Phule argued Shudras understood slavery through direct experience of Brahmin conquest.

Evidence

Phule—who, among other things, campaigned for widow remarriage, girls’ education, and started a school for Untouchables—described how “the owners of slaves treated the slaves as beasts of burden, raining kicks and blows on them all the time and starving them”, and how they would “harness the slaves as bullocks and make them plough the fields in the blazing sun”. Phule believed that the Shudra and Ati-Shudra would understand slavery better than anyone else because “they have a direct experience of slavery as compared to the others who have never experienced it so; the Shudras were conquered and enslaved by the Brahmins”. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 226

Categorization

• XREF: Phule’s framing of Shudras as conquered people parallels American slavery discourse — connects to the reader’s interest in how Indian anticaste thinkers borrowed from Black liberation frameworks.
• DEFINE: Phule’s notion of caste as a form of internal conquest and slavery is a key conceptual foundation for the Indian anticaste tradition.