The Priceless Treasure: Dr. Ambedkar’s Manifesto for Women’s Liberation

Abstract

“I am sure that whoever reads references to women by the Buddha which occur in the scared literature of the Buddhists will be convinced that far from doing anything which would have the effect of degrading the woman, the Buddha all along tried to enable woman and to elevate her.”[1]

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar The Rise and Fall of the Hindu Woman,Vol. 17, II.

Needless to say, women composed half of human society. But in India they suffer from the double oppression; firstly, is of gender itself and second is of the caste. It becomes all the more complicated and unliberated when it gets into the divine clutches. When a birth or the gender get sanctification of the divine and authentication of the sacred texts, who are the humans to alter or challenge it? Thus, gender and caste slavery eternally crippled both: women and the Shudrās in Ancient India. Unfortunately, this is the case even in our times. This results majorly into two serious consequences. Firstly, the human world paralyzes before divinity which is hierarchical and oppressive in nature which results in a culture of privileged and underprivileged. Secondly, once the slavery entwines with an oppressive divinity, thus becomes not a matter of reason or a questionable principle or an enquiry, it cannot be investigated, but cease to merely a belief; that makes slavery eternal and sustains forever. Such view cannot see any hope of ray of liberation in the human and non-human world. The doors of liberation thus shut down permanently.

[1] Ambedkar, The Rise and Fall of The Hindu Women: Who was responsible for it? Vol. XVII, Part II, p. 117.