B.R. Ambedkar's Literary Legacy: Key Writings and Their Impact • PolSci Institute

Before he became the chief architect of the Indian Constitution, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar had already made his name as a scholar with a pen sharper than most. His writings were not academic exercises detached from reality. Each book, essay, and undelivered speech was a weapon aimed at a specific injustice, whether it was a manipulated currency, a rigid caste hierarchy, or a religion he believed had failed the oppressed. To understand Ambedkar the reformer, you have to read Ambedkar the writer.

A scholar before a statesman
The problem of the rupee: economics as anti-colonial critique
The clash with Keynes
From thesis to the Reserve Bank
Annihilation of caste: a manifesto that was never spoken
Caste as the division of labourers
The debate with Gandhi
Rewriting history: who were the shudras and the untouchables
The turn to religion: the buddha and his dhamma
The lasting impact of his words

A scholar before a statesman

Ambedkar’s intellectual range was extraordinary. He held doctorates from Columbia University and the London School of Economics, and his early work focused on economics rather than caste. Over his lifetime, his subjects shifted from monetary policy to social justice, religion, and constitutional law. The Government of Maharashtra later compiled his complete works into a multi-volume series, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, which was reprinted by the Dr. Ambedkar Foundation under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.

What ties these diverse writings together is a single thread: a relentless concern for the powerless. Whether he was analysing exchange rates or scriptures, Ambedkar was always asking the same question. Who benefits from this system, and who pays the price?

The problem of the rupee: economics as anti-colonial critique

The Problem of the Rupee: Its Origin and Its Solution (1923) was based on Ambedkar’s doctoral thesis at the London School of Economics. On the surface it is a technical study of Indian currency. Look closer and it becomes a powerful indictment of colonial economic policy.

The clash with Keynes

At the time, the dominant view favoured the gold exchange standard, championed by economists like John Maynard Keynes. Ambedkar disagreed. He argued that the gold exchange standard was unstable and unsuited to a country like India because it increased inflation and reduced the real wages of the earning class. He insisted that price stability mattered far more than exchange rate stability, and he backed this with statistical evidence showing how the rupee had lost value.

His deeper point was political. The British had an interest in keeping the rupee’s exchange rate artificially high to make their exports cheaper and their profits larger. Ambedkar’s analysis exposed how monetary arrangements were being used to serve metropolitan interests at the expense of the colony. This made the book a foundational anti-colonial economic text decades before such critiques became common.

From thesis to the Reserve Bank

This was not theory that gathered dust. In December 1926, Ambedkar presented evidence before the Royal Commission on Indian Currency and Finance, known as the Hilton Young Commission, and each member of the commission held a copy of his work. Several of his recommendations fed into the Reserve Bank of India Act of 1934, which led to the establishment of the Reserve Bank of India in 1935. He also championed an autonomous institution to manage the currency, an idea the RBI eventually embodied.

Annihilation of caste: a manifesto that was never spoken

If The Problem of the Rupee shows Ambedkar the economist, Annihilation of Caste (1936) reveals Ambedkar the radical reformer. Its origin story is famous. The text was written as a presidential address for the annual conference of the Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal, a group of caste-reforming Hindus in Lahore. When the organisers read the speech, they found it too controversial and revoked the invitation. Ambedkar refused to soften his words. Instead, he self-published the speech, and it spread rapidly across the country.

Caste as the division of labourers

The central argument is uncompromising. Ambedkar insisted that caste was not merely a division of labour, as its defenders claimed, but a division of labourers into a fixed and graded hierarchy. He argued that no real social progress was possible while this structure remained intact. His proposed solutions were equally bold: he advocated inter-caste marriage and a direct challenge to the authority of religious scriptures that he believed sanctified inequality.

He also made a claim that reordered the entire reform debate of his era. Ambedkar argued that social reform must come before political reform. Independence from the British would mean little, he warned, if a society remained internally divided and unequal.

The debate with Gandhi

The book triggered a landmark exchange with Mahatma Gandhi. Writing in his journal, Gandhi defended Ambedkar’s right to express his views but argued that a religion should be judged by its best adherents, not its worst, and that Ambedkar had selected unreliable interpretations of the scriptures. Ambedkar responded in a later edition, published as Annihilation of Caste: With a Reply to Mahatma Gandhi. This was not a polite disagreement. It captured a fundamental split in vision, with Gandhi seeking to reform caste from within Hinduism and Ambedkar concluding it had to be uprooted entirely.

Rewriting history: who were the shudras and the untouchables

Ambedkar understood that caste was justified through history and myth, so he set out to dismantle that history. In Who Were the Shudras? (1946), dedicated to the social reformer Jyotirao Phule, he challenged the traditional account of the varna system. Drawing on texts like the Vedas and the Mahabharata, he argued that the Shudras were originally part of the Kshatriya class and had been pushed into a degraded status through historical conflict, not divine ordination.

He continued this project in The Untouchables: Who Were They and Why They Became Untouchables (1948), which examined the origins of untouchability within Hindu society. Together, these works form a deliberate strategy. By proving that caste hierarchy was a human invention rather than an eternal truth, Ambedkar removed its claim to sacred authority and reframed it as a system that could be changed.

The turn to religion: the buddha and his dhamma

Ambedkar’s lifelong search for a faith based on equality culminated in his final major work, The Buddha and His Dhamma, published posthumously in 1957. By the 1950s he had concluded that the dignity of the oppressed could not be secured within Hinduism, and he turned to Buddhism, which he saw as rooted in liberty, equality, and fraternity.

The book was a unique compilation, intended almost as a Buddhist guide for the modern follower, offering a social interpretation of the Buddha’s teachings. It became the intellectual foundation for the Dalit Buddhist movement, often called Navayana Buddhism. On 14 October 1956 at Nagpur, Ambedkar formally converted to Buddhism along with hundreds of thousands of followers, an event this book directly inspired.

Publishing it was a struggle. Ambedkar lacked the resources to print the manuscript he had worked on for five years and even wrote to Prime Minister Nehru seeking the government’s help to purchase copies for libraries. He did not live to see it published.

The lasting impact of his words

Ambedkar’s writings continue to shape the country in concrete ways. His economic insights are embedded in the institutions of the financial system. His critique of caste remains a central resource for Dalit movements, legal reforms, and academic discourse on social justice. And his constitutional vision is written into the law of the land.

What makes his body of work so durable is its method. Ambedkar combined rigorous research with moral clarity. He did not simply assert that a system was unjust. He gathered the data, traced the history, and laid out the argument, leaving little room for his opponents to dismiss him. His writings still serve as both a record of past injustice and a toolkit for confronting it.

What do you think? Was Ambedkar right that social reform must come before political reform, or are the two impossible to separate? And how might his economic thinking, often overshadowed by his social activism, change the way we remember him today?

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Table of Contents

A scholar before a statesman 🔗

The problem of the rupee: economics as anti-colonial critique 🔗

The clash with Keynes 🔗

From thesis to the Reserve Bank 🔗

Annihilation of caste: a manifesto that was never spoken 🔗

Caste as the division of labourers 🔗

The debate with Gandhi 🔗

Rewriting history: who were the shudras and the untouchables 🔗

The turn to religion: the buddha and his dhamma 🔗

The lasting impact of his words 🔗