D:\AMBEDKAR\VOL-07\CONTENT Mk S.K.—26-09-2013>DK>9-11-2013\M 3
FOREWORD
The seventh volume of the Writings and Speeches of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar contains two of his most memorable contributions to the sociological literature of the modern India, viz. (1) ‘Who were the Shudras?- How they came to be the Fourth Varna in the Indo-Aryan Society;’ and (2) ‘The Untouchables- Who Were They and Why They Became Untouchables?’ Both these works have influenced the thinking of the present century which has witnessed emergence of the individual as the autonomous unit in the constitutional jurisprudence of equality and liberty. They mark the inauguration of the age of reason in our history and impress upon us the need to rearrange our social institutions in harmony with the dynamics of technological changes which have made it possible for masses to enjoy freedom. The age of reason was the effect of technologies of freedom and mobility inherent in the Railways, Roads, Telegraphs, mass education movements and greater contacts with the liberal culture of the West.
Both the works have a historical orientation and throw a critical light on the problem of the caste as the inhibitory and controlling element in the social organisation and structure. The defect of the Indian social structure was immobility which was institutionalised as the divine dispensation, leading to decay and atrophy. Dr. Ambedkar examines the problem in the light of historical evidence and shows how the caste became the fundamental criterion of social action.
The work ‘Who were the Shudras?’ is inscribed to the memory of Mahatma Jotiba Fule whom Dr. Ambedkar esteems “as the greatest Shudra of Modern India who made the lower classes of Hindus conscious of their slavery to the higher classes and who preached the gospel that for India social democracy was more vital than