Who were they and why they became UNTOUCHABLES ? This is the digital copy of "THE UNTOUCHABLES". a book wrote by The great Dr B.R. Ambedkar. Please give us your feedback : www.facebook.com/syag21 Your opinion is very important to us. We appreciate your feedback and will use it to evaluate changes and make improvements in our book.

The Shudras echoes Dr Ambedkar's question in Who Were the Shudras? that he asked in 1946. More than 70 years later, Kancha Ilaiah and his team of authors revisit this issue to give Shudras a voice again' -CHRISTOPHE JAFFRELOT The Shudras: Vision for a New Path weaves together multiple dimensions of the predicament of India's productive castes-in the spiritual, social, political, economic, philosophical and historical spheres. It reformulates their current position as well as future pathways. It strives to provoke Shudras-including regional political party leaders-all over India to realize their unique historical role in fighting unequal caste structures. And it gives a call to resist Hindutva, in which they have no liberated, equal space with the Dwija castes. At a juncture when the Shudra castes are regionalized and the Dwijas have become 'national', the fifth volume of the Rethinking India series, in collaboration with the Samruddha Bharat Foundation, seeks to bring home the real picture of their marginalized status in all key structures of the nation. It posits that the emancipation and progress of the Shudras are vital to sustain Ambedkar's constitutional democracy and move towards socio-spiritual equality.

'The Shudras echoes Dr Ambedkar's question in Who Were the Shudras? that he asked in 1946. More than 70 years later, Kancha Ilaiah and his team of authors revisit this issue to give Shudras a voice again' -CHRISTOPHE JAFFRELOT The Shudras: Vision for a New Path weaves together multiple dimensions of the predicament of India's productive castes-in the spiritual, social, political, economic, philosophical and historical spheres. It reformulates their current position as well as future pathways. It strives to provoke Shudras-including regional political party leaders-all over India to realize their unique historical role in fighting unequal caste structures. And it gives a call to resist Hindutva, in which they have no liberated, equal space with the Dwija castes. At a juncture when the Shudra castes are regionalized and the Dwijas have become 'national', the fifth volume of the Rethinking India series, in collaboration with the Samruddha Bharat Foundation, seeks to bring home the real picture of their marginalized status in all key structures of the nation. It posits that the emancipation and progress of the Shudras are vital to sustain Ambedkar's constitutional democracy and move towards socio-spiritual equality.

The present work has been undertaken not only to provide an adequate treatment of the position of the sudras in ancient times, but also to evaluate their modern characterizations, either based on insufficient data, or inspired by reformist or anti-reformist motives. Here an attempt has been made to present a connected and systematic account of the various developments in the position of the sudras down to circa A.D. 600. Since the sudras were regarded as the laboring class, in this study particular attention has been paid to the investigation of their material conditions has been paid to their economic and social relations with the members of the higher varnas. This has naturally involved the study of the position of slaves, with whom the sudras were considered identical. The untouchables are also theoretically placed in the category of sudras, and hence their origin and position has also been discussed in some detail.