B. R. Ambedkar · Politics
In a 1916 paper written as a graduate student at Columbia, the young Ambedkar cracked open the machinery of caste. Its essence, he argued, is not occupation or race but <em>endogamy</em> - a class that has closed itself by forbidding marriage outside - and the cruel customs that keep the door shut.
You learned that Ambedkar defined caste by endogamy superimposed on exogamy - a self-enclosed class - and explained its maintenance through the management of ‘surplus’ men and women, and its spread through imitation of the highest caste. Explain the mechanism in your own words.
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