Ambedkar frames religious reform as a total death-and-rebirth requiring abolition of shastra authority

Evidence

It means conversion; but if you do not like the word, I will say it means new life. But a new life cannot enter a body that is dead. New life can enter only into a new body. The old body must die before a new body can come into existence and a new life can enter into it. To put it simply: the old must cease to be operative before the new can begin to enliven and to pulsate. This is what I meant when I said you must discard the authority of the shastras, and destroy the religion of the shastras. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 1010

Categorization

• XREF: This organic death-and-rebirth metaphor foreshadows Ambedkar’s actual move: his public conversion to Buddhism in 1956, choosing a new body for a new life rather than incremental reform.
• SEED: Essay angle: how reformers who reject gradualist reform resort to total-conversion rhetoric — Ambedkar’s ‘new body’ doctrine vs. Gandhian incrementalism.