Ambedkar’s anti-caste speech sold out swiftly across India in 1937.

Evidence

The speech prepared by me for the Jat-Pat Todak Mandalb of Lahore has had an astonishingly warm reception from the Hindu public for whom it was primarily intended. The English edition of one thousand five hundred copies was exhausted within two months of its publication. It has been translated into Gujarati and Tamil. It is being translated into Marathi, Hindi, Punjabi and Malayalam. The demand for the English text still continues unabated. To satisfy this demand it has become necessary to issue a second edition. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 751

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• SEED: The immediate translation into six Indian languages within two years is evidence for how fast reformist texts circulated in the 1930s — usable in an essay on the spread of annihilation-of-caste ideas.
• SHARE: Send to someone studying Indian print history or Dalit movements: the English speech sold 1,500 copies in two months and went straight into six vernacular translations.

Related

• The 1937 second edition of the essay sold out quickly and stayed in demand (similarity 0.85)
• Caste segmentation split Ambedkar’s readership along the very lines he attacked (similarity 0.83)
• The Mandal withdrew its invitation before Ambedkar delivered the speech (similarity 0.83)
• Annihilation of Caste sold out its first English print run within two months (similarity 0.82)
• Ambedkar’s speech was suppressed by its own host organization in 1936 (similarity 0.80)
• Ambedkar’s writings first reached print through Dalit movement publishers in 1963 (similarity 0.80)
• Even a radical Hindu reform group cancelled Ambedkar over his anti-Shastra stance (similarity 0.80)
• Gandhi’s defense of varnashrama dharma prompted Ambedkar’s 1937 expansion. (similarity 0.78)