Ambedkar held that caste itself, not untouchability, must be dismantled

Evidence

Ambedkar stayed away from these meetings. He had begun to grow sceptical about these very public but completely out-of-character displays of solicitude for Untouchables. He saw that these were ways in which, in the changing times, the privileged castes were manoeuvring to consolidate their control over the Untouchable community. While his audience, his constituency and his chief concern were the Untouchables, Ambedkar believed that it was not just the stigma, the pollution–purity issues around untouchability, but caste itself that had to be dismantled. The practice of untouchability, cruel as it was—the broom tied to the waist, the pot hung around the neck—was the performative, ritualistic end of the practice of caste. The real violence of caste was the denial of entitlement: to land, to wealth, to knowledge, to equal opportunity. (The caste system is the feudal version of the doctrine of trusteeship: the entitled must be left in possession of their entitlement, and be trusted to use it for the public good.) — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 301

Categorization

• DEFINE: Draws the key distinction for the book’s whole argument between untouchability (performative ritual) and caste (structural denial of entitlement) — the load-bearing conceptual framework.
• STORYSTEM: The reformist maneuvers of privileged castes consolidating control through public solicitude is a reusable structural plot for fiction about any liberation movement.
• ADDENDUM: The ‘feudal version of trusteeship’ line parallels the sacrificial stabilizer theme of ‘On Sacrifice’ — the entitled are ‘trusted’ to use holdings for public good, structurally mirroring how sacrifice stabilizes hierarchy.