Criticisms of Manusmriti: A Tool for Brahminical Dominance

Few ancient texts in India provoke as much controversy as the Manusmriti. Also known as the Laws of Manu, this Dharmashastra was composed somewhere between the 2nd century BCE and the 2nd century CE, and it laid out detailed rules for duty, law, and social conduct. To some, it represents a venerable guide to traditional life. To its critics, it is something far more troubling: a carefully constructed framework that placed power in the hands of a few while denying dignity to many. Understanding why the Manusmriti attracts such sharp criticism means examining how it organised society, who benefited from that arrangement, and why thinkers like Dr. B.R. Ambedkar saw it as an obstacle to social justice.

The varna system and the architecture of hierarchy 🔗

The central criticism of the Manusmriti rests on its elaboration of the varna system. The text describes society as divided into four classes: Brahmins as priests and teachers, Kshatriyas as warriors and rulers, Vaishyas as merchants and farmers, and Shudras as servants and labourers. This fourfold classification was treated as fundamental to how society ought to be organised.

What makes this hierarchy controversial is not merely that it existed, but how it was justified. The Manusmriti famously describes the four varnas as emerging from different parts of the cosmic being: Brahmins from the mouth, Kshatriyas from the arms, Vaishyas from the thighs, and Shudras from the feet. The placement is symbolic and deliberate. The mouth, associated with speech and knowledge, sits at the top. The feet, which touch the ground, are placed at the bottom. By rooting social rank in a divine act of creation, the text presented inequality not as a human choice but as the natural order of the universe.

Why divine origin made the system hard to challenge 🔗

This claim of divine origin is one of the most powerful tools the text used to entrench hierarchy. When a social arrangement is presented as the will of the gods, questioning it becomes more than a political disagreement. It becomes an act against sacred order. A person born into the Shudra varna could not easily argue that the system was unjust, because the system claimed the authority of creation itself. This is precisely why critics argue the text functioned as an instrument of control. It removed the ground on which dissent could stand.

The British colonial administration later treated the Manusmriti as a definitive guide to Hindu law, which gave its prescriptions a fresh layer of formal authority. As Britannica notes, the colonial attempt to structure caste through varna echoed the work of the Manusmriti from over a millennium earlier, turning what had once been dynamic and debated into something far more rigid.

Whose interests did the order serve? 🔗

Critics point out that the Manusmriti’s hierarchy was not neutral. It systematically favoured the three upper varnas, the so-called “twice-born” who were entitled to religious education and ritual initiation. Brahmins in particular enjoyed extraordinary privileges under the text’s framework.

Consider the matter of punishment. The text and the broader Dharmashastra tradition it represents extended remarkable legal protection to Brahmins. As one analysis of the tradition notes, a Brahmin was generally not subject to capital punishment for crimes, a protection not extended to those lower in the order. The same offence could carry vastly different consequences depending on the varna of the person who committed it and the varna of the victim. This unequal application of justice meant that birth determined not only one’s occupation and social standing but also one’s treatment before the law.

The position of the Shudras and the excluded 🔗

For Shudras, the text reserved the role of service to the other three varnas. They were denied access to the religious education and ritual life that defined upper-caste status. Below even the Shudras stood communities entirely outside the varna scheme, sometimes designated the Panchama or “fifth” group. The exclusion of these communities was rooted in rigid ritual purity laws drawn from texts like the Manusmriti, which helped institutionalise the practice of untouchability. These were not minor inconveniences. They were structural barriers that shaped where people could live, what work they could do, whom they could marry, and even from which sources they could draw water.

The subordination of women 🔗

The criticism of the Manusmriti extends well beyond caste. Feminist scholars have long argued that the text codified the subordination of women into religious law. Perhaps the most frequently cited verse declares that a woman should be protected by her father in childhood, her husband in youth, and her son in old age, concluding that a woman is never fit for independence. This single idea, repeated in various forms across the text, denied women autonomy at every stage of life.

Scholars such as Uma Chakravarti and Sukumari Bhattacharji have shown how the text sought to control women’s mobility, knowledge, reproduction, and sexuality. Marriage was presented as compulsory for women, and a wife’s service to her husband was equated with a disciple’s devotion to a guru. The emphasis on chastity and obedience created a clear double standard, where the conduct demanded of women far exceeded what was expected of men.

Why caste and gender were linked 🔗

It is important to see that the control of women and the maintenance of caste were connected. Caste purity depended on controlling who women could marry and bear children with. By restricting women’s choices, the text helped preserve the boundaries between varnas across generations. This is why anti-caste reformers and feminist critics often raised their objections together. The endorsement of the varna order and the secondary status of women sit at the very core of the ideology that critics call Brahminism.

Ambedkar and the burning of the Manusmriti 🔗

No single act symbolises the rejection of the Manusmriti more powerfully than what happened at Mahad in 1927. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the chief architect of the Indian Constitution and the foremost leader of the Dalit rights movement, publicly burned copies of the text on 25 December 1927.

The burning took place during the Mahad Satyagraha, a movement asserting the right of so-called untouchables to draw water from the public Chavdar tank. After upper-caste resistance turned violent and a legal case stalled the water protest, Ambedkar recognised that the deeper problem was the ideology that justified untouchability in the first place. According to accounts of the event, a pyre was prepared over two days, and the text was burned at the hands of a group that included Brahmin supporters of the cause, signalling that this was a principled rejection of an idea rather than an attack on any community.

What the act meant 🔗

Ambedkar later explained his reasoning in his newspaper. He wrote that his reading of the Manusmriti had convinced him it did not support the idea of social equality in any meaningful way, and that to burn a thing was to register a protest against what it represented. He compared the act to the burning of foreign cloth during the freedom movement, framing it as a recognised form of protest that uses a symbol of oppression to launch a struggle for liberation.

The event is now commemorated annually as Manusmriti Dahan Din. It is worth noting that Ambedkar was not the first to take such action. A year earlier, in 1926, a non-Brahmin group in the Madras Presidency had carried out a similar burning under the leadership of Periyar E.V. Ramasamy, showing that resistance to the text was building across different parts of the country.

Why the criticism still matters 🔗

One might ask why a text written nearly two thousand years ago deserves such intense scrutiny today. The answer lies in its lasting influence. The hierarchy the Manusmriti described did not vanish with its composition. It shaped social attitudes, marriage practices, and patterns of discrimination that persist in various forms. Caste-based exclusion, prejudice against Dalits, and resistance to women’s autonomy all draw, in part, from the worldview the text helped legitimise.

The Indian Constitution, drafted under Ambedkar’s leadership, can be read as a direct response to this inheritance. It guarantees equality before the law, abolishes untouchability, and prohibits discrimination on the basis of caste, sex, or religion. In a real sense, the constitutional commitment to equality stands as the deliberate opposite of the order the Manusmriti prescribed.

A note on the debate 🔗

It would be incomplete to ignore that the Manusmriti has its defenders. Some scholars argue that the text contains verses honouring women, and that it has been read selectively or judged unfairly out of its historical context. Others point out that similar or even older passages appear in earlier Dharmasutras, suggesting Manu became a symbol that absorbed criticism meant for a whole tradition. As the scholar Patrick Olivelle has observed, Manu became the symbol of oppression even though comparable passages exist in other documents. These counterarguments do not erase the criticism, but they remind us that the debate is genuine and ongoing. What is clear is that, for the millions affected by caste and gender discrimination, the text became the most visible representative of a system they had every reason to reject.

What do you think? If a social hierarchy claims divine sanction, what tools does a society have to challenge it without rejecting its entire cultural inheritance? And does burning a text like Ambedkar did strengthen a movement for justice, or does symbolic rejection risk overshadowing the harder work of legal and social reform?

References

1. https://www.britannica.com/topic/varna-Hinduism
2. https://www.thenewsminute.com/voices/why-manusmriti-symbol-caste-system-anti-caste-reformers-136809
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avarna
4. https://ijcrt.org/papers/IJCRT2603411.pdf
5. https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2845&context=jiws
6. https://sabrangindia.in/why-did-dr-babasaheb-ambedkar-publicly-burn-manu-smruti-dec-25-1927/
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahad_Satyagraha