Religion, social status, and property are alternative sources of power across stages

Evidence

The fallacy of the socialists37 lies in supposing that because in the present stage of European society property as a source of power is predominant, the same is true of India, or the same was true of Europe in the past. Religion, social status, and property are all sources of power and authority which one man has to control the liberty of another. One is predominant at one stage; the other is predominant at another stage. That is the only difference. If liberty is the ideal, and if liberty means the destruction of the dominion which one man holds over another, then obviously it cannot be insisted upon that economic reform must be the one kind of reform worthy of pursuit. If the source of power and dominion is, at any given time or in any given society, social and religious, then social reform and religious reform must be accepted as the necessary sort of reform. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 851

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: This is the analytical core of Ambedkar’s anti-Marxist argument; connects to the book’s overall thesis that caste is not merely an economic superstructure.

Related

• Religion, social status, and property each dominate as power sources at different historical stages (similarity 0.95)
• Religion and social status can be sources of power rivaling property (similarity 0.88)
• Caste must be abolished before political or economic reform can succeed (similarity 0.83)
• A socialist state in India cannot function without tackling caste prejudice (similarity 0.81)
• Social order change must precede all other progress (similarity 0.81)
• Caste can only be destroyed by attacking its religious foundations (similarity 0.81)
• Economic reform cannot succeed without prior social-order reform in India (similarity 0.81)
• Indian socialism cannot function without first dismantling caste prejudice (similarity 0.81)
• Religious notions are the root mechanism sustaining India’s caste system. (similarity 0.80)
• Reforms divide into secular, religion-conforming, and religion-opposed species (similarity 0.80)
• Ambedkar proposes state-certified, non-hereditary priesthood as a reform. (similarity 0.80)
• Ambedkar argued that destroying caste required destroying its religious foundations, not just inter-caste marriages (similarity 0.80)
• Ambedkar proposed replacing caste with liberty, equality, and fraternity (similarity 0.79)
• Abolishing caste requires destroying the sacred authority of shastras (similarity 0.79)
• Destroying caste means destroying shastra and Veda authority, a near-impossible task. (similarity 0.79)