B. R. Ambedkar

B. R. Ambedkar was born an untouchable in western India, studied at Columbia and the London School of Economics, and became the leader of the Dalits, the drafter of India’s constitution, and its first law minister. Annihilation of Caste was written as a speech for a Hindu reform society in 1936 that cancelled the meeting when it read the text; he published it himself, with Gandhi’s reply and his own rejoinder. It argues that caste cannot be reformed because the scriptures sanction it, and that the scriptures must go. He converted to Buddhism with half a million followers weeks before his death.