Letters: Fitting tribute

President Pranab Mukherjee’s gesture of dedicating the new economics institution modelled on the London School of Economics to B R Ambedkar in Bengaluru on April 14 was a fitting tribute.

Next year marks the centenary of Ambedkar’s PhD in economics, which focused on productivity, skill training and the need to shift people from agriculture to industry, as a strategy to overcome poverty. He was an economist first, who flowered to become a legal luminary and shaped the Constitution. It is worth reflecting on some of his thoughts on Hinduism, the caste system and its perversions.

“The first and foremost thing that must be recognised is that ‘Hindu society is a myth’,” Ambedkar said in his book The Annihilation of Caste. Some of the quotable quotes from the book: “Hindu society… is only a collection of castes… Each caste had no conception of their having constituted a community… A caste has no feeling that is affiliated to other castes, except when there is a Hindu-Moslem riot… Its survival is the be-all and end-all of its existence. Castes do not even form a federation. On all other occasions each caste endeavours to segregate itself and to distinguish itself from other castes.”

I appeal to all to realise that it was the vastness of thinking in our civilisation that made our sages and seers attain extraordinary limits of consciousness, and for humans to benefit from achievements in science and philosophy. 

N Narasimhan | Bengaluru

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