How Babasaheb rejected and criticised the Vedas

Contrary to RSS official Krishna Gopal's claim that Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar had immense faith in the Vedic religion, the framer of India's Constitution not only never believed in the Vedas or Vedic faith but severely criticised it several times, once going to the extent of writing, in his canonical work ` Annihiliation of Caste', that “you have got to apply the dynamite to the Vedas and the shastras, which deny any part to reason; to the Vedas and shastras, which deny any part to morality .“
The first eight of the 22 vows that Ambedkar administered to his followers on the day he embraced Buddhism in Nagpur on October 14, 1956, were also an open repudiation of the Vedic religion, said scholar Hari Narke, who edit ed volumes 17 to 22 of Ambedkar's writings and speeches, published by the Maharashtra government.
In 1936, Ambedkar wrote, “The Hindu religion, as contained in the Vedas and the Smritis, is nothing but a mass of sacrificial, social, political and sanitary rules and regulations, all mixed up. What is called religion by the Hindus is nothing but a multitude of commands and prohibitions.“
Offering a radical solution to the problem of too many scriptures in Hinduism, he said the “Vedas, Shastras and Puranas, which are treated as sacred and authoritative, must by law cease to be so and the preaching of any doctrine, religious or social contained in these books should be penalised.“ Describing the great work of the Buddha, Ambedkar stated that the founder of Buddhism had “repudiated the authority of the Vedas“.When Buddha condemned “karma kanda“ (rituals) and Yagnas, Ambedkar stated, the “counter-revolutionaries“ opposed him saying these things “were ordained by the Vedas, the Vedas were infallible.“
But, he wrote, “People who had accepted the gospel of social equality and who were remaking society on the basis of each one according to his merits--how could they accept the Chaturvarnya theory of gradation and separation of man based on birth simply because the Vedas say so?“ In at least four of his works in addition to the controversial `Riddles in Hinduism -Caste in India' (1916), `Annihilation of Caste' (1936), `Who were the Shudras' (1946) and `The Untouchables' (1948) -Ambedkar offered a strong indictment of the earliest known Hindu texts.


Source: Times of India, 24-01-2017