4
MANU AND THE SHUDRAS
[This is a 31 page handwrittten Ms. of Dr. Ambedkar. The chapter has no title. It is also left incomplete. The title is suggested—editor.]
I
The reader is now aware that in the Scheme of Manu there were two principal social divisions: those outside the Chaturvarna and those inside the Chaturvarna. The reader also knows that the ; present day Untouchables are the counterpart of those outside the Chaturvarna and that those inside the Chaturvarna were contrasted with those outside. They were a composite body made up of four different classes, the Brahmins, the Kshatriyas, the Vaishyas and the Shudras. The Hindu social system is not only a system in which the idea of classes is more dominant than the idea of community but it is a system which is based on inequality between classes and therefore between individuals. To put it concretely, the classes i.e. the Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, Shudras and Antyajas (Untouchables) are not horizontal, all on the same level. They are vertical i.e. one above the other. No Hindu will controvert this statement. Every Indian knows it. If there is any person who would have any doubt about it he can only be a foreigner. But any doubt which a foreigner might have will be dissolved if he is referred to the law of Manu who is the chief architect of the Hindu society and whose law has formed the foundations on which it is built. For his benefit I reproduce such texts from the Manu Smriti as go to prove that Hindu society is based on the principle of inequality.
II
It might be argued that the inequality prescribed by Manu in his Smriti is after all of historical importance. It is past history and cannot be supposed to have any bearing on the present conduct of the Hindu. I am sure nothing can be greater error than this. Manu is not a matter of the past. It is even more than a past of the present. It is a ‘living past’ and therefore as really present as any present can be.