The Struggle Against Untouchability: B.R. Ambedkar’s Fight for Dignity and Rights

For centuries, millions of people in India were treated as less than human simply because of the family they were born into. They could not draw water from common wells, enter temples, or even let their shadow fall on someone from a higher caste. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, born into one of these communities himself, refused to accept this as fate. He spent his life dismantling the idea that any human being could be considered “polluting.” His fight against untouchability was not just a political campaign; it was a moral and intellectual revolution that reshaped how the nation thinks about dignity and equality.

Untouchability is not the same as caste 🔗

One of Ambedkar’s most important contributions was insisting that untouchability is a separate problem from the caste system, even though the two are linked. The caste system, as he described it, divides society into ranked groups based on birth, occupation, and notions of ritual purity. It is unjust and hierarchical, but it still places everyone within the social order, even if at different levels.

Untouchability does something far more extreme. It pushes an entire group of people outside the boundaries of society altogether. The so-called untouchables were treated as so impure that their touch, their shadow, or even their proximity was believed to contaminate others. Ambedkar saw this as a complete denial of humanity rather than a mere ranking within it. Historically known as Dalits, Scheduled Castes, or the depressed classes, these communities faced segregation in settlements outside towns and were barred from temples, schools, and wells.

An institution of social ostracism 🔗

Ambedkar described untouchability as a system of total social exclusion. It was not occasional discrimination but a permanent, hereditary condition imposed at birth. The disabilities were many: prohibition from public water sources, exclusion from places of worship, denial of education and employment, and forced confinement to “impure” occupations like manual scavenging and leatherwork. This combination of social, economic, and religious exclusion is what made untouchability uniquely cruel.

The Brahmanical roots of untouchability 🔗

Ambedkar argued that untouchability was not a natural or accidental development. It was a social institution deliberately upheld by Brahmanical ideology. This ideology promoted the belief that some people were inherently inferior and impure, which conveniently justified their exploitation and exclusion. By framing this hierarchy as sacred and ordained by religion, the system made oppression appear legitimate and unchangeable.

The “broken men” theory 🔗

To challenge the idea that untouchability was timeless, Ambedkar offered his own historical explanation in his 1948 work The Untouchables: Who Were They and Why They Became Untouchables?. He theorised that the untouchables descended from “broken men” – scattered tribal groups who settled on the edges of villages. According to his account, these groups were treated as outsiders partly because they continued eating beef after Brahmins made the cow sacred. Beef-eating, once an ordinary practice, was redefined as a religious offence, and the broken men who continued it were cast beyond the pale of society.

This theory mattered because of what it implied. If untouchability had a historical and contingent origin, then it was a human creation. And anything humans create, humans can also dismantle. Ambedkar used scholarship as a weapon to strip away the religious aura that protected the system.

The burden of emancipation falls on the oppressed 🔗

Ambedkar held a clear and demanding view: the primary responsibility for liberation lay with the untouchables themselves. He did not believe that the upper castes would willingly surrender their privileges out of goodwill. Real change, he argued, would come only when the oppressed organised and asserted their own rights. This philosophy is captured in his famous call to educate, agitate, and organise, which became the motto of the Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha he founded in 1924.

Education as the true liberator 🔗

Ambedkar placed education at the heart of his programme. He saw it as the most powerful tool for breaking the chains of ignorance and inferiority that the caste system imposed. Drawing on his own struggle to study despite humiliating discrimination in schools and colleges, he understood firsthand how knowledge could transform a person’s sense of self-worth. He believed education was an indispensable prerequisite for rebuilding society on the principles of equality and justice, and he campaigned for it to be made accessible and affordable to all children, regardless of caste.

Organisation and struggle 🔗

Education alone was not enough. Ambedkar insisted that the oppressed had to come together as an organised force. Scattered and divided, the untouchables had little power. United, they could demand their rights and resist exploitation. He led direct movements to assert these rights, such as the Mahad Satyagraha of 1927, where Dalits asserted their right to draw water from a public tank, and the Kalaram Temple entry movement. These acts of struggle were meant to shatter the everyday practices of exclusion and to instil a sense of self-respect and courage in his community.

Constitutional democracy as a shield 🔗

Ambedkar understood that social movements needed the backing of law and the state. As the chairman of the drafting committee of the Constitution, he ensured that the new republic would carry strong guarantees against untouchability. The most direct of these is Article 17, which abolishes untouchability and forbids its practice in any form. Crucially, this provision applies not just to the state but to private individuals as well, making the enforcement of any such disability a punishable offence.

Giving the law real teeth 🔗

A constitutional declaration on its own can remain symbolic. Recognising this, the framers used the power under Article 35 to allow Parliament to make laws prescribing punishment. This led to the Untouchability (Offences) Act of 1955, later strengthened and renamed the Protection of Civil Rights Act in 1976. This law criminalised the denial of access to temples, water sources, shops, hospitals, and public spaces on the grounds of untouchability. It was later reinforced by the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989, which addressed the violence and humiliation that these communities continued to face.

Preferential policies and social justice 🔗

Beyond prohibition, Ambedkar believed the state had a positive duty to actively uplift those it had historically excluded. Centuries of denied education, land, and opportunity could not be undone simply by declaring everyone equal overnight. This is the reasoning behind the policies of reservation in education, public employment, and legislative representation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

These preferential policies were designed to work alongside social and educational reform. Legal equality would create the space for the oppressed to organise, while reservations and education would give them the means to actually use that space. Ambedkar’s broader vision was a society governed by the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, where the rights of every individual are respected and upheld. For him, political democracy was hollow without social democracy to support it.

Why the fight is not over 🔗

More than seven decades after independence, Ambedkar’s analysis remains strikingly relevant. While the legal disabilities of untouchability have largely been removed, the attitudes that sustained it have proved stubborn. Discrimination now appears in newer forms, such as violence against inter-caste couples, bias in workplaces and universities, and the continued segregation of Dalit settlements in many villages. The persistence of caste-based discrimination despite legal protection shows that the institution Ambedkar identified has adapted rather than disappeared. His insistence on education, organisation, and constitutional vigilance therefore continues to guide those working for social justice today.

What do you think? If untouchability has been abolished by law for over seventy years, why do its attitudes and practices still survive in society? And do you believe Ambedkar was right that the responsibility for emancipation must rest primarily with the oppressed themselves, rather than with the goodwill of those in power?

References

1. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Dalit
2. https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/library/resource/dr-babasaheb-ambedkar-vol-7-who-were-the-shudras-and-the-untouchables—who-were-they-and-why-they-became-untouchables/
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahishkrit_Hitakarini_Sabha
4. https://zenodo.org/records/6945899
5. https://www.indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/15434/1/protection_of_civil_rights_act,_1955.pdf
6. https://www.refworld.org/legal/legislation/natlegbod/1955/en/14581
7. https://www.mea.gov.in/Images/pdf1/Part4A.pdf
8. https://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/india/India994-03.htm