Against the Madness of Manu

A brahman mega convention in contemporary pune reasserts faith in endogamy for national interest , and imposes new codes on brahman women a brahman congress leader suggests that a dalit chief minister be raped and paid compensation in his 1916 paper castes in india , the 25-year-old ambedkar offered the insight that the caste system thrives by its control of women, and that caste is a product of sustained endogamy since then, till the time he piloted the hindu code bill, seeking to radicalise women s rights in the 1950s, ambedkar deployed a range of arguments to make his case against brahmanism and its twin, patriarchy while ambedkar s original insights have been neglected by sociologists, political theorists and even feminists, they have been kept alive, celebrated and memorialised by dalit musical troupes and booklets in maharashtra sharmila rege, in this compelling selection of ambedkar s writings on the theme of brahmanical patriarchy, illuminates for us his unprecedented sociological observations rege demonstrates how and why ambedkar laid the base for what was, properly speaking, a feminist take on caste

Sharmila Rege is a sociologist who heads the Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule Women s Studies Centre, University of Pune. She is the author of Writing Caste/Writing Gender: Narrating Dalit Women s Testimonios