Against the Madness of Manu: B.R Ambedkar’s Writings on Brahmanical Patriarchy

Gives insight into Ambedkar's life and work which can be rarely found in any text books.

Awesome

It will tell you about how much Ambedkar has done for the cause of women and has brought together the question of caste and gender in the discussions of Parliament in the way no other leader, politician has. Also, theorized their interconnection a great deal.

A very important introduction to B.R.Ambedkar and what ails this country. The first article on caste details the issue so well and is written in such a technical way, amazes you. How I would update a Bug report on a software Bug. Have always found reading the source is so much better that reading commentaries on it, to some extent that is true for this volume also. Sharmila Rege's introduction is good but many a times too technical for me.Compulsory reading for every Indian.

It is best book on the woman's rights' in India in old days, golden period of hindu rule and now a days

The book is delivered in a very bad condition.If I m paying 399rs on a book , the least I expect is the book to be in a good condition

Ms Sharmila Rege's book Against the Madness of Manu is an essential contribution to many fields of study as well as to India's and the World's past and present history. The present wave of ordered rapes makes this sadly clear albeit in a caricatural fashion. For Westerners now faced with the cynical strategy of their leading classes (the infamous 1 % and their allies and servi in camera) to implement a « return » to inequalities and obscurantism based on « reference to Authority » and on the barbaric use of the Nietzschean Hammer, Ms Rege's presentation of Ambedkar’s thesis on castes, studied violence and endogamy will act as a revelation.Those who already know Nietzsche and his current philo-Semite Nietzschean unearthing will immediately appreciate the crucial important of this book. Of course, Ambedkar's analysis of endogamy precedes that of Germaine’s Tillion: Both are essential for social sciences as well as for the development of a modern non-Freudian and non-Jungian psychoanalysis. This will be occultated by academics only at the cost of transforming themselves into servi in camera as is proven in my Pour Marx, contre le nihilisme.Ambedkar's pioneering periodisation of endogamy and castes origins remains vital. It does not concern India's only. Of course as Paul Lafargue, the great student of G. Vico, showed, this question involves the transition from pre-patriarchal societies to patriarchal ones. Thus, Prehistory must now be brought to task, in particular the analysis of fecundity rituals. This is often oculted by a calculated Western and generally academic conformist Puritanism, as much as Pompeii’s frescoes which are but a pale Roman echo of the earlier Neolithic and Protohistoric pictograms. These fecundity rituals provide the main transition between « primitive exogamy » and hierarchical endogamy. The façades of many old temples in Southern India are also speaking to a later stage of this transition.Because this touches upon the understanding of sexualized reproduction, one must also look at the behavior of higher primates, something which has already started. This will illuminate with a new light the various lineage structures analyzed by Lévi-Strauss and others as well as their social and psychological consequences. In the end, the simple arithmetic of sexualized reproduction illustrates in an irrefutable way the difference between inequality and difference, male and female contributing equally to the renewal of the human species. This equality supposes the wide and unfettered circulation of women and thus a new exogamy founded in gender parity and equal access to employment with equal pay. When this realization of human emancipation is negated, more or less unfortunate social and cultural mediations are invented to deal with the ensuing problems: Ms Rege's rightly points to sati and enforced widowhood as well as to institutionalized violence. When the negation of human equality rests on a strict and reinforced endogamy (Manu, Nietzsche and his teachers etc.) the human species is endangered (consanguinity, cultural closure, obscurantism and structural violence against the people.)It does not come as a surprise to see the confluence between women’s liberation movement and general human emancipation: One beautiful example is Diderot’s understanding of the liberating impact of Polynesian lineage structures which he lays out in his Suppléments au Voyage de Bougainville. The best revolutionaries understood this immediately, including many pioneering women. The Declaration of Human Rights remains a Declaration of Man Rights without it.Ambedkar's lesson on castes and emancipation remains essential for all, not only for India. It is only sad that life did not grant Ms Rege's more time to offer her own essential contributions. She is clearly right in stating that the celebration of December 25, 1927 is not in opposition to the March 8 celebration, quite the opposite.Paul De Marco.