Gandhi’s birth-to-worth varna reform is practically unenforceable and fails women

Evidence

Ambedkar pointed out the absurdity of this idea: “How are you going to compel people who have acquired a higher status based on birth, without reference to their worth, to vacate that status? How are you going to compel people to recognise the status due to a man, in accordance to his worth, who is occupying a lower status based on his birth?” He went on to ask what would happen to women, whether their status would be decided upon their own worth or their husbands’ worth. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 97

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• QUESTION: The question of enforcement and gender within varna is a live angle for understanding why caste-reform failed.

Related

• Ambedkar exposed the practical impossibility of Gandhi’s worth-based varna idea (similarity 0.90)
• Vedic varna originally ignored birth and recognized only worth (similarity 0.83)
• Establishing worth-based chaturvarnya requires first dismantling the birth-based caste system. (similarity 0.83)
• Gandhi’s varna doctrine collapses into caste despite his claims (similarity 0.81)
• Guna-karma theory underwrites reformers’ defense of varnashrama without birth-based caste. (similarity 0.80)
• Applying chaturvarnya’s worth-based logic to women would require female priests and soldiers. (similarity 0.80)
• Gandhi contradicted himself on whether varna is essential to Hinduism (similarity 0.79)
• Ambedkar saw women’s bodies as the gateways upholding caste (similarity 0.79)
• Ambedkar saw control of women’s sexuality as a method of caste reproduction. (similarity 0.78)