers of equality, B. R. Ambedkar spent his life
battling Untouchability and instigating the end of the caste
system. In his 1948 book The Untouchables, he sought to trace the
origin of the Dalit caste. Beef, Brahmins, and Broken Men is an
annotated selection from this work, just as relevant now, when the
oppression of and discrimination against Dalits remains pervasive.
Ambedkar offers a deductive, and at times a speculative, history to
propose a genealogy of Untouchability. He contends that modern-day
Dalits are descendants of those Buddhists who were fenced out of
caste society and rendered Untouchable by a resurgent Brahminism
since the fourth century BCE. The Brahmins, whose Vedic cult
originally involved the sacrifice of cows, adapted Buddhist ahimsa
and vegetarianism to stigmatize outcaste Buddhists who were
consumers of beef. The outcastes were soon relegated to the
lowliest of occupations and prohibited from participation in civic
life. To unearth this lost history, Ambedkar undertakes a forensic
examination of a wide range of Brahminic literature. Heavily
annotated with an emphasis on putting Ambedkar and recent
scholarship into conversation, Beef, Brahmins, and Broken Men
assumes urgency as India witnesses unprecedented violence against
Dalits and Muslims in the name of cow protection.
One of twentieth-century India's great polymaths, statesmen, and
militant philosophers of equality, B. R. Ambedkar spent his life
battling Untouchability and instigating the end of the caste
system. In his 1948 book The Untouchables, he sought to trace the
origin of the Dalit caste. Beef, Brahmins, and Broken Men is an
annotated selection from this work, just as relevant now, when the
oppression of and discrimination against Dalits remains pervasive.
Ambedkar offers a deductive, and at times a speculative, history to
propose a genealogy of Untouchability. He contends that modern-day
Dalits are descendants of those Buddhists who were fenced out of
caste society and rendered Untouchable by a resurgent Brahminism
since the fourth century BCE. The Brahmins, whose Vedic cult
originally involved the sacrifice of cows, adapted Buddhist ahimsa
and vegetarianism to stigmatize outcaste Buddhists who were
consumers of beef. The outcastes were soon relegated to the
lowliest of occupations and prohibited from participation in civic
life. To unearth this lost history, Ambedkar undertakes a forensic
examination of a wide range of Brahminic literature. Heavily
annotated with an emphasis on putting Ambedkar and recent
scholarship into conversation, Beef, Brahmins, and Broken Men
assumes urgency as India witnesses unprecedented violence against
Dalits and Muslims in the name of cow protection.
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