Ambedkar Renounced Hinduism and Wrote Down Why: From the 1927 Manusmriti Bonfire to "Worthless" Vedas and the 22 Vows of 1956

Let's go to Mahad, in the Konkan. To be precise, 25 December 1927. A conference over which B.R. Ambedkar presides burns the Manusmriti, in a resolution "to form the basis of reconstruction of Hindu Society". On 13 October 1935, at Yeola, he says: "I solemnly assure you that I will not die a Hindu." In 1936 he writes that "the enemy, you must grapple with, is not the people who observe Caste, but the Shastras." In a manuscript unpublished in his lifetime he writes: "The Vedas are a worthless set of books." On 14 October 1956 at Nagpur, lakhs of people repeat after him: "I shall have no faith in Rama and Krishna, nor shall I worship them." Every one of those lines is printed, with a page number, in the Government of Maharashtra's edition of his works. So is the page almost nobody quotes. And this time I did one more thing. He told the world what the Hindu books say, so I opened the books. Manu 2.12, the verse he printed as "three sanctions", says in its own words that there are four. The tenth book of the Rig Veda, from which he quoted hymns to show the Vedas contain "nothing that can be said to be spiritually or morally elevating", has a hymn telling the rich to feed the hungry, and he had printed a line of it himself, eleven pages before that conclusion. Where the texts back him, and on caste in Manu they do, I say so. Where Gandhi's answer fails the same test, I say that too. Our first version said he hated Hinduism. Here is what the record actually says.